When John Harmon—who has been left a fortune if he will marry the girl his miserly father chose for him—is found floating dead in the Thames， he sets in motion a story overflowing with cases of deception and mistaken identity， of murder and attempted murder， of sin and redemption. The influence of the notorious Harmon inheritance ripples through a large cast of vividly drawn characters from every level of society， including Noddy Boffin， known as “the Golden Dustman”; the one-legged villain Silas Wegg; willful Bella Wilfer; saintly Lizzie Hexam; the sharp-witted doll’s dressmaker Jenny Wren; the social-climbing Veneerings; the ruthless speculator Fascination Fledgeby; and the river-scavenging corpse robbers Gaffer Hexam and Rogue Riderhood. Out of this flurry of invention Dickens creates in Our Mutual Friend a portrait of a city and a civilization that is at once indignant， compassionate， and utterly unforgettable. Charles Dickens’s last completed novel features one of his most surreal and haunting visions of �0�2London， shadowed by towering dust heaps that supply the corrupting riches at the heart of the plot and washed by the dark river that winds its way insisten...