The Last Dickens

{{Short description|2009 novel by Matthew Pearl}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox book |  | name = The Last Dickens | title_orig = | translator = | image = The Last Dickens.jpg | caption = First edition | author = Matthew Pearl | cover_artist = | country = United States | language = English | series = | genre = Mystery novel | publisher = Random House | release_date = 2009 | media_type = Hardcover (first edition) | pages = 400 pp (first edition hardcover) | isbn = 1-4000-6656-5 | oclc= 268547496 | preceded_by = The Poe Shadow | followed_by = The Technologists }} '''''The Last Dickens''''' is a novel by Matthew Pearl published by Random House. It is a work of historical and literary fiction. The novel is a ''Washington Post'' Critics' Pick.{{Citation needed|date=May 2009}} It contains some characters from ''The Dante Club''.

==Plot summary== The novel is set in the United States, England, and India in 1867 and 1870.<ref name="washingtonpost.com">[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040303434.html Mundow, Anna. "A Tale of Three Continents, Winningly Traversed." ''Washington Post''. April 4, 2009]</ref> When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James R. Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await Dickens's unfinished last novel – ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood''.

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 will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel's killer. Danger and intrigue abound on the journey, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel's older sister, to help clear her brother's name and achieve their singular mission. 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 the 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.

The novel also includes interspersed sections about Charles Dickens's 1867 reading tour of the United States and Francis Dickens's role as a mounted policeman in Bengal, India. One of the characters carries a walking stick with a qilin (kylin) head attached.

==See also== {{portal|Novels}} *''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' *Francis Dickens *Qilin in popular culture

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== *[http://www.matthewpearl.com Official site for author ''Matthew Pearl''] *[http://www.matthewpearl.com/dickens/reviews.html Reviews of ''The Last Dickens''] *[http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9781400066568.html Random House page for ''The Last Dickens''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090204123344/http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9781400066568.html |date=2009-02-04 }} *[http://www.slate.com/id/2213159/ Slate article by Matthew Pearl about Dickens as a celebrity]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Last Dickens, The}} Category:2009 American novels Category:2009 English-language novels Category:American mystery novels Category:Novels set in 1867 Category:Novels set in 1870 Category:Novels set in the 1860s Category:Novels set in the 1870s Category:Works about Charles Dickens Category:The Mystery of Edwin Drood