After that lovely fat hammy passage -- on page 161 out of 256 -- alas, String of Pearls starts to fall apart.
'Continue at your work,' said the voice, 'or death will be your portion as soon as sleep overcomes you, and you sink exhausted to that repose which you will never awaken from, except to feel the pangs of death, and to be conscious that you are weltering in your blood.
'Continue at your work and you will escape all this -- neglect it, and your doom is sealed.'
'What have I done that I should be made such a victim of? Let me go, and I will swear never to divulge the fact that I have been in these vaults, so I cannot disclose any of their secrets, even if I knew them.'
'Make pies,' said the voice, 'eat them and be happy. How many a man would envy your position -- withdrawn from all the struggles of existence, amply provided with board and lodging, and engaged in a pleasant and delightful task. It is astonishing how you can be dissatisfied!'
By this point in the book, a reader of the meanest intelligence will have figured out from the ridiculously broad hints, asides and verbal wink-wink nudge-nudges -- even if he didn't know it already, for example from having read this blog -- what Sweeney's barber-chair does; what the foul smell from under St Dunstan's Church is really all about; and where the supply of meat for Mrs Lovett's pies comes from. But for some dumb-ass reason, the author[s] are committed to pretending that these things (and several other, less important ones) are all "mysteries" until the final chapter -- perhaps to give the reader an opportunity to feel smugly clever for having "figured it out."
Regardless, it's an idiotic decision, because it means that instead of concentrating on what's really interesting -- Todd skulking and scampering about his subterranean empire, lugging chunks of his victims to and fro -- we have to endure the asininities of two naval gentlemen playing detective and sounding for all the world like the goofy gophers, a plucky heroine (if plucky meant vapid and delusional), the irritating refusal of Sweeney's former apprentice to die quietly in his nice madhouse cell like we all want him to, and no less than two boring, completely irrelevant short stories thinly disguised as conversation.
Nothing on how Sweeney started his slaughter-factory, built or discovered his tunnels, or came up with the idea of turning his victims into pies; nothing on where he found or how he invented the wonderful machinery; nothing on how he and Mrs Lovett entered into partnership, where they met or what their relationship was. Not even -- and speaking here as a fellow-writer, this is flabbergasting to me -- not even a climactic chase scene through the tunnels. The "big finish" is more like "half-assed farce", and as I read it, all I could think was, "Oh, come on, you're not even trying."
