On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, fifty-three-year-old Charles Dickens - at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world - hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? We're his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, lime pits, and a hidden London-beneath-London mere research...or something much darker?

Based on the historical details of Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins - Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-esque secret rival - Drood explains the still-unsolved mysteries of the author's last years and may provide the key to his final, unfinished work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.