Helena Landless
Charles Dickens’s last and famously unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood receives a very smart and entertaining pastiche treatment in Deanna Madden’s Helena Landless, in which the title character returns to England, to ‘Cloisterham,’ with her twin brother, Neville, and is quickly embroiled in a murder investigation. Her brother has become a suspect in the disappearance of Edwin Drood, since Neville was the last person known to see him alive.
It falls to Helena to seek out proof of her brother’s innocence, and that quest takes her from Cloisterham to the darkest pits of Victorian London.
Madden creates a very satisfying simulation of the Dickensian world, complete with eccentric characters and a headlong plot that gathers momentum as it goes along. The best part of all this good fun is Helena herself, a wonderfully drawn character I finished the book wanting to see in further adventures.
Dickens fans especially will enjoy this.