Synopses & Reviews
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary historys 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 Dickenss 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 Dickenss unfinished novel. But when Daniels 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 Daniels killer.
Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniels older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickenss 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 Dickenss inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickenss lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dantes Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poes The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. 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.