Line #14 Literature/Drood


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drood.png]]
2	''Drood'' is a HistoricalFantasy novel by Creator/DanSimmons, featuring Creator/CharlesDickens. It's told from the point of view of his friend and fellow author Creator/WilkieCollins and is about the last 5 years of Dickens's life, written as a memoir by Collins to be read 125 years after his death. The name is taken from the title of Dickens's last, unfinished novel, ''Literature/TheMysteryOfEdwinDrood''. Drood is also a mass murderer that inspired Dickens's original tale. [[UnreliableNarrator Or was]] [[AllJustADream he?]]
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5	!!This novel provides examples of:
6	* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer / WrongSideOfTheTracks: "Undertown", the maze of sewer tunnels and underground rivers where people live in conditions that make the slums of aboveground London look like the Riviera.
7	* AllJustADream: Late in the book, Wilkie Collins successfully lures Charles Dickens to Rochester Cathedral and, after learning how Dickens plans to end ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'', shoots him dead. Collins then wakes up in his bed, realizing that the meeting and murder were just a dream, and that he still has time to make them a reality.
8	* AlwaysSecondBest / DrivenByEnvy / GreenEyedMonster: Collins hates the fact that Dickens outshines him as a writer and that he (Collins) is considered a junior protege. When he finally admits that Dickens is a better writer than he is, Collins is even more enraged.
9	** Fans of Wilkie Collins won't like this part of the book. [[WordOfGod Dan Simmons admitted]] that he was going for a [[Theatre/{{Amadeus}} Mozart-Salieri]] relationship between Dickens and Collins.
10	* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: One of the spirits that haunt Wilkie Collins is a tusk-toothed woman with green skin.
11	* AnachronismStew: Simmons kills off Inspector Field several years before the real Field died. And he has Collins mention "a militia which the Americans called the National Guard", when American state militias were not organized into the National Guard until 1903.
12	* AntagonistTitle: Drood is the namesake and (apparent) main villain of the book.
13	* ArcWords: "Unintelligible."
14	* ArrangedMarriage: Wilkie forces the woman with whom he's lived as husband and wife for many years into one of these to get her out of his hair. The guy she marries turns out to be horribly abusive. Wilkie doesn't care, [[spoiler: although at the end he helps her kill her husband, then he takes her back.]]
15	* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Late in the book, Wilkie buys himself a puppy and takes it on a trip to the abandoned cathedral. Once they get there, he casually snaps the puppy's neck and chucks its corpse into a lime pit, purely to test how long it will take to dissolve.
16	* BigEater: Wilkie Collins' idea of a light repast is "two types of pate, soup, some sweet lobsters, a bottle of dry champagne, a leg of mutton stuffed with oysters and minced onions, two orders of asparagus, some braised beef, a bit of dressed crab, and a side of eggs". With an appetite like that, it's no wonder the man suffers from gout.
17	* BodyHorror: Wilkie getting an Egyptian scarab inserted into his body.
18	* CallForward: Collins assumes that the people 120 years or more hence that will be reading his novel will also still be using laudanum, "unless medical science has come up with a common remedy even more efficacious." Medical science did just that when it invented heroin.
19	* CharacterNarrator: Framed as a confessional story written by Collins just before he died, concealed for at least 120 years.
20	* TheChessmaster: Drood. [[UnreliableNarrator Assuming he exists.]]
21	* ComedyGhetto: [[invoked]] DiscussedTrope--Collins notes that in his time tragedy is replacing comedy as the focus of "serious readers".
22	* DeadpanSnarker: Collins in a big way.
23	* DearNegativeReader: In-universe example in the final chapter, wherein Collins goes on an angry rant against you, the reader, accusing you of having never read any of his books and of only caring about Dickens and Drood.
24	* DeathOfAChild: In a horrifying scene where Dickens and Collins, looking for Drood in the slums of London, see three dead infant left out by their prostitute mothers to rot.
25	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Hoo boy. Wilkie's views on race, sex, and class are all utterly abhorrent by today's standards. Not to mention the usage of old-fashioned terms like "Chinee," "Moslem," and "Hindoo." Dickens is even more racist than Wilkie, but his views on class are [[FairForItsDay fair for their day.]]
26	* {{Doppelganger}}: Wilkie has one which he calls the Other Wilkie. Or at least he thinks he does. The most bizarre TruthInTelevision part of the book, as the real Collins actually believed this.
27	* DrivenToMadness: [[spoiler:Wilkie.]] [[MindScrew Possibly.]]
28	* {{Eagleland}}: Flavor 2. Wilkie really hates his American reading tour, but then again, Wilkie hates pretty much everyone who is not a wealthy white Brit.
29	* EldritchAbomination: Whatever the spirits are that live in Wilkie's house. One of them [[spoiler:eats Wilkie's serving girl.]] Drood also has elements of this, at least at first.
30	* FaceHeelTurn: Not that he was really a face to begin with, but it's not until [[spoiler:Wilkie starts plotting to kill Dickens (and actually does kill his simple-minded serving girl)]] that he can actually be called a heel.
31	* FingerInTheMail: Lord Lucan's heart was mailed to Scotland Yard.
32	* FunctionalAddict: Collins, at least at first. Despite a laudanum addiction that escalates to opium and requires daily fixes, he can still write his masterpiece ''Literature/TheMoonstone''.
33	* FuturisticPyramid: Discussed. Inspector Field claims that if Drood has his way, all of London will be covered by a series of glass pyramids by the dawn of the 20th century.
34	* GroinAttack: A detective dispatches a thug this way.
35	* GuttedLikeAFish: When a disoriented Wilkie finally finds his way back to the Undertown entrance after getting the scarab implanted into him, he finds Detective Hatchery disemboweled, with his entrails strung up like garlands.
36	* HaveAGayOldTime: "It was logical that thoughtful, sensitive men should focus their energies and intercourse on other men."
37	** A deliberate lampshade, of course, as Wilkie is speaking of his brother, whom Wilkie does not realize is gay.
38	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Creator/CharlesDickens, Creator/WilkieCollins, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Frederick_Field Charles Fredrick Field]], others.
39	* HypnoFool: Done to--well, done to someone.
40	* HypocriticalHumor:
41	--> '''Wilkie''': Tonight I decided to dine relatively lightly and ordered two types of pate, soup, some sweet lobsters, a bottle of dry champagne, a leg of mutton stuffed with oysters and minced onions, two orders of asparagus, some braised beef, a bit of dressed crab, and a side of eggs.
42	* ItsAllAboutMe: Charles Dickens--in Collins' opinion, at least.
43	* LeftHandedMirror: Wilkie is right-handed, but his doppelganger is left-handed. This becomes apparent when he starts using the doppelganger as an amanuensis; Caroline looks over the notes written by the doppelganger and immediately notices the difference in writing style.
44	* LivingADoubleLife: Wilkie with his two girlfriends, and Dickens' work with Drood.
45	* MalignedMixedMarriage: Drood was supposedly born in Cairo to a local woman and a visiting Englishman. Their marriage was not popular with the city's conservative Muslims, and after the father abandoned the family to go back to England, the mother was stoned to death. Drood would have been killed as well, but his mother's uncle found him and spirited him away to Alexandria where he'd be safe.
46	* MindScrew: What ''is'' Drood? What are the spirits in Wilkie's house? What is the other Wilkie? [[spoiler: Did anything in the book really happen?]] Pretty much everything about the book counts.
47	* NarrativeProfanityFilter: Collins censors all swear words that appear in the text, such that "damn" is written as "d -- ". [[spoiler:He stops doing this in the last chapter so he can rant and curse at you, the reader.]]
48	* ObviouslyEvil: Drood is a pale, horrendously mutilated ghoul of a man who dresses all in black, complete with OminousOperaCape. Naturally, he's up to no good.
49	* OpiumDen: While exploring the bowels of London (in more than one sense), Dickens and Wilkie stumble into two of these. Wilkie spends a fair amount of time in each later on.
50	* SecretRelationship: Wilkie maintains two: One with a woman he basically treats as his wife, but refuses to marry because he doesn't want the responsibility, the other with a much younger woman who he keeps away from the other.
51	* ShoutOut:
52	** When fleshing out his new novel Collins thinks about having his detective character be fixated on a post-retirement life of [[Franchise/SherlockHolmes beekeeping]].
53	** The parts about Lord Lucan, who was murdered in gory fashion, are fictional, but may be referencing a later and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_John_Bingham,_7th_Earl_of_Lucan notorious Lord Lucan]].
54	** The bits about the play ''The Frozen Deep'' about the doomed Franklin Expedition are a shout out to Simmons' previous historical fiction novel, ''The Terror''.
55	* ShoutOutToShakespeare: Dickens quotes the "Alas, poor Yorick" line from Theatre/{{Hamlet}}. So does Dradles the cryptkeeper, who turns out to be surprisingly literate. Later Dickens quotes the "chimes at midnight" line from ''Theatre/HenryIVPart2''.
56	* SinisterMinister: Drood is the head of a cult that worships the ancient Egyptian gods, and is also responsible, directly or otherwise, for hundreds of murders spanning two decades.
57	* {{Sleepwalking}}: Happens to at least one character, and [[UnreliableNarrator maybe more]].
58	* SomewhereAnEquestrianIsCrying: A reference to vomiting horses appears early on...except that horses can't vomit.
59	* SssnakeTalk: Drood tends to draw out the letter s in his words due to his deformities.
60	* TechnologyMarchesOn: Wilkie doesn't like gas lights because they're harsh and inhuman.
61	* ThirdPersonPerson: Mr. Dradles, stonemason and cryptkeeper at Rochester Cathedral.
62	* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: One likely interpretation is that everything Collins sees and imagines about Drood is the result of his laudanum addiction as well as the effects of HypnoFool. Agnes' letter to her parents is another clue pointing to this.
63	* TransparentCloset: Wilkie's brother Charley is gay. Wilkie doesn't quite get this, although Dickens (whose daughter married Charley) does.
64	* {{Unperson}}: Collins doesn't just want Dickens to die, he wants him to disappear and be forgotten by history. He plans to accomplish this by luring Dickens to the graveyard at Rochester cathedral, killing him there, dissolving his corpse in a lime pit, and hiding his bones within a cavity in the cathedral’s crypt. [[ForegoneConclusion Naturally, this doesn't happen]].
65	* UnreliableNarrator: Wilkie Collins happens to be addicted to laudanum, and, later, opium. [[spoiler:Not to mention that Charles Dickens mesmerizes him a few pages in and never gets around to unmesmerizing him.]]
66	* VictorianLondon: Described from the world of fine gentlemen on down to the slums (and below) in gritty, occasionally squicky detail. Special attention is paid to the overflowing sewers and graveyards that are so overcrowded they have to stuff the corpses in on top of each other. The entire book is clearly very [[ShownTheirWork well-researched]], and many small details of Victorian life are included along with details of both the Collins and Dickens biographies.
67	* WhamEpisode: When Wilkie [[spoiler: is abducted by Drood, and has the scarab put in his chest.]]

Context Literature / Drood