The sprawling city of London, the rapacious river Thames, and a multitude of lively dinner parties set the scene for Our Mutual Friend. The unforgettable "Golden Dustman," otherwise known as Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin, is unexpectedly willed a tremendous fortune, and his first scattering of the precious dust is to acquire a one-legged "literary man," Silas Wegg, to reveal to him the mysteries of the Decline-and-Fall-off-the-Rooshan-Empire. Noddy and his fashionable wife become sought-after guests of the Podsnaps and the Veneerings, those resplendent members of Society ensconced in Self-Esteem and smug pomposity. Our Mutual Friend quietly slips into the picture, the sinister machinations of Rogue Riderhood gather momentum, and the conniving in Mr. Venus' bone shop begins to entangle our hero. Unified by the theme of money and its relationship to happiness and self-fulfillment, this last novel that Dickens completed is perhaps the most consciously artistic as well as one of the warmest and most human of all his works.