<p>This sinister masterpiece was Dickens’ last completed novel and perhaps his ultimate vision of a dark macabre London and the corrupting power of money. Opening with a father and daughter scavenging for corpses on the Thames this chilling tale unfolds around drownings disguises and doubles violence murder and triumphant love.</p> <p>Young John Harmon presumed killed on his return home to England is very much alive. The heir to a dust merchant’s fortune he goes to work under an assumed name for his father’s current heirs the amiable elderly Boffins—who are about to be blackmailed by the unscrupulous one-legged Wegg.</p> <p>So begins the intrigue in a novel that is quintessentially Dickensian in flavor—in its grotesque caricatures its rich symbolism and in the astonishing realism of its heroine Bella Wilfer one of Dickens’ most splendid female characters.</p>