The Last Dickens, by Matthew Pearl

I learned quite a bit from this book - about the cutthroat publishing industry and copyright disputes, the workings of the opium trade, Charles Dickens and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, tax collection, divorce law, and early literary manias predating Twilight. I hope I'm right in trusting Pearl's scholarship. The novel takes place in three spheres: James Osgood and Rebecca Sand try to solve the mystery of the ending of Drood in Boston, London, and Gadshill in 1870; Charles Dickens and his entourage take their final, exhausting American reading tour in 1867; and Frank Dickens uses his position in the Bengal Mounted Police to protect the opium trade from thieves in 1870. A few reviewers called the book "rollicking," which is perhaps reviewer code for "disjointed." The characters are flat, the mysteries contrived, the pace tedious.