';When it comes to walking the mean streets, Dickens could give modern genre authors the tour of their lives.' Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times When a corpse is found in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, many lives will be forever changed.

John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father for years, will no longer collect his inheritance.

It will instead go to the miser's employees, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, transforming their circumstances. The miser's will had placed a condition on John: marry Bella Wilfer, a woman he had never met, in order to collect the estate.

Now Bella is on her ownuntil she is generously taken in by the Boffins. These events not only alter the course of several lives, but also end a lifethat of the waterman who found John's body.

Accused by a rival of murdering the heir, Gaffer Hexam is soon found drowned as well, resulting in a puzzling mystery and setting Gaffer's impoverished daughter on a new path that will lead her in surprising, and dangerous, directions. Blending propulsive plot twists with sharp social satire, Our Mutual Friend is the final masterpiece completed by Victorian England's greatest novelist. ';In addition to its realistic police procedures and incisive criminal psychology, Our Mutual Friend is steeped in the gloomy atmosphere and foreboding imagery that one associates with the modern suspense thriller.' The New York Times