This is the second book to be published in ''The Austen Project'' being run by publisher HarperCollins, which has asked different best-selling authors to take six of the Austen novels and write a contemporary story with their own stamp on it. (The first one was Joanna Trollope's reimagining of Sense and Sensibility that came out last year.)
So, although you will find the same character names as in the Austen book, published in 1818 in an attempt to ridicule other tales of romance and terror by contrasting them with life as it really happens, the whole scenario has been modernised and the young people are ''with it''. The plot is set in the Edinburgh Festival, and there are all sorts of modern accoutrements such as cellphones and the internet.
But Catherine (''Cat'') Morland, who has a fascination with the modern vampire stories (not Bram Stoker's Dracula) is invited to spooky Northanger Abbey, where the grim and rigidly formal General Tilney does not allow his WiFi to be used by her or others in the family. And, of course, there are all sorts of romantic complications in this Gothic plot, well imagined by a fine thriller writer.
The Abbey is well portrayed as a weird place at night, with crumbling turrets, passages, footsteps and talk of ghosts. Cat's imagination runs riot.
I found it hard to put down this book and difficult to predict the outcome. Perhaps if I had been more familiar with the Jane Austen story I would have done better with that, but no matter - I found it a very clever portrayal of modern teenage years. And it also encourages me to read the classic version.
J.K. Rowling has paid this book a strong tribute. She wrote: ''Val McDermid's brilliant reworking of Jane Austen's original shows that innocent, bookish girls in thrall to the supernatural have changed surprisingly little in two centuries. Witty and shrewd, full of romance and skulduggery - I loved it.''
Me too.
- Geoff Adams is a former ODT editor.
