Upon the discovery of an unpublished Charles Dickens novel in the cellar of an old Thames-side pub and a spate of murders, an ambitious journalist takes it upon himself to investigate. The more he discovers about these peculiar murders the more he becomes obsessed with unraveling the cryptic messages in the century-old text. With the help of a police officer and a beach-combing tramp he tries to unlock the riddle in Dickens' novel, in the hope it will solve the present day murders.
