Matthew Pearl loves the lives and works of great writers, but he doesn't stop there. While others wait for the next major biography, he conjures up enthralling historical thrillers about legendary authors. his debut novel The Dante Club, he drafted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and other New England literati to be impromptu sleuths investigating a series of unsolved murders in Boston and Cambridge. In The Poe Shadow, he has readers following a young Baltimore lawyer as he uncovers the real truth behind the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. Pearl's first two novels were original spellbinders, but his latest is his most engaging yet. The Last Dickens propels us on a double quest: On one hand, we (and the protagonist) are racing to solve a series of homicides on both sides of the Atlantic; on the other, we're delving into the conundrums of "the last Dickens," Charles Dickens' unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A good book to recommend this fiction to anyone who likes mysteries or Dickens or, better yet, both.
