Review: "The Last Dickens," Matthew Pearl

By Paul Carrier

Matthew Pearl has made something of a name for himself writing literary-themed novels. The Dante Club dealt with a series of 19th-century murders seemingly inspired by The Divine Comedy. The Poe Shadow offered a fictionalized investigation of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. And The Last Bookaneer detailed the attempted theft of Robert Louis Stevenson’s final novel before its publication.

The Last Dickens is yet another tale along such lines, this time focusing on The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, who was in the process of serializing Edwin Drood when he suffered a fatal stroke on June 8, 1870. Dickens died the next day, leaving unanswered the question of whether Drood, a young man who has disappeared, has been murdered or is still alive.

As The Last Dickens opens, three of the 12 installments of Edwin Drood have been released to the author's British and American publishers. When three more installments arrive in Boston, Daniel Sand, a young clerk from Fields, Osgood & Co., Dickens' American publisher, is mysteriously run over by an "omnibus" while carrying the latest chapters from the harbor to the publishing firm.

An unscrupulous lawyer steals the papers from Sand as the clerk lies dying in the street, but a tall, hulking man sporting a turban and claiming to be named Herman later murders the lawyer and makes off with the chapters. Fields, Osgood & Co. obtains replacement copies of parts four, five and six from London, but the struggling company's future is imperiled when Dickens dies, leaving the American publisher with only six of the 12 chapters in hand.

Did Dickens finish the novel? Is the second half tucked away somewhere in England? If not, are there clues to be found there indicating how Dickens planned to resolve Drood's disappearance?

The United States and Britain have no copyright agreement, so as the available chapters are serialized in Britain, unscrupulous American publishers are free to publish here as well, undercutting Fields, Osgood & Co.  and threatening the Boston's firm's survival unless it can land an exclusive. The reading public has much at stake too. By serializing the early chapters, the phenomenally popular Dickens built up feverish interest in the outcome. His untimely death at 58 leaves desperate readers hanging midway through Edwin Drood.

James Fields, the real-life senior partner in the 19th-century publishing house, dispatches James Osgood, the firm's actual junior partner, to England to ferret out the remaining six parts of Edwin Drood, or at least learn how Dickens intended to wrap things up. Osgood takes along company clerk Rebecca Sand, sister of Daniel Sand, to help with the research.

Pearl works in a set of subplots that add more spice to his already lively tale. They involve an opium theft in Bengal that is being investigated by a police unit headed by Dickens’ son, lengthy flashbacks to Dickens’ 1867-68 visit to the United States, a deranged Boston fan of the author, a budding romance between Osgood and Sand, and a vengeful U.S. Treasury Department agent determined to illegally collect taxes on the profits from Dickens’ U.S. tour. Even the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson figures in the plot.

The sections of The Last Dickens set during Dickens’ second and final U.S. tour are especially compelling. The famed genius comes to life as a bit of a scamp, a genial, bubbling mix of wit, charm, energy and neuroses.

The novel “aims to portray Charles Dickens and the atmosphere surrounding his life and death as accurately as possible,” Pearl writes in an author’s note. Dickens’ “language, behavior, and personality as they appear in this novel incorporate many actual conversations and actions.”

The Last Dickens skates its way through a dizzying number of dramatic twists and turns that repeatedly leave the reader desperate to learn what happens next, only to be surprised by the answers. Seemingly tangential developments eventually dovetail with the plot, although the story line set in Bengal peters out in disappointing fashion.

Still, Pearl has concocted a thriller that builds (the Bengal detour notwithstanding) to a pulse-pounding climax. This elaborate, clever exercise in storytelling is a credit to Pearl's vivid imagination and generally skillful plotting.