Another entry in the expanding Pride and Prejudice universe, Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Investigator, (publication day July 8, 2025) by Kelly Gardiner and Sharmini Kumar, is a satisfying mystery centered on a minor character from Pride and Prejudice.
As the book opens, Caroline Bingley is staying with her brother Charles and his new wife Jane (formerly Bennett) at their country house that is somewhat near Pemberley, where Darcy and his new wife Elizabeth are also living, with Darcy’s young sister Georgiana. Georgie has sent Caroline a note that she has gone to London, alone, and she asks that Caroline not tell her brother. Afraid for Georgie, who is so young and unaware of the dangers that face a young woman, Caroline sets out in a snowstorm to find her.
Georgie has run after her maid, a young Indian woman who has gone to find her brother after having exchanged letters with him, and so Caroline gets drawn into the drama. Caroline is no-nonsense, a woman near thirty who has not yet found a husband but has taken her inheritance and set up housekeeping by herself in London. With her butler, Gordon, assisting her, Caroline starts making inquiries to try to find Caroline’s maid, Jayani, and her brother, Sameer.
Caroline does find them, unfortunately too late for one . So now she’s drawn into a murder, which is not something that respectable ladies in society even discuss, let alone inquire about!
Crossing paths with the magistrate who is investigating the murder, representatives of the Company (Royal East India Company) and an interesting family, the Dunstons, who are also involved with Colonel Fitzwilliam, Georgie’s guardian, Caroline waltzes in like the high-born lady that she is. Luckily she has Gordon, her butler, to get information not available to her, and she eventually figures the whole thing out, with, like all good mysteries, a meeting of all concerned where the detective reveals all in a dramatic scene.
I enjoyed it, and thought the authors did a great job of making the writing true to the original, while having the characters do things that were difficult for women to do at the time. It was weight-neutral, no negative mention of body size.
Reading While Fat 