Our mutual friend

The first edition of the novel by Charles Dickens “Our Common Friend” (1864–1865) was accompanied by a leaflet attached to the beginning of Tom, noting that the penetrating reader would understand the meaning of the name when it reaches the ninth chapter. This “detective” invention, promising the game in plot secrets, continues in the book itself: the story of the London “millionaire bin” of the harmony, who was rich in municipal contracts, his heir to John, declared by the dead, and the capricious beauty of Bella Wilfer, girls from a poor family, girls, girls, girls. Dreaming of a profitable marriage, is built on personality substitutions, masquerade transformations and sudden exposure, contains episodes of blackmail and attempts to kill and other signs of a criminal narrative. The last complete novel by Dickens, “Our common friend” develops the topics of the duality of human nature, the search for the true “I” and freedom of life choice, which will become the main in the final masterpiece of the writer - the intriguingly unfinished detective “The Secret of Edwin Drud”