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In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.
Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.
Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.
"Some awkward prose distracts ... while the ending may strike some readers as a cop-out." - Publishers Weekly.
"A pleasing whodunit that resolves nicely, bookending Dan Simmons's novel Drood as an imaginative exercise in what might be called alternative literary history." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A whole world of life-and-death nefariousness awaits both him and the reader, who will be well rewarded." - Booklist.
This information about The Last Dickens was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Sigrid Estrada
Matthew Pearl's books have been international and New York Times bestsellers and have been translated into more than thirty languages. He edits Truly*Adventurous magazine, and his nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Slate. He has been chosen as Best Author in Boston magazine's "Best of Boston" issue and received the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.
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