Carlo Frut­tero and Fran­co Lu­cen­ti­ni’s "La verità sul caso D." (trans­lat­ed into En­glish as "The D. Case: The Truth about "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood"), is the fruit of a joint writ­ing pro­ject be­tween two well-known Ital­ian writ­ers of de­tec­tive fic­tion who most of the time op­er­ate as a cou­ple – hence the use of the am­per­sand. But even more so, this is the fruit of a joint writ­ing pro­ject be­tween them and Charles Dick­ens. "La verità sul caso D." con­sists ac­tu­al­ly in Dick­ens’s own un­fin­ished "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" in­ter­po­lat­ed by chap­ters writ­ten by Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni which rep­re­sent about one third of the whole. The two parts form a sin­gle text, a di­a­logue be­tween the two au­thors and Dick­ens, or, as some re­view­ers de­fined it, “a three-way col­lab­o­ra­tion” or, even bet­ter, “un ro­man­zo a sei mani” (a novel for six hands). To con­tin­ue the nu­mer­i­cal es­ca­la­tion (and bor­row Wolf­gang Iser’s def­i­ni­tion of read­ing), the new novel is a dra­mat­ic ex­am­ple of “the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween its struc­ture and its re­cip­i­ents” (1980: 106), in this case not only the com­mon read­er but also the over two hun­dred writ­ers who at­tempt­ed to com­plete and com­ple­ment the novel.

Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni use the nar­ra­tive frame­work of a de­bate among the most fa­mous fic­tion­al de­tec­tives as they are try­ing to make sense of Dick­ens’s in­ten­tions. Sher­lock Holmes, Mai­gret, Dupin, Poirot (and even a Her­cule Popeau, a char­ac­ter cre­at­ed by Hi­laire Bel­loc’s sis­ter well be­fore Agatha Christie gave birth to her im­mor­tal sleuth), join some equal­ly fa­mous roman noir col­leagues such as Philip Mar­lowe and Lew Archer. To them we should add Por­fir­ij Petro­vic from Crime and Pun­ish­ment, De Quincey’s “Toad in the Hole”, Dick­ens’s own In­spec­tor Buck­ett and Collins’ Sergeant Cuff. Last but not least comes a token aca­dem­ic, Dr. Wilmot, the fic­tion­al ed­i­tor of The Dick­en­sian [Stan­ley Fried­man in his sur­vey "Re­cent Dick­ens Stud­ies: 1992" in Dick­ens Stud­ies An­nu­al, 23, points out that Dick­ens had played the part of Lord Fred Wilmot in am­a­teur pro­duc­tions of Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton's com­e­dy Not So Bad As We Seem (p. 393). It is pos­si­ble that Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni used the name al­lu­sive­ly al­though there is no in­di­ca­tion to con­firm it.]. They are all par­tic­i­pants in an “In­ter­na­tion­al Forum on the Com­ple­tion of Un­fin­ished or Frag­men­tary Works in Music and Lit­er­a­ture” which takes place in Rome, de­fined by Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni as “la cap­i­tale in­dis­cus­sa delle rovine e del restau­ro” (10) (“the un­de­ni­able cap­i­tal of ruins and restora­tion”). Schu­bert’s Un­fin­ished Sym­pho­ny, Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge, Puc­ci­ni’s Tu­ran­dot,

Livy’s "Ab Urbe con­di­ta", Poe’s "The Nar­ra­tive of Arthur Gor­don Pym" and Dick­ens’s "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" are the works under con­sid­er­a­tion and its motto is “COM­PLETE­NESS IS ALL”. The forum is spon­sored by two Japanese firms, them­selves de­vot­ed, as the au­thors iron­i­cal­ly point out, “to com­plete­ness”: one man­u­fac­tures au­to­mo­bile spare parts, the other elec­tron­ic com­po­nents. They plan to use the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to­geth­er with the best avail­able ex­perts on the sub­ject to pro­duce the rein­te­grat­ed texts on which they will pock­et roy­al­ties for fifty years.

The fic­tion­al de­vice pro­vides the au­thors with many op­por­tu­ni­ties for jib­ing, à la Lodge, at aca­dem­ic con­fer­ences as well as at Ital­ian dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion con­trast­ed with Japanese ef­fi­cien­cy. The hu­mor­ous tone is car­ried over to the con­fla­tion of the many crit­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" (or, rather, MED, the ab­bre­vi­a­tion the del­e­gates use) and of the many at­tempts to com­plete the text. Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni’s "La verità sul caso D." dif­fers from these nu­mer­ous at­tempts be­cause the au­thors seem to be aware of the un­fash­ion­able­ness (as David Park­er point­ed out re­cent­ly) of spec­u­lat­ing “about how Dick­ens might have ended "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood"” (1993: 185). In­stead of at­tempt­ing to solve the puz­zle, they in­dulge in a tongue-in-cheek metafic­tion­al and meta­crit­i­cal ex­er­cise with par­o­dis­tic in­ten­tions. They live, after all, in an era that looks askance on clo­sure, toy them­selves, though mild­ly, with post­mod­ernism and are fa­mil­iar with crit­i­cal the­o­ry, es­pe­cial­ly through Um­ber­to Eco whose Opera aper­ta and Lec­tor in Fab­u­la are part of the in­tri­cate in­ter­tex­tu­al fab­ric of the novel as is Calvi­no’s "Se una notte d’in­ver­no un vi­ag­gia­tore" ("If on a Win­ter’s Night a Trav­eller"). As in the lat­ter, the read­er of "La verità sul caso D." is ad­dressed con­tin­u­ous­ly by the nar­ra­tor and fre­quent­ly called upon to use his own de­tec­tive skills, thus be­com­ing a lead­ing char­ac­ter in the thriller.

The text, thus, goes be­yond par­o­dy or the mere dis­play of de­tec­tive sub­tle­ty and Dick­en­sian lore to focus on such con­tem­po­rary is­sues as in­ter­tex­tu­al­i­ty and the read­er’s con­struc­tion of mean­ing. The pro­cess of “spec­u­lat­ing and in­fer­ring” [Spec­u­lat­ing and mak­ing in­fer­ences, in re­cep­tion the­o­ry are the ways in which a read­er “con­cretizes” a lit­er­ary work through read­ing. (V. Terry Ea­gle­ton, 1983: 76).] dis­played by the de­tec­tives faced with the un­solved mys­tery of the in­com­plete text, is sim­ply a more in­tense and dra­mat­ic ex­am­ple of what we do all the time when read­ing and sheds some light on how to deal with Dick­ens’s in­ter­rupt­ed text on the eve of the Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry, by shift­ing, for in­stance, our at­ten­tion away from au­tho­ri­al in­ten­tion to priv­i­lege the read­er’s role in the pro­cess. The metaphor of dif­fer­ent de­tec­tives hold­ing on to dif­fer­ent schema­ta well rep­re­sents the sin­gle read­er’s shift from per­spec­tive to per­spec­tive. The idea of equat­ing de­tec­tive ac­tiv­i­ties with semi­otic-epis­te­mo­log­i­cal meth­ods be­longs to a well-es­tab­lished tra­di­tion, that which, for in­stance, equates the ac­tiv­i­ties of Charles S. Peirce to those of a de­tec­tive. Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni are like­ly can­di­dates to con­tra­dict Se­beok’s bet that “while C.S. Peirce spe­cial­ists have all at least thumbed through A.C. Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes Chron­i­cles, the mass of Holmes afi­ciona­dos have never even heard of Peirce” (Eco and Se­beok 1985: 1). The two Ital­ian nov­el­ists seem to be well aware of the equa­tion when they try to imag­ine what would hap­pen if, in­stead of de­tec­tives, they were to deal with philol­o­gists and literati (“se in­vece di sem­pli­ci in­ves­ti­ga­tori ci fos­sero qui let­terati e filolo­gi”, 48).

After each group of chap­ters of Dick­ens’s novel, which the de­tec­tives lis­ten to as it is read to them aloud or sub­lim­i­nal­ly, the de­tec­tives turn in­deed into philol­o­gists and semi­oti­cians, putting their minds to­geth­er to de­code each clue – both sit­u­a­tion­al and ver­bal. Not only do these nar­ra­tees draw, as other an­a­lysts have done, in­fer­ences on the basis of bi­o­graph­i­cal data such as Dick­ens’s state­ments as to his in­ten­tions or the ri­val­ry an­i­mat­ing him to outdo Collins’ suc­cess with The Moon­stone; they also ad­vance hy­pothe­ses made on the basis of dis­course anal­y­sis or “lit­er­ary com­pe­tence” – in this case the knowl­edge of the con­ven­tions of the genre and, in par­tic­u­lar, of the suc­cess­ful Moon­stone for­mu­la. The de­bate is a con­ve­nient de­vice for re­view­ing the best known con­jec­tures about "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood", from the ear­li­est read­ings down to Ed­mund Wil­son’s, Forsyte’s, Aym­ler’s or Meck­i­er’s, and for of­fer­ing their own spec­u­la­tions and de­duc­tions.

The most im­por­tant at­tempts to pro­vide an end­ing to the novel, pre­vi­ous to 1908, are re­viewed in Edwin Charles' "Keys to the Drood Mys­tery" (1908); most of them call for Edwin's sur­vival. Charles own in­ter­pre­ta­tion is based on John Forster's and Luke Fildes' state­ments and posits Jasper as the mur­der­er who will be found out by Datch­ery thanks to the en­gage­ment ring which has re­sist­ed the ac­tion of lime. Felix Aym­ler's "The Drood Case" (1964) sup­ports Jasper's in­no­cence and in­tro­duces an Ori­en­tal el­e­ment. Jasper would be the son of an Egyp­tian woman whose de­scen­dants out a fam­i­ly vendet­ta on Edwin. Ed­mund Wil­son had also in­tro­duced an Ori­en­tal note in his fa­mous essay in The Wound and the Bow (1929) sug­gest­ing that Jasper was a wor­ship­per of the god­dess Kali, in other words a Thug, who in­dulged in rit­u­al killings. More im­por­tant­ly, here and in other es­says, Wil­son is the force­ful sup­port­er of the the­sis of Jasper's dual per­son­al­i­ty. Charles Forsyte con­cen­trates in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the de­tec­tive in dis­guise while Jerome Meck­i­er tries to find a so­lu­tion dic­tat­ed by the ri­val­ry be­tween Dick­ens and Collins.

The in­de­ter­mi­na­cies which are in­her­ent to any lit­er­ary text, com­pound­ed with those due to a gapped text, are high­light­ed by the num­ber of dif­fer­ent, mu­tu­al­ly con­flict­ing read­ings. All in­ter­pre­ta­tions of­fered are ques­tion­able and dra­mat­i­cal­ly ques­tioned in live­ly scenes oc­cur­ring both in the Dick­ens Room where the de­bates take place, and at cock­tail par­ties, sight­see­ing trips and in a va­ri­ety of other cir­cum­stances. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of hy­pote­ses and so­lu­tions, and the fail­ure to reach agree­ment, well il­lus­trate our pre­sent day be­lief that the sci­en­tif­ic quest for cer­tain­ty is im­pos­si­ble, and all knowl­edge for­ev­er fal­li­ble [See for in­stance,Karl R. Pop­per’s con­tro­ver­sial pic­ture of sci­ence as a mat­ter of “con­jec­tures and refu­ta­tions.”]. Being aware of this, which sems to be one of the novel’s tenets, the au­thors do not take se­ri­ous­ly any of the so­lu­tions, not even their own sen­sa­tion­al end­ing which, as we shall see, far from pro­vid­ing a clo­sure and a so­lu­tion, rather demon­strates the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of find­ing one and con­firms the “peren­ni­al in­sol­u­bil­i­ty” of the novel.

Like any one who has read an in­tro­duc­tion to the novel, Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni are fa­mil­iar with what David Park­er terms “the bi­o­graph­i­cal ar­gu­ments” as to Dick­ens’s in­ten­tions (1993: 186). Var­i­ous del­e­gates, or the nar­ra­tor him­self, il­lus­trate the con­tents of Dick­ens’s pri­vate pa­pers, or re­late John Forster’s ac­count of Dick­ens’s plans, Luke Fildes’ rev­e­la­tions of the rea­son for Jasper wear­ing a long neck­er­chief (so that, later on, he may “stran­gle Ed with it”) and any­thing that has been as­cer­tained re­gard­ing the dat­ing of the ac­tion and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of lo­cales – the city, the jails, the opi­um-smok­ing dens. This way of trans­mit­ting the find­ings of schol­ars pleas­ant­ly is an il­lus­tra­tion of what the au­thors con­sid­er also to be Dick­ens’s artistry, name­ly pass­ing in­for­ma­tion with­out seem­ing to be doing so [“In questo con­siste a conti fatti l’arte del ro­manziere tanto più bravo in quan­to meglio ri­esce a “far pas­sare” in­for­mazioni senza av­erne l’aria” (32).].

As in­ter­pre­ta­tion chap­ters fol­low groups of nar­ra­tive chap­ters, the var­i­ous hy­pothe­ses about the "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" are also sur­veyed thus “pleas­ant­ly pass­ing” fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about the crit­i­cal de­bate sur­round­ing the novel. At the be­gin­ning, the the­sis of Jasper’s guilti­ness seems to be pre­vail­ing as the sleuths es­pouse Ed­mund Wil­son’s, Charles Mitchell’s and other crit­ics’ ideas. Those sup­port­ing the the­o­ry of Jasper’s guilt de­fend their po­si­tion by main­tain­ing that the in­ter­est of the novel lies in Jasper’s dou­ble na­ture which makes him a pro­to­type of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde di­vid­ed per­son­al­i­ty. Most fic­tion­al de­tec­tives, how­ev­er, can­not be con­tent with such an ob­vi­ous so­lu­tion. Where would the mys­tery be, ex­claim some of them, if we knew the cul­prit be­fore­hand? We over­hear one of them mut­ter­ing “in un vero poliziesco il mag­giore in­dizia­to non può as­so­lu­ta­mente…” (in a real de­tec­tive novel the prime sus­pect can­not pos­si­bly…) (33). So the fic­tion­al de­tec­tives raise a num­ber of ques­tions thus those touched upon in the crit­i­cal cor­pus and in the rewrit­ings and se­quels to the novel. Their ques­tions re­gard prin­ci­pal­ly the fol­low­ing points:

1. Jasper’s guilti­ness. The the­sis of his guilti­ness is sup­port­ed by his threat­en­ing per­son­al­i­ty, mes­mer­ic pow­ers, drug-de­pen­dance, and vi­o­lent eroti­cism, but ques­tioned by the ne­ces­si­ty for a de­tec­tive novel to pro­vide some sus­pense. Jasper’s guilti­ness grant­ed, the sus­pense of the novel would con­sist in some sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion as to the cir­cum­stances of the crime or as to the way the in­quir­ers would find out about it – in a death-cell (as Dick­ens seemed to have planned) or under the in­flu­ence of opium (as in The Moon­stone) or under the in­flu­ence of mes­merism (as Dick­ens’s in­ter­ests at the time would sug­gest). The mys­tery of The Mys­tery could also con­sist in the de­ploy­ment of a dual per­son­al­i­ty, Jasper’s guilti­ness com­ing to him as a shock, as his evil self would have com­mit­ted the crime while the good self was un­aware of it.
2. The re­turn of Edwin Drood as an avenger or as a ghost to fright­en Jasper who had failed to kill him or as Datch­ery, the de­tec­tive fig­ure in­tro­duced in the last ex­tant chap­ters of Dick­ens’s text.
3. The iden­ti­ty of Datch­ery: Be­sides Edwin Drood him­self, the names of Tar­tar, Grew­gious, Baz­zard and even Helen Land­less all find sup­port.
4. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of there being an­oth­er cul­prit, Neville or He­le­na or a killer sent to ex­e­cute a vendet­ta or even a va­grant for a real sur­prise end­ing.
5. The Ori­en­tal sug­ges­tion. Know­ing that Dick­ens was try­ing to em­u­late and outdo Collins’s The Moon­stone, one could ex­pect that the cues about Edwin going to Egypt or the men­tion that the Land­less broth­ers come from the East would have taken much more im­por­tance, to equate the In­di­an plot in The Moon­stone.

All these dif­fer­ent sug­ges­tions can be de­fend­ed – and have been de­fend­ed – by var­i­ous crit­ics on the basis of in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal ev­i­dence (what Park­er calls “foren­sic” and “aes­thet­ic” ar­gu­ments – 1983: 187). In their turn, the de­tec­tives in Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni’s novel pick them up to fire the de­bate while they speak and act in char­ac­ter, adopt­ing so­lu­tions ac­cord­ing to the na­ture of the works from which they orig­i­nate and the sub­gen­res they rep­re­sent. The mem­bers of the hard-boiled school are pit­ted against those who seek the so­lu­tion of the enig­ma through de­duc­tion (the British school, we might call them); the sup­port­ers of a sur­prise end­ing, à la Christie are op­posed to those à la “Por­fir­ij Petro­vic” who, like the judge in Crime and Pun­ish­ment, see in "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood", a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller rather than a novel of de­tec­tion, in­deed, be­cause of the use of drugs, a “psy­chi­atric thriller” (33). All these con­jec­tures are used dra­mat­i­cal­ly to cre­ate ten­sion among the del­e­gates. Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni do not seem to favour one above an­oth­er but rather they try to re­trace the steps of the var­i­ous the­o­rists and show how the group of de­tec­tives re­con­sid­er and adapt each con­jec­ture formed and strive to reach a cu­mu­la­tive final in­ter­pre­ta­tion con­sis­tent with the text, only to be di­vert­ed from their pur­pose by an un­ex­pect­ed, shat­ter­ing find­ing.

The pro­cess of read­ing, thus, is il­lus­trat­ed se­quen­tial­ly: after a se­ries of in­ter­ven­tions sup­port­ing, for in­stance, Jasper’s guilti­ness, new con­jec­tures will be ad­vanced. What was ac­quired will fade or be read­just­ed as new in­for­ma­tion is added. “Read­ing is not a straight­for­ward lin­ear move­ment, a mere­ly cu­mu­la­tive af­fair” writes Ea­gle­ton com­ment­ing on re­cep­tion the­o­ry. We “shed as­sump­tions, re­vise be­liefs, make more and more com­plex in­fer­ences and an­tic­i­pa­tions.” (1983: 77). The de­tec­tives’ heat­ed de­bate mim­ics the pro­cess by which a read­er pass­es through the var­i­ous per­spec­tives of­fered by the text and re­lates the dif­fer­ent views and pat­terns to one an­oth­er.

To prove this the au­thors swerve from what seemed to be their orig­i­nal plan, name­ly to have the de­tec­tives write a com­plet­ed ver­sion of The Mys­tery. While the del­e­gates are fi­nal­iz­ing the re­sults of the work­ing ses­sion and seem on the verge of opt­ing for a so­lu­tion of the case which in­cludes the most spec­tac­u­lar el­e­ments of past the­o­ries (the Is­lam­ic plot with the Land­less twins as the ex­ot­ic killers), sud­den­ly Mai­gret and Poirot re­join the party with a sen­sa­tion­al rev­e­la­tion. The ex­am­i­na­tion of the para­text – the fron­tispiece and il­lus­tra­tions of the first edi­tion – to­geth­er with telepa­thy have al­lowed them dis­cov­er that Dick­ens could not com­plete the novel be­cause he was mur­dered by Wilkie Collins as a re­venge for his plan­ning to use an idea of the lat­ter. As in Ham­let, Jasper’s guilt would have been dis­closed through a play – Dick­ens’s own Mouse­trap – writ­ten by the am­a­teur play­wright Baz­zard, who mas­quer­ades as Datch­ery. Thus re­al­i­ty (at least the fic­tion­al re­al­i­ty of "La verità sul caso D.") re­joins fic­tion. Dick­ens is un­able to con­clude the story of the uncle mur­der­ing the nephew (a sort of Cain and Abel story, as has been point­ed out by Wendy S. Ja­cob­son) be­cause he was him­self mur­dered by his Cain-like broth­er-ri­val Collins.

So there is clo­sure after all in "La verità sul caso D." – a clo­sure that goes against the grain of the novel and is tan­ta­mount to rec­og­niz­ing that each at­tempt at in­ter­pre­ta­tive de­tec­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of a forced­ly open text such as Dick­ens’s is, de­feats its own pur­pose deny­ing mean­ing­ful pat­terns in the text, or prov­ing that any pat­terns found are il­lu­so­ry im­po­si­tions of the read­er. The dif­fer­ent in­ter­pre­ta­tions of The Mys­tery do not only re­flect the un­fin­ished sta­tus of the novel but they fore­ground the an­ar­chic pol­y­se­man­tic po­ten­tial of all texts while the ac­tiv­i­ty of the de­tec­tives try­ing to im­pose some man­age­able frame­work by re­duc­ing the pol­y­se­man­tic po­ten­tial to some kind of order, equates that of the crit­ic or of the sim­ple read­er. There are no cor­rect read­ings which will ex­haust the se­man­tic po­ten­tial of a text and es­pe­cial­ly of a text such as "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" which, be­sides being un­fin­ished, is also full of rich sug­ges­tions, gaps and loose ends that need de­cod­ing (and on which many crit­ics have con­cen­trat­ed ig­nor­ing the temp­ta­tion to pro­vide an end­ing).

The clas­sic de­tec­tive novel, it has been re­peat­ed­ly point­ed out, is a rigid, hy­per­cod­i­fied form, pre­sent­ing a re­as­sur­ing model of re­al­i­ty where, with the un­mask­ing and pun­ish­ment of the crim­i­nal, we re­turn to a state of so­cial and moral equi­lib­ri­um and to the tri­umph of ra­tio­nal­i­ty [See Rober­to Bar­boli­ni’s anal­y­sis of the genre in his Il de­tec­tive sub­lime and Ste­fano Man­fer­lot­ti’s more spe­cif­ic study of "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" as a par­o­dy of de­tec­tive nov­els.

Wilkie Collins’s de­tec­tive sto­ries fit the pat­tern while "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood", even in its frag­men­tary form, promised to be much more un­set­tling, ques­tion­ing, as it was, the Vic­to­ri­an ide­als of per­fectibil­i­ty, of the good­ness of human na­ture, of the power of rea­son and of the ad­e­qua­cy of lit­er­ary forms to con­tain ex­pe­ri­ence.

Frut­tero & Lu­cen­ti­ni’s "La verità sul caso D.", with its ab­surd and sen­sa­tion­al con­clu­sion, fore­grounds the forced in­de­ter­mi­na­cy of Dick­ens’s text and shows how what could have been a de­tec­tive novel in the Nine­teenth cen­tu­ry tra­di­tion is, in its pre­sent state (but maybe even if it had been com­plet­ed) an open text, in­deed a post­mod­ern text, it­self lead­ing to the in­fi­nite rewrit­ings of other post­mod­ern texts.

Works Cited

1. DICK­ENS Charles, FRUT­TERO Carlo and LU­CEN­TI­NI Fran­co, La verità sul caso D, Tori­no, Ein­au­di, 1989.
2. DICK­ENS Charles, FRUT­TERO Carlo and LU­CEN­TI­NI Fran­co, The D. Case: The Truth about "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood", trans. G. Dowl­ing, New York, Har­court Brace Jo­vanovich, 1992.
3. DICK­ENS Charles. "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood", M. Car­well (ed.), Ox­ford, Ox­ford UP, 1972.
4. AYM­LER Felix, The Drood Case, New York, Barnes & Noble, 1964. BAR­BOLI­NI Rober­to, Il de­tec­tive sub­lime, Roma, Napoli, Theo­ria, 1988. CALVI­NO Italo, Se una notte d’in­ver­no un vi­ag­gia­tore, Tori­no, Ein­au­di, 1979.
5. CHARLES MARKHAM Edwin, Keys to the Drood Mys­tery, Lon­don, Col­lier, 1908. COLLINS Philip, Dick­ens: In­ter­views and Rec­ol­lec­tions, Lon­don, Macmil­lan, 1981. COLLINS Wilkie, The Moon­stone, Lon­don, Pen­guin, 1966.
6. EA­GLE­TON Terry, Lit­er­ary The­o­ry, U. of Min­neso­ta P, 1983.
7. ECO Um­ber­to and SE­BEOK T.A. (eds.), The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce,
8. Bloom­ing­ton, In­di­ana UP, 1983.
9. FORSTER John, The Life of Charles Dick­ens, Lon­don, Dent, 1966. FORSYTE Charles, The De­cod­ing of Edwin Drood, Lon­don, Gol­lancz, 1980.
10. FRIED­MAN Stan­ley, “Re­cent Dick­ens Stud­ies: 1992”, Dick­ens Stud­ies An­nu­al, 23 (1993).
11. ISER Wolf­gang, “In­ter­ac­tion be­tween Text and Read­er”, The Read­er in the Text, S. Suleiman and I. Cros­man (eds.), Prince­ton UP, 1980.
12. JA­COB­SON Wendy S., “The Gen­e­sis of the Last Novel: "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood"”, Dick­ens Stud­ies An­nu­al, 25 (1996), 197-210.
13. MAN­FER­LOT­TI Ste­fano, “Generi e par­o­dia dei generi in "The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood" di C. Dick­ens”, La per­for­mance del testo, F. Maruc­ci and A. Brut­ti­ni (eds.) Siena, Ticci, 1986. 195-202.
14. MECK­I­ER Jerome, Hid­den Ri­val­ries in Vic­to­ri­an Fic­tion, Lex­ing­ton, The UP of Ken­tucky, 1987.
15. PARK­ER David, “Drood Redux: Mys­tery and the Art of Fic­tion”, Dick­ens Stud­ies An­nu­al, 23 (1993), 185-195.
16. La Stam­pa Tut­tolib­ri: Re­views of "La verità sul caso D." 7/10/1989 and 18/11/1989.
17. WIL­SON Ed­mund, “Dick­ens: The Two Scrooges.” The Wound and the Bow, Cam­bridge, Mass, Houghton Mif­flin, 1941 (1929).