13 Feb 2026 3 min read Blog

The Late Mrs Willoughby by Claudia Gray

After several months of good progress, I've experienced a bit of a health setback in the past couple of weeks and found it difficult to focus on physical books. (I've written a little more about my experiences of long-term illness here). I asked my podcast production assistant Leandra, who I know is an avid audiobook listener, if she could recommend me any cosy, easy-to-consume titles that would fit my general tastes. And, kind soul that she is, she immediately provided a dozen options that fall somewhere in the realm of historical/mystery/fantasy/science fiction. I got searching on my library apps and this, the second book in the Mr Darcy and Miss Tilney series, was the first one available.

I read the first book in this series — The Murder of Mr Wickham — as an ebook last year. I've read a lot of Austen follow-ons and fanfiction (it's a bit of a project of mine) and I enjoyed the way Claudia Gray blended together the timelines of the different Austen novels so that characters like Emma Wodehouse, Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Eliot could interact in the same book. The addition of an original plot in the form of a well-paced mystery elevated this book above the others of this type that I've read; Gray took the story onwards into new territory, rather than rehashing events that Austen had already covered.

Where The Murder of Mr Wickham puts the details from Emma and Pride and Prejudice at the fore, The Late Mrs Willoughby takes us into the realm of Sense and Sensibility. Both of our sleuth characters from the first book — Jonathan Darcy, son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth, and Juliet Tilney, daughter of Catherine from Northanger Abbey) — find themselves in Barton, Devonshire, where Austen's novel is mostly set. Jonathan is there as a reluctant houseguest of his school bully, Mr Willoughby, who has recently married and inherited his rich aunt's estate. Juliet, meanwhile, is making an extended visit to Marianne Brandon (née Dashwood), after striking up a friendship in the previous book in this series.

At a neighbourhood party, Mrs Willoughby dies horribly after drinking port laced with arsenic. It's awfully convenient for her husband, who disliked her and married her for her money, and terribly sad for another of his guests, whom she had spurned in favour of Willoughby's proposal. Marianne is also suspected and rumours of poison as a "woman's weapon" make life very unpleasant for her. Mr Darcy and Miss Tilney step in once more to investigate, skirting the bounds of propriety to question servants, perform chemical analyses of the poison, and interrogate their hosts. I will admit that I correctly guessed the identity of the culprit about halfway through, but this didn't impair my enjoyment of the whole story.

As well as working the case, our two protagonists make some emotional breakthroughs in their friendship, which is handled in a believable and period-appropriate fashion. The careful portrayal of Jonathan Darcy as neurodivergent centuries before such a term existed is done well, too. I found him to be a better-realised character in this book, where he existed separately to his parents, who will always be harder for a modern author to write convincingly because they carry the baggage of their Austen versions and all of the adaptations thereof.

I found Billie Fulford-Brown's reading of the book very easy and pleasant to listen to (and as an erstwhile audio editor, I am a notoriously picky audiobook consumer). The pace and momentum she kept up had me listening in every available moment and very nicely distracted from my symptoms. I plan to continue the series in audio and am waiting impatiently to borrow the next book, The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

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