Showing results for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" in Traditional Detectives

The novel begins as a man, who we later learn is John Jasper, leaves a London opium den. The next evening, Edwin Drood visits Jasper, his uncle, who is the choirmaster at Cloisterham Cathedral. Edwin confides that he has misgivings about his betrothal to Rosa Bud.

When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again, for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing.

When young Edwin Drood disappears, suspicion centers on John Jasper, a drug-addicted choirmaster who hungers after Drood's fiancé. So does Neville Landless, a Ceylonese who has previously quarreled violently with the missing man. The mystery if further enhanced because it was left unfinished at the author's death. Thus the book has challenged the imagination of generations of readers.

El misterio de Edwin Drood es la decimoquinta y última novela del escritor británico Charles Dickens. Quedó inconclusa debido a su muerte súbita, por tanto la identidad del asesino sigue siendo objeto de debate, en lo que se designa hoy día como, «literatura droodiana» (Droodian literature), una larga serie de investigaciones, hipótesis, soluciones y finales de todo género alrededor de los posibles finales. El último libro de Dickens, que sin duda es una novela policíaca, puede también ser leído como la «culminación de temas y motivos de sus obras anteriores».

Writer Frances Fyfield uses the manuscript of Dickens's last, unfinished, novel to work on the mystery of what happened to the book's eponymous hero, Edwin Drood. First broadcast: BBC Radio 4, 19 January 2012.