Bleak House

As the interminable cae of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way trhough the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people : Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, whose inheritance gradually being devoured by legal cost ; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery ; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn ; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, a destitute crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, "Bleak House" is one of Disken's most ambitious novels, with a renga that extends from the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy to the London slums.