Christopher Lord’s The Edwin Drood Murders: Being the Second Dickens Junction Mystery

There is a special place in my heart for all things Charles Dickens. There was even a time in my life where I wanted to go to graduate school to become a Dickens scholar. To this day, my copies of my Dickens Norton Critical Editions are some of my most beloved texts. I am part Dickensian at heart, so when this book crossed my path, I could not resist it.

From the title, you may have guessed that there is a First Dickens Junction Mystery—The Christmas Carol Murders. Sometimes I am resistant to starting a series without reading the first book first, but in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I decided to dive in to Drood, and any concerns I had about missing out on backstory were assuaged before long. Lord has a way of referencing the previous story in an easygoing way when pertinent to the plot without it being tiresome. The premise of the story is that there is an annual conference of Dickens scholars, more specifically Droodists, who meet and primarily speculate on the ending of Dickens’ last, unfinished work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. During the course of the conference, some nefarious events unfold, including murder. Dickens Junction resident, conference coordinator, and Pip’s Pages bookstore owner Simon Alastair takes it upon himself to solve the mysteries at hand—all the while being impeccably polite and making sure to be courteous to the local law enforcement and not step on their toes. While Alastair is a great novice detective, I must admit that I beat him to the punch and solved the mystery fairly early on. From there, I raced through the pages so I could confirm my suspicions about the culprit and motives, and I soaked up every delightful Dickens reference and allusion along the way. While vastly different from a Dickens novel, there was one similarity: the numerous cast of characters in the book reminded me of the same feeling of trying to keep all the characters straight in Bleak House. Overall, this is an amusing, light read for the literary minded, especially during the holiday season.

Lord, Christopher. The Edwin Drood Murders: Being the Second Dickens Junction Mystery. Harrison Thurman Books, 2013.