Books: The 110-Year-Old Murder

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

by Charles Dickens; concluded by Leon Garfield; André Deutsch; 327 pages; £7.95

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

"I must go to London immediately." Thus speaks Charles Dickens, 58, on the evening of June 8, 1870. They are his last words. He collapses on a sofa in his dining room and dies the following night. Upon hearing the news, a melancholy world grieves for itself: there will be no more rumbustious squires, no more hilarious cockneys, no more sneaking, slavering villains or appealing waifs, no more enchantments at all from the...

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