The Mystery of Edwin Drood

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was as good as it was unsatisfying.  What can I expect considering that Dickens died in the middle of the book.  He stopped writing, had a stroke at dinner and never regained consciousness.  At first I wondered what the point would be to reading a mystery that wasn't finished, but it was much more interesting than I thought.  It appears that Dickens was half-way through the book when he died, so the scene was set, the characters developed and the major clues laid down.  There is fairly wide agreement on who did the murder, if there actually was a murder.  On the other hand, some people feel like Edwin did not die, but survived the attack and disappeared.  They feel that he would reappear at some point and confront the supposed murderer.

There is also a pretty fair agreement as to why Edwin Drood was murdered, if he was murdered.  There are still plenty of mysteries left though.  Was Dickens salting the book with red herrings and he intended a complete plot twist?  Does he have one or two characters in disguise so that the book actually has two less characters than would appear?  There are at least two possible romances set up...how do the turn out? What happens to Neville?

Fortunately, I was doing this with a book group and we could bounce ideas off each other.  It has made it even more interesting.


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