in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.ĭan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Finally he begins writing what would have been the world’s first great mystery masterpiece, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only to be interrupted forever by…īased on actual biographical events, Drood explores the still-unresolved mysteries of one of our greatest writer’s dark final days in a profoundly original tale that confirms Lincoln Child’s assessment of New York Times bestselling author Dan Simmons as “a giant among novelists.”ĭan Simmons grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional 'Elm Haven' in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Increasingly obsessed with crypts, cemeteries, and the precise length of time it would take for a corpse to dissolve in a lime pit, Dickens ceases writing for four years and wanders the worst slums and catacombs of London at night while staging public readings during the day, gruesome readings that leave his audiences horrified. A laudanum addict and lesser novelist, Collins flouts Victorian sensibilities by living with one mistress while having a child with another, but he may be the only man on Earth with whom Dickens can share the secret of…ĭrood.

And at the core of that ensuing five-year nightmare is…ĭrood… the name that Dickens whispers to his friend Wilkie Collins. When Dickens descends into that valley to confront the dead and dying, his life will be changed forever. All of the first-class carriages except the one carrying Dickens are smashed to bits in the valley below. On June 9, 1865, Dickens and his mistress are secretly returning to London, when their express train hurtles over a gap in a trestle. Drood… is the name and nightmare that obsesses Charles Dickens for the last five years of his life.

Drood simmons