Penguin Classics: The Mystery Of Edwin Drood

Dickens died before completing his last novel, leaving its tantalising mystery unsolved and encouraging successive generations of readers to try and work out what happened next.

Edward Drood is contracted to marry orphan Rosa when he comes of age, but duty has replaced affection and they break the engagement off. Shortly afterwards, in the middle of a storm on Christmas Eve, Edwin Drood mysteriously disappears, leaving nothing but some personal belongings and the suspicion that his jealous uncle John Jasper, in love with Rosa, is the killer.

But beyond this presumed crime there are further intrigues: the dark opium world that lies beneath the surface of sleepy cathedral town Cloisterham, and the sinister double life of choirmaster, Jasper, whose wicked passions and drug-fuelled fantasy life belie his respectable appearance.

‘The Mystery Of Edwin Drood’ bears all the hallmarks of Dickens’ greatest fiction.