Death Comes to Pemberley: Austen re-visited?

I fell in love with P.D. james when I read the first Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Cover her Face. The book had me hooked. It reminded me of the classic Christie. The setting was period. The English countryside. Contemporized with a generous dose of sexual desire and intrigue. When I then heard of Death Comes to Pemberley, I HAD to read it. A sequel of sorts to the eternally entertaining Pride and Prejudice. Murder in the Victorian country house, beautiful men and women, familiar characters. Got to be good, right? 

Well, the book was procured, begun with much fanfare and devoured ravenously to the last page. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much I'd be able to say about it that would live up to the hype. Admittedly, it is well-written. The historical research is detailed and rendered as authentic as is possible. The characters are all logical extensions of Austen's world. James spends a considerable amount of time setting the background, developing the histories of Elizabeth and Jane and Bingley and Darcy. She gives them the right clothes, the right words and the right emotions. Despite the correctness of all formal elements, the book doesn't work.

Elizabeth and Darcy are passionately in love. "In love" like in a chick-flick. He wants to hold her hand so he can feel his world righting itself. She looks up to him as only a Victorian woman can. Jane is as much in awe of Bingley as she was when he was walking all over her in deference to the snob values of his best friend and his sister. The man is still a pushover. As a 21st century reader, the least I expected from a "Murder Mystery" based on Austen's novel was a little bit of spice. Darcy unhappy. Stuck in an "unsuitable" marriage. Bingley having an affair on the sly. Elizabeth running a women's rights group. Jane fed up of bearing children every alternate year. At the least. Instead, what we get is an insipid extension of the period drama minus the edgy intensity that has so far defined James's work.

The writer spends most of her energy and the reader's time in getting the background right. Therefore, there is the working class, circumscribed by it's desire to please and it's recognition of it's rightful, subservient place in the order of things. There is the usual distraught woman, the threat of scandal and subsequent overthrow of the social order. Feeble clues in the form of initials carved on tree trunks and a rather unconvincing murder. It follows logically that the final revelation of the murderer and the cause of the crime are even more unconvincing. 

Anti-climactic doesn't even begin to describe it. It's a yawn and then two more.
What really bothers me, at the end of this rather unsatisfactory read, is why did James do it? Why take on characters that daunt you instead of setting you free? Why handle someone else's story as a historical relic instead of making it your own? Why negate the very idea of an adaptation? That, and not the murder, is the real mystery I wish P.D.James had solved for me.