And then she meets handsome Henry Tilney, who lives at the beautiful and forbidding Northanger Abbey. Cat quickly begins to take Edinburgh by storm and is taken into the bosom of the Thorpe family, particularly by eldest daughter Bella.

So imagine her delight when her neighbors, the Allens, invite her to attend the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh as their guest. A homeschooled minister's daughter in the quaint, sheltered Piddle Valley in Dorset, Cat Morland loses herself in novels (and, of course, her smartphone) and is sure there is a glamorous adventure awaiting her beyond the valley's narrow horizon. Now in paperback, Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey is an updated take on Jane Austen's classic novel about a young woman whose visit to the stately home of a well-to-do acquaintance stirs her most macabre imaginings. Bella Thorpe, Cat’s first fast friend in Edinburgh, is the embodiment of 21st-century annoyances, speaking like someone out of “Made in Chelsea,” a British reality TV series following the dramas of the young, rich, and spoiled (“Totes amazeballs”), and harboring not-so-sneaky ambitions that expose social climbers for what they are no matter the century.'Long before our modern-day crime author draws a final, canny ace from her tartan sleeve, you'll have succumbed to the delights of Northanger la McDermid.'- The Boston Globe He also, in Cat’s active imagination, gives off just the faintest whiff of being a vampire - as does the rest of his family.

Heroic, even, Cat allowed herself to think.” He didn’t have the confected good looks of a boy-band member but his face was compelling and memorable. Cat and Henry Tilney meet-cute at a dancing lesson, sharing easy laughter and an immediate connection: “Henry was the right sort of tall. . . McDermid’s “Abbey” kicks off in the best tradition of a charming rom-com. In a particularly cheeky move, Cat’s mother’s lack of concern about the dangers of city street life - mirroring Catherine’s mother’s attitude in the original - is ironically underscored by the tidbit that she is an avid reader of real-life Edinburgh crime writers Ian Rankin and Kate Atkinson. But McDermid also conjures up the fictional “Hebridean Harpies” series - “Vampires on Vatersay,” “Banshees of Berneray,” “Shapeshifters of Shuna,” “Killer Kelpies of Kerrera” - that makes a sublimely perfect stand-in for the Gothic novels of death and dark secrets that enthralled Austen’s Catherine.Īusten’s early reference to baseball gets a tip of the tam-o’-shanter here, and the various platforms of social media substitute nicely for the reams of journals and epistolary communications of Austen’s time.

Val mcdermid jane austen