Victoria,
what made you decide to write The
Mansfield Park Murders?
I had already written The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the
Village of Jane Austen’s Emma and The
Meryton Murders: A Mystery Set in the Town of Jane Austen’s Pride &
Prejudice. After each novel appeared, several readers asked me to please
write another.
Some
readers say that Mansfield Park is
their least favorite Jane Austen novel. Would they still like The Mansfield Park Murders?
I’ve heard many Jane Austen admirers say
that Mansfield Park is their least
favorite of her novels because they don’t care for the heroine, Fanny Price, who
is so retiring and timid. But whether you love or hate Fanny Price doesn’t
matter for The Mansfield Park Murders,
as Fanny doesn’t have a big role in The
Mansfield Park Murders. Instead I focused on her younger sister, Susan
Price. Susan was described by Austen as being “fearless,” which makes her a
better protagonist for a murder mystery. Besides, when Fanny marries Edmund,
she moves to Thornton Lacey, so she would not even be living at Mansfield Park.
