Product Description

Boston, 1870. The news of the untimely death of Charles Dickens reaches his American publisher. James R. Osgood, a junior partner there, had been expecting the arrival of the latest instalment of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood', now Dickens' last work, to arrive shortly. Suspicious of unscrupulous New York publishers and their ruthless agents intent on stealing Dickens' novel, Osgood sends his trusted young clerk, Daniel Sands, to await its arrival. When Daniel's body is found by the docks, the true cause of his death unknown and the manuscript nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the rest of Dickens' final mystery and solve another of his own. Danger and intrigue abound on his seaward journey, especially once he discovers that Rebecca Sands, Daniel's sister and bookkeeper for Fields & Osgood, has stowed away in order to help clear her brother's name. Arriving in Britain, Osgood and Rebecca go to Dickens' home, where his possessions are about to be auctioned off; they plunge into the world of London theatres, the seedy, dangerous streets of the East End. Very soon they find themselves pursued by assailants and entangled in a sinister game in which the plot of Dicken's final mystery and real life seem destined to collide. And overshadowing everything is the violent, lucrative international opium-smuggling trade. In 'The Last Dickens', Matthew Pearl once again delivers an intricate, fast-paced and stylish literary thriller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43593 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Review
Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens is a tour-de-force. India in the time of the Raj, the opium dens of London, literary piracy in 1860s Boston, and Charles Dickens himself - all come alive in this ingenious, engrossing mystery, which grips the reader from harrowing start to tantalizing finish --JED RUBENFELD, author of The Interpretation of Murder

Review
'Pearl's research is often impressive.'

About the Author
Matthew Pearl is the internationally bestselling author of The Dante Club, which have been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries, and of The Poe Shadow. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

What the Dickens?
I'd enjoyed the Dante Club so thought this could be worthwhile. Big mistake. This book is poor: the plot is ludicrous unless it's actually meant to be a parody of the "penny dreadfuls" of the period itself, the characterisations are weak and shallow, and often stereotypes, there's a pointless parallel subplot in India... I've wasted enough time on this book already so won't continue, just want to warn you please don't make the same mistake.

Disappointing and poorly researched
I enjoyed The Dante Game and The Poe Shadow - perhaps I was too trusting that they represented 19th Century America fairly accurately. This mess of nonsense misrepresents Dickens and his works and almost everything we know about him. I couldn't struggle through it. Utter tosh.

Fast paced thriller from the world of Dickens
By chance I found this book at Oslo airport of all places whilst waiting for a much delayed flight home. I was unable to purchase it at the time but took all the details and ordered from Amazon as soon as I arrived home.

I have never heard of Matthew Pearl before, living in Germany makes it a little difficult to seek out new authors but I am so glad I found this one. The Last Dickens is a well researched fictional account of the American publisher of the last, unfinished, Dicken's novel's attempt to solve the Mystery of Edwin Drood. It spans the Atlantic as our hero and love interest journey to England and to Dicken's house looking for clues. On their quest they meet villans and character's worthy of Sherlock Holmes with just as many twists and turns and red herrings.

I couldn't put it down. Based on real people it has the ring of credibility to it, now I must investigate his previous books.

Highly recomended