Our Mutual Friend (1865)

An inheritance tied to a marriage condition draws a whole London economy into view, from scavenging to fashionable dinner parties. Dickens makes wealth built from rubbish a useful rebuke to people who imagine money has cleaned their origins. Choose this for grotesque social comedy mixed with a mystery, rather than a restrained drawing-room novel. The 1864–65 serial is sprawling and sometimes melodramatic; the reward is watching apparently separate levels of the city connect.