No Thoroughfare is a Christmas melodrama and the final collaboration between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, first published in 1867 in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round and later adapted for the stage. The plot is a classic sensation novel, revolving around the common theme of switched identities and a lost inheritance. It begins in a London orphanage, where two babies are given the same name, Walter Wilding. One is the true heir to a fortune, while the other is a pauper. A mistake leads to the wrong boy being sent to a life of wealth. The story then leaps forward in time, following the two men: the gentle, confused Walter Wilding, who runs a wine merchant business and is haunted by a sense of disquiet, and his bitter, long-lost counterpart. The pursuit of the truth spans from London to the treacherous Swiss Alps, involving a villainous foreign scoundrel, Jules Obenreizer, who is determined to secure the fortune for himself and his ward, Marguerite. The story is filled with Dickensian atmosphere, Collins's flair for suspense, and dramatic set-pieces, including a thrilling chase across an Alpine pass and a confrontation at a mountain hut. No Thoroughfare is a gripping, theatrical tale of fate, greed, and the relentless search for identity and justice.

Table of Contents:

• No Thoroughfare. Part 1

• No Thoroughfare. Part 2

• No Thoroughfare. Part 3