The Passions of Dr. Darcy

A peripheral character from Lathan’s Darcy saga takes center stage in this tepid Jane Austen pastiche. Driven by medical ambition and scornful of idle aristocrats, 22-year-old Dr. George Darcy (uncle to Austen’s memorable Fitzwilliam Darcy) takes a post in colonial India. Impatient with his incompetent boss, a “pompous, insufferable hack,” George throws himself into his work and pursues romance between brief visits back home to Pemberley and briefer glimpses of political unrest and contemporary medical practice. After George’s first love marries a rival who, unlike George, is willing to move back to England, Lady Ruby Thomason uses George to get an heir for her secret husband, the scheming Duke of Larent. Short affairs give way to a grand passion for Jharna, the widow of a good friend, then more affairs after her early death; the eventual wedding-and-baby happy ending with an Englishwoman lacks romantic impact after all these dalliances. Lathan eschews subtlety, delivering a straightforward melodrama of by-the-book passions in a bare-bones setting. Agent: Scott Eagan, the Greyhaus Literary Agency. (Apr.)