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OSCAR WILDE AND A DEATH OF NO IMPORTANCE
by Gyles Brandreth
Touchstone, January 2008
368 pages
$14.00
ISBN: 1416534830


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

On August 30 1889, Joseph M Stoddard, the American publisher of Lippincott’s Magazine held a dinner in London’s Langham Hotel for, among other guests, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. He proposed to the two authors that each write a work for his journal. The results were the second Sherlock Holmes novel, THE SIGN OF FOUR, which would appear in the February 1890 issue, and Wilde’s only novel, THE PORTRAIT OF DORIAN GRAY, which would appear in the July number. One could say that the meeting also led over a century later to the first in what Gyles Brandreth proposes as a series of nine murder mysteries featuring the two men.

The novel appeared originally in 2007 in the U.K. under the title OSCAR WILDE AND THE CANDLELIGHT MURDERS. It begins dramatically enough with Wilde’s discovery on August 31 of the naked body of "Billy Wood, a male prostitute of no importance." Wood would appear to have been ritualistically sacrificed, for his throat was slashed while he lay, surrounded by six candles, on the floor of an incense-filled room. According to Wilde, he himself had gone to the house to give a lesson to a pupil and, though he knew Wood, was not expecting to find him there, let alone his body.

Wilde inexplicably flees the house and waits a day before reporting the murder, not to the police but to Conan Doyle. They return to the crime scene only to find the body has disappeared. Doyle insists Wilde must go to Scotland Yard; he bids him to ask particularly for Inspector Aidan Fraser (one of the many fictional characters in the novel). The latter, however, proves to be less than interested in pursuing the case of a missing body. Thereupon, Wilde decides he must undertake the investigation on his own.

The resulting adventure is narrated by Wilde’s very heterosexual friend Robert Sherard, who in life remained faithful to him to the end despite the calumny surrounding the author upon his trial and subsequent imprisonment and who served as Wilde’s early biographer. As a result of Sherard’s performing the role of Wilde’s 'Watson,' the playwright’s love for his wife and two sons is given prominence. Thus Wilde emerges looking more like a bisexual, perhaps even an early metrosexual, than a tragic figures in the fight for gay liberation.

None of Wilde’s often campy wit, however, is sacrificed. We have loads of quips taken from his real-life conversations and his writings. Often while reading the novel, I burst out laughing at some paradox Wilde tosses out. Adding to the general fun, we also have Wilde sometimes quoting from the novel that Doyle is working on to prove his assertion, "I am absorbing what lessons I can from Mr Sherlock Holmes, . . . that perfect reasoning and observing machine." In particular, he quotes from memory Holmes’s maxim, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Throughout the novel the historical context is kept firmly in mind. Prince Eddy’s and other famous names are casually dropped so as to deliciously blend fact and fiction. Because of the victim, there is a special emphasis on the demimonde. References are made to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, whose vague charge of "gross indecency" turned it into the "blackmailer’s charter," and to the Cleveland Street scandal involving a house of male prostitution. Needless to say, however, the reader may rest assured that nothing happens during the course of the novel to frighten the horses in the street.

In Sherard’s company Wilde engages in trips to locate Billy’s mother, a rendezvous with a group who had used Billy’s services, an interview with his almost blind pimp, and a sortie to Paris in the company of Fraser and his fiancée Veronica Sutherland. Fraser seems curiously oblivious to the flirtation between the lovely Veronica and the perpetually woman-chasing Sherard, who has fallen madly in love with her. Unaccompanied by Sherard, Wilde also makes use of the services of John Gray, "a young Adonis" who was probably one of the real-life inspirations for the character Dorian Gray, to visit all the London mortuaries in search of the missing body.

Still it takes five months, from August 31 to January 31 1890, to solve the case. As Wilde observes to Sherrard: "It’s all about saints’ days . . . and temptation." The author is scrupulously honest in his presentation of facts so that, unlike with the Sherlock Holmes stories, the reader can actually begin putting the clues together to remain at least in step with, if not indeed ahead of Wilde in his solution to the crime.

Wilde appeared earlier as a major character in Russell A Brown’s mystery SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MYSTERIOUS FRIEND OF OSCAR WILDE (1988), which, as the title indicates, joined the fictional detective with the historical figure. But it is amazing that no one has before thought to use Wilde as a celebrity sleuth in a conventional historical mystery. Brandreth shows us how well it can be done, leaving the reader to look forward to the next installment in the series.

Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, January 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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