Certainly the feel of the paperback and the modern typeface has an advantage over many of the tiny cramped editions which are the norm of the 'collected Dickens', and together they create the sense that you are reading a modern thriller rather than something approaching two hundred years old.

In focus too this is the 'later' Dickens, for his main interest here is not the social conditions or campaigning of his earlier work (although there is here a view on the workings of racial prejudice), but on the psychology of sexual repression, with hints of the preoccupations of modernist novels of the 1920s.īut ultimately the question must be asked if this new edition is any way an advantage.

And for lovers of Dickens' immersive, detailed style, this is the master at his best - the atmosphere oozes from each scene, but with a little more economy and terseness than sometimes was his approach. And at the centre is the twisted figure of the choir master John Jasper, outwardly respectable but harbouring evil intent. We certainly have potential villains and victims, but we also have a number of likely red herrings complex threads of romantic interest, but again it is by no means clear exactly which way these will resolve and a shadowy detective figure, whose speculations certainly have no sense of conclusion.Īnd the novel creates a fascinating environment, the old town, the murky characters attached to the functioning of the cathedral, but also the sinister world of the opium den and the London tenements. So as the basis for endless speculation about what really happens this novel could hardly be bettered. Given that this is a detective story, one of the very first in that tradition, it is doubly intriguing, because although we are clearly being fed clues and hints throughout, at the point where the text ends we aren't even fully sure even if a crime has been committed. It is Dickens' last work, and he died without completing it. If you have never come across 'Drood' before, there are certain significant factors which make this a 'must read'. But it poses two questions for the reader, why should we spend time on an unfinished story, and why in any event yet another edition? The quality of Dickens' writing answers the first of these questions - this novel is as fascinating, atmospheric and complex as any more complete work, but perhaps the jury is still out on the second. Summary: The reissue of this classic is clearly the result of the BBC adaptation of Dickens' last novel.

Dickens the mystery of