There is so much Jane Austen buzz these days.
Book clubs are still dissecting Karen Joy Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club -- the film version of which opens today -- and people are still queuing up for Becoming Jane, which is making the rounds at art cinemas.
PBS is launching an Austen extravaganza in mid-January 2008 when Masterpiece Theatre will begin airing adaptations of all six of her novels.
There are two mystery series which arise from the Austen legacy. Stephanie Barron has a series in which Austen herself is the detective and Carrie Bebris has a series where Austen's fictional characters Fitzwilliam Darcy and his wife Elizabeth (née Bennet) do some genteel sleuthing.
In a 1997 interview shortly after her series was launched, Barron explains that, as a detective, "Austen is a natural ... because she understood the human heart, she understood motivation, she understood the society of her day. She was a strong, independent woman with a natural curiosity and a desire to figure out why people did what they did."
Despite the current Austen revival, Barron will be making a departure from the Austen mysteries and bringing out a stand-alone novel in February.
A Flaw in the Blood opens on the evening of Prince Albert's demise. Barron's website describes it as "A suspense novel centered around Queen Victoria's troubled court and a secret so dangerous it could topple thrones."
That's thrones, plural, so it must indeed be dangerous!