Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death by Gyles Brandreth

[chesilbeach]

Synopsis (from waterstones.com)

 

'I see murder in this unhappy hand!' When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'Murder' in which each of his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill. For the fourteen 'victims' begin to die mysteriously, one by one, and in the order in which their names were drawn from the bag! With growing horror, Wilde and his confidantes Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, realise that one of their guests that evening must be the murderer. In a race against time, Wilde will need all his powers of deduction and knowledge of human behaviour before he himself -- the thirteenth name on the list -- becomes the killer's next victim.

 

This is actually the second in a series of Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries that Gyles Brandreth is writing. I hadn't read the first, but it was no barrier to this book, and from the start you're quickly drawn into this Victorian crime novel, with real people as characters in this tale of murder.

 

The writing is very evocative of the era, using dialogue that seems to fit comfortably with the Victorian times as you would read in a novel written in that period. With real people as characters, such as Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Sickert and Bram Stoker, the book comes alive with small references to their lives and works, and is a very good whodunnit to boot!

 

I'm not a huge reader of crime as I don't particularly like reading about graphic violence or disturbing real life crimes, but tend to read more quirky period or comic crime novels, and this one suited me perfectly. With lots of little nuggets of information being planted throughout the book, it was a joy to get to the end and find out which ones I'd managed to figure out for myself.

 

I will definitely be going back to find the first novel in the series, and will be reserving the next one at my local library when it comes out in hardback in May this year.

[Jack Dawkins]

This sounds fantastic,another couple of books for the wish list thank you!

[Nollaig]

I love the sound of these. Great review btw. I'm definately going to check these out a.s.a.p!