At times a bit slow moving, Gyles Brandreth's
Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder is the second of three titles in what turned out to be a delightful conjuring of 1890s London and Wilde's circle. It's chock full of Wildeisms and whimsy as the murder mystery is unravelled, thread-by-thread. The series is narrated in the first person by Robert Sherard -- Wilde's actual first biographer. And Brandreth himself is a Wilde scholar who lavishes much detail that is either true or credible invention as a grounding filigree to the tales; it's often hard to tell, in fact, which are the facts and which artistic license.
The story opens with Wilde holding a regular dinner meeting of The Socrates Club in a local hotel. Guests include Conan Doyle, Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), Bram Stoker, Walter Sickert and other notables of the period. There are 14 at dinner and Wilde asks everyone to write anonymously the name of someone he'd like to see murdered. The slips of paper are gathered and Wilde reads them out. The game is to guess whose victim belongs to whom. Unfortunately, the next day, the first name on the list dies and one member of the gathering was on the scene. Coincidence? or murder? The tale unfolds, murder by murder, with Wilde playing Sherlock Holmes to Sherard's Watson. Were will it end? Oscar himself is on the list, as is his dear wife Constance.
I admit it took some pages before I was hooked ... but then I was thoroughly hooked. It's a breezy read and certainly left me keen on exploring more in the series; nine books in all are planned.
You can find the series as e-books, for about $10 each at
Amazon and
Kobobooks.