Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey and the struggle to breathe new life into Jane Austen

In the next instalment of the “Austen Project”, the Scottish crime writer gives her modern-day take on the novel formerly known as Susan.

By John Mullan

(Photo By Northern Northanger: McDermid updates the setting from Bath to Edinburgh. Photo: Getty)

Northanger Abbey
Val McDermid
Borough Press, 352pp, £18.99

It is an odd thing, the so-called “Austen Project”. The idea, dreamt up by some clever operative at HarperCollins, is that a well-known novelist produce a contemporary version of each of Jane Austen’s six novels. You can imagine the growing excitement in the marketing department: each volume would catch both the contemporary author’s loyal readers and all those Austen fans. Better still, the series could hook some of those who have enjoyed Austen on the screen but who might find early-19th-century prose too daunting. Joanna Trollope has already “done” Sense and Sensibility; now the crime writer Val McDermid, doyenne of tartan noir, gives us her version of Northanger Abbey, transposed to some kind of present day.