Book dossier

Trial for Murder

by Charles Dickens

One of Dickens's standalone ghost stories, of which he was so fond. Here the unnamed narrator is also selected as the foreman of the jury where the accused is being tried for murder. There is, among the jury, an unseen thirteenth juror, whose presence is certainly felt by the accused, by witnesses, by the prosecutor and by the judge himself. When the verdict is pronounced, the guilty man (for so he has been judged) declares that the the trial was an unfair one, that the foreman of the jury was dead against him...