It is amazing how quickly O Pie O, East Walnut Hills’ just barely a year old restaurant has become my favorite, my go to place.

Last Tuesday, Shaheen and I had dinner in between working on my computer and doing readings for each other. Then on Friday, with my Florida sister Kathleen and her significant other Rob in town, it ws again the right – comfortable, relaxed, easy – choice, after spending the day riding the streetcar and wandering Findlay Market.

Long may it reign!

I can check another of Jane Austen’s masterpieces off my list. Last night, I finished Emma, which Jane wrote and which was published in 1816, the year before she died.

It includes the dedication which is a major part of the Jane Austen mystery, Jane and the Waterloo Map, by Stephanie Barron. The dedication says: To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This work is, by his Royal Highness’s Permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness’s dutiful and obedient humble servant, The Author. No wonder the royals were so sure they were always right!

The Cincinnati Library provided this in a large type edition – it was 684 pages. And I now know probably almost all of the prevailing rules about who calls on whom, when, how and why in English manners and society in the early 1800s. Whew! I am glad life is so much simpler now. And texting doesn’t involve a lot of social rules.

Emma is a 21-year-old member of the gentry, wealthy in her own right, sweet and naive in some ways, but also quite sure she knows who belongs with whom, how things should be done, and is very willing to act on those beliefs to arrange and fix the lives of her friends. We definitely would recognize Emma today, though this book is over 200 years old. She is also living in a fairly backwater part of England, which gives her just a small segment of society to work on, and we get to know them all very well.

Needless to say, Emma is almost always, and flamingly, wrong. So there is a lot of Jane’s subtle humor in these pages. Emma is, though, very good hearted, and very smart in some ways, while also missing clues right in front of her. As well as always insisting she herself, while working to marry off friends and acquaintances, will never marry.

The book ends well, which I always appreciate. And is fairly lighted-hearted and fun. It also could have been written yesterday or tomorrow, thus demonstrating Jane’s genius and gifts. Enjoy!

So here it is, the latest Being A Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron. Jane and the Waterloo Map features one of the heroes of that battle, and the action occurs only a few months later. Her writing gets better and better, she invents interesting and challenging characters, loves quirky and impossible situations, and is not particularly worried about shedding a little blood here and there. In this case, there is also poison – the needles of the yew, which, brewed in a tea, cause paralysis and death.

Jane is not here the gadabout Londoner, but is herself injured, and is also caring for her brother, who is ill, and whose bank is in trouble. There are fewer characters and less social activity than in many of these mysteries – and so more focus on particular interactions, mostly around Carlton House, the fabulous home of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. There are also a couple of wonderful historical painters, and Jane’s now grown up niece, Fanny, has a part to play.

Great writing, great fun, smart – but who knows when the next one will appear? Besides, Jane has only a year and half to live (the books are true to where she was and what she was up to, as the background of these mysteries), so the series is nearly done, no matter what.

P. S. If you are going to read these superlatives mysteries – start with the beginning and work your way through. They build on each other. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is the first.

This book, one of the six completed by Jane Austen, was published in 1818, after Jane’s death. It is the story of the Eliot family, much of which is not nearly as talented and smart as it thinks it is, and of what happens to gentry in that state – they lose their money, their home – but not always their status, because if they continue to say they are great, most folk seem to believe them. And those who don’t probably don’t see the point in undressing that emperor. Ah, well – that continues even today.

The only reason I bring it up is that Anne Eliot, the one member of the family not a social climber, and who actually has redeeming social value, is our heroine – and is looked down on and devalued by a fair number of her own family. She is pushed away from the love of her life, and pushed toward men who have no way to comprehend who she is, only that she will have an inheritance.

Luckily, that original love – from whom she was pushed away – is back on the scene, now rich and successful: Frederick Wentworth. Much of this book is about Jane’s views on marriage – marry only for love is her motto, and the social constrictions on women. It also has deep lessons on speaking up and out, not waiting on others; on being clear and direct as much as possible; and on having your own life, not someone else’s. Although those reading this in the 1800s may not have taken these lessons from the book.

Once Jane has the lovers back in love, she rushes on to the end – which I have noticed is a habit of hers. I would not have minded a few more long walks, more head on the shoulder time. But once Jane got them paired off, she wrapped up a few loose ends and was done. So I had to imagine the rest – which is also one of the characteristics of a great book, is it not? Aaaaaahhhhhh.

Note:
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has all the Jane Austen books – but most of them seem to be in large print, which makes them big, awkward and gawky. And many pages longer and heavier. Seems odd to me. But the books are terrific, and so we readers just deal with them.

This is the second actual book by Jane Austen I’ve read, yet it was the first book Jane prepared for publication, though it was only published posthumously. From a quiet village home, Catherine Morland accepts the kind offer of family friends, and comes with them to Bath for a season. (Jane uses Bath as a backdrop a couple of times, and was definitely not fond of it or of most of its behaviors.) All the 17-year-old Catherine knows of life comes from Gothic novels, quite the rage in Britain at the time.

She has a very active imagination and fills in the blanks in her understanding Gothically – picturing all manner of vivid horrors behind closed doors and down dim hallways. Jane designed it perhaps as a parody, or maybe a comedy of manners. It plays well either way, and is often a lot of fun. Except I kept worrying about each new tangle Catherine involved herself in, not wanting anything too hard to happen to her young and naive self. Jane is good though (from the less than half of her books I’ve read so far) at having bad things happen to the bad guys, and in general good stuff happening to the good ones.

Isabella, for instance, is a stinker and ends up as she deserves – I could wish she was smarter and more discerning, and not bring so many difficulties on herself. Catherine’s brother is also naive and ill used, but with no long term consequences. Catherine herself nearly ends up engaged, not understanding the obscurities and nuances in the mating rules of that time. And then when she is sure she is headed into the arms of her true love, suddenly it all that blows up.

But since Catherine is definitely a good guy / person everything works out, and the blow up is a catalyst in producing her happy future. Long live Jane!

This volume, with Jane Austen cast as the detective, by Stephanie Barron, is eerie and hard and with several instances of real violence. And with George Gordon, Lord Byron, cast as the anti-hero. Of all the series, this is the toughest and most hard-boiled.

Knowing Stephanie Barron as being a stickler for detail (all these mysteries are set in days and times when Jane really was in each of the various cities and areas of England), I just checked Wikipedia for Lord Byron. And it turns out he really was as awful – nearly a monster – as Barron depicts him. Violent is one of the key words throughout the wiki info.

And violent he is in this book, all charm one moment, and violent in word and deed the next. His treatment of women would have him in prison today. Perhaps those powerful and beautiful poetic works would not have been written.

We also get an intriguing picture of the death and mourning rituals in Britain at that time, and get to see the seaside at Brighton at high season, with all of the highest crust of society bathing in their weird machines – dipping into the ocean without actually being seen. Much fun in that social commentary – how the rich do Brighton.

Lord Byron does not turn out to have been the actual murderer of the young woman who is the victim in this book. The answer as to who did it is quite shocking.

Another great work from Stephanie Barron, whose voice in the book is totally Jane Austen’s – in tone, in thought, and in detection.

This mystery, as with all the mysteries by Stephanie Barron featuring Jane Austen as the detective and cultural commentator, is just excellent. Turns out the Barque of Frailty is an Edwardian code for mistress, perhaps call girl, way higher on the social scale than a prostitute.

And Jane, in this book, actually develops a friendship with one of the leading such women of her day, and is kind and reciprocal, in the heavy and all-in-code way of conversations at that time. It is interesting – and not surprising – that there were entire salons of these women, attended by men of the nobility and upper classes, to drink and flirt and make their choices. While the culture itself twisted itself into pretzels to pretend no such thing was happening.

And, of course, it turns out that one of the guys who pretended to be entirely above it all – not like those other men over there – was likely the killer, though the question was not quite concluded by the end of the book. Jane, as is usual in these mysteries, is seen as an older spinster (in her late 20s) by many other characters, with the few, the discerning, recognizing her true worth.

And I recognize that paragraph as carrying the same tone as the book, and nearly written in Edwardian code. I fear I have been infected with the Jane virus.

The eighth in the Jane Austen as detective series by Stephanie Barron, this one begins with Jane’s great grief over the loss of Lord Harold Trowbridge, which occurred at the same moment that they declared their love for one another.

Jane’s grief is her own private torment, her mother and sister never having approved of that friendship which had grown deeper and richer. As this volume opens, Jane and her mother are just moving into a home owned by Jane’s older brother, Edward, who is extremely wealthy, where the rest of the family is decidedly not. The village of Chawton is already disposed not to be kind to the Austens, even more so when one of Jane’s first actions is to find a dead body in the cellar.

In the second major happening in this book, an ancient solicitor from London, a representative of the Duke of Wilborough, shows up at the door asking for Jane. He delivers to her a carved Bengali chest filled with all the journals, letters, diaries and other papers of Lord Harold, second son of the Duke, with the willed request to turn them into a memoir. The solicitor also points out that there have been many attempts to steal the papers.

Jane’s wealthy brother owns most of the village, another brother is a London banker, with a branch in the area, a third the rector at a nearby church, and yet a fourth, the ship captain from the previous novel is also involved. A villager also claims to be the real owner of the village and of Edward’s wealth, and has thus turned the village against them. Another young man of mysterious parentage, Julian Thrace, is resident at several houses in the area, including Stonings, the seat of the Earl of Holbrook, Freddie Vansittart, an old friend of Lord Harold Trowbridge.

It being an English village, everything is tangled up with everything else, and several more deaths are piled on that original first body found in Jane’s cottage cellar. All is untangled, and the book ends with a letter found in the recovered chest – a love letter from Lord Harold, and thus Jane’s peace returns.