Readers familiar with Harriet Smith as Emma Woodhouse\u2019s mousy, unmarriageable prot\u00e9g\u00e9 will be surprised to learn that Harriet (not her real name, by the way) is already at age 18 an accomplished con artist, trained by the father she turned on and fled, who\u2019s hired by Mrs. Lavinia Churchill to recover some prized jewelry Jane Fairfax pinched from her and prevent Jane from marrying Frank Churchill, the client\u2019s nephew, ward, and heir, by any means necessary. Throwing herself into the assignment with vigor, Harriet gets intermittent help from her friend Robert Martin, a tenant farmer and aspiring author whose lover, Reuben Denny, is the \u201cheartthrob of the Derbyshire militia.\u201d The plot seriously shades Emma and her future husband, George Knightley, who have little more than walk-on roles. But it does make room for multiple poisonings, a scorpion planted in a box on a dressing table, and Harriet\u2019s growing fear that the force behind all these alarums and excursions is none other than her father, determined to avenge himself on his treacherous daughter. The melodramatic climax places multiple interested parties, three of them armed with guns, on a cliff two of them end up plunging over. That aptly summarizes the principal pleasure of this improbable series debut: The tension that arises from Andrew\u2019s desire to duplicate the characters of Austen\u2019s novel, inviting the reader to wonder if she\u2019s willing to bend their possible fates\u2014will any of Austen\u2019s own characters emerge as victim or killer?\u2014and then unleash a criminal fantasia that borrows only some names from its celebrated source.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Readers familiar with Harriet Smith as Emma Woodhouse\u2019s mousy, unmarriageable prot\u00e9g\u00e9 will be surprised to learn that Harriet (not her real name, by the way) is already at age 18 an accomplished con artist, trained by the father she turned on and fled, who\u2019s hired by Mrs. Lavinia Churchill to recover some prized jewelry Jane […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}