Drood: A Novel By Dan Simmons

Simmons definitely has a talent for visual imagery. His depiction of the rail accident which nearly took the lives of Dickens, his mistress and her mother and did kill numerous others is appropriately shocking and gory in its realism. The travels of Dickens and Collins through the London slums and the sewer system beneath the city are equally graphic. And his portrayal of Dickens' reading of the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes puts the reader at the scene, if words alone can ever do such a thing.