
The Last Dickens
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Paul Michael
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By:
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Matthew Pearl
About this listen
In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled listeners of the best sellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.
Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. 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 he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.
Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. 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 Dickens’s 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.
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Overall
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Performance
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Overall
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Performance
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Critic reviews
"A rousing yarn of opium, book pirating, murder most foul, man-on-man biting and other shenanigans—and that's just for starters.[The Last Dickens is] a pleasing whodunit that resolves nicely, bookending Dan Simmons's novel Drood (2009) as an imaginative exercise in what might be called alternative literary history."—Kirkus
"Just what do the seemingly disparate parts of the story have to do with one another? What the publisher becomes embroiled in, in London, is far more complicated than simply manuscript detection. A whole world of life-and-death nefariousness awaits both him and the reader, who will be well rewarded."—Booklist
“Well executed and tightly controlled…extremely clever.”—Los Angeles Times
If you're interested in taking a step back in time and get a little personal with one of the greatest writers that ever lived get this book!
What A Gem!
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A great Dickens mistery
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The Last Dickens
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Disappointing
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The reader, too, fails to bring any excitement to the story. His accents are very good, but his style is very, very deadpan, which doesn't lend itself to an already deadpan book.
Neither good mystery or history
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not for me
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Well researched but dull
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Like a long boring walk...
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Total fluff
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