Wilkie experienced firsthand much of what Dickens did and experienced in those last years – and Dickens was busy. The story is told by his friend, the author Wilkie Collins. This is the story of the last few years of Charles Dickens’ life and what he did after being in a terrible railway accident in 1865 and till his death in 1870. I haven’t even started talking about what’s the book about yet. I love this aspect of it – how you can imagine Dickens living his life and seeing inspiration all around him.īut I digress. John Jasper’s secret visit to the crypt is here, we have Deputy and so much more. Dickens has one of the main characters be a opium addict – in Drood (at least) one of Dickens’ best friends is a opium addict and suffers terrible consequences because of it. Of course, Simmons then has a cat named Pussy. One small example is how in the Dickens novel, there’s a girl nicknamed Pussy and a lawyer who thinks Pussy is a cat. Simmons have taken parts from The Mystery of Edwin Drood and then used them in this book in the most clever way. If you have read Dickens’, you will get the hints in Drood – in fact, Drood then reads as a introduction to how an author gathers inspiration. Everyone should read The Mystery of Edwin Drood just to read this one afterwards since this book makes more sense if you have read Dickens’ novel.

I said in my review of that book that I didn’t recommend it except for die hard Dickens fans and the like – but I was wrong.

I’ve had this on my shelves for a couple of years, just waiting for me to get ready to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. Let me start of by saying that I absolutely loved this book so if there’s an inappropriate amount of gushing in the following, you have been warned.

Simmons dan drood