"The BBC is about to f
inally provide an answer and expose the murderer, in a new adaptation of Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to be screened this summer.Dickens died in 1870, exhausted by overwork and his gruelling public performances, before he could reveal all.
He had finished two-thirds of the book, and caused Drood to vanish in mysterious circumstances, when the author had a stroke on 8 June and died the following day without regaining consciousness, leaving only a sketchy outline for the remainder of the novel.
The story will be completed this time by the film and television script writer Gwyneth Hughes, responsible for last year's acclaimed BBC serial Five Days.
The BBC is not revealing Hughes' final twist of the plot, but the hot money must be on John Jasper, the opium-addled uncle and choirmaster at Cloisterham cathedral – a scantily disguised Rochester in Kent, near Dickens' last home at Gad's Hill, whose cathedral, castle and narrow streets appear in many of his books."
"Edwin Drood is one of a string of Dickens adaptations the BBC is launching as part of its Year of Books season, in advance of next year's bicentenary of the author's birth. The season will include a BBC1 dramatisation of Great Expectations, and Radio 4 versions of A Tale of Two Cities and Martin Chuzzlewit."Read full article in Guardian
