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I loved it, but I'm also a literature junkie and have long been interested in the speculation around The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It's been a couple months since I finished it, so a few of the names in it are escaping me...
I think you're right that London is really the main character of the novel. The depiction is vivid and lush and squalid. Stinky, even. That said, Simmons' interweaving of the real history of Dickens' last few years and Wilkie Collins' history, their publications and record of public appearances, with all the speculation of what might be going on in their relationship... It's a MASTERFUL piece of historic novelizing.
Casting back, there were a couple of things that happened that can't be explained by Spoiler: Wilkie being mesmerized or wacked out on opiates. The one that most came to mind was the discovery of the Egyptian artifacts in the buildings, on the walk that whats-his-name who ended up being Fields' son took him on. If Fields was really chasing a figment Drood and had turned is son just as mad, where did those things come from?
Do you figure the underground opium den was real? I do. So then why, the first time they went there, did whatsisname-the-chinaman say something like, "This is the entrance to the gateway to the outer vestibule of undertown." Later it's asserted that no such place exists.
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