Our Mutual Friend

When a corpse is discovered in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, the lives of multiple people are transformed. John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father, will not collect his inheritance. Instead, it passes to the Boffins, the miser's employees, dramatically improving their circumstances. John's father's will had required him to marry Bella Wilfer, a woman he had never met, to receive the estate. Now unattached, Bella is taken in by the Boffins. These events set off a chain of consequences. The waterman who found John's body is accused of murder by a rival and is soon found drowned himself, creating a mystery. This tragedy redirects the waterman's impoverished daughter onto an unexpected and perilous path. The novel combines intricate plot developments with social satire. It features realistic police procedures and criminal psychology, along with the atmospheric tension and foreboding imagery characteristic of suspense fiction. This is Dickens's final completed novel.