FANS of historical mysteries will find plenty of intrigue in a Barry man's take on the most famous unsolved mystery in literature.

Barry boy Lyn Squire, a former director with the World Bank, has written what he admits are "some of the most boring books in economics" over the years, but is now focusing on writing mysteries for fun.

His novel The Last Chapter is based on Charles Dickens' unfinished final novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the work Dickens died before completing.

The plot follows Charles Dickens' nephew Dunston Burnett who, believing his uncle was poisoned to prevent him completing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, scours the half-finished manuscript in search of pointers.

Knowing the writer’s methods better than anyone, he eventually figures out the intended ending - a chilling, prison-cell confession.

Better yet, he recognizes the real-life counterpart behind the damning portrait of the villain. But has he found the killer?

Former Barry grammar school pupil Lyn, who now lives in Springfield, Virginia in the US, explained that the idea was born during two years he spent working in India and reading some old classics.

Encountering the mystery of the unfinished novel, he spent the next 10 years piecing together his own solution to the puzzle.

"At the end of the book you don't know whether Edwin is dead or not," said Lyn, 67. "Of course there have been millions of solutions put forward but as it turned out mine had some ideas in it that had not been looked at previously.

"I just thought that it was bit odd that Dickens died before he finished it and I wondered if maybe there was something in the book that someone didn't want him to write."

Father of two Lyn, who still visits Barry once a year with his wife Jennifer, is already starting on his next book having finished The Last Chapter.

If you want to know what really happened to Edwin Drood then The Last Chapter is available as an ebook or a paperback from Amazon.com.