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Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (Oscar Wilde Mysteries 2)
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| List Price: | £7.99 |
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Product Description
‘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.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #66712 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-05
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
Editorial Reviews
Sunday Express
`A carnival of cliffhangers and fiendish twists-and-turns'
Review
”Part biography and part murder mystery with a wonderful cast of historical characters”
(Oswentry & Border Countries Advertiser, Teresa Eccleston )‘Hugely enjoyable’
(Daily Mail )‘Rather fun ...Brandreth unashamedly wheels out a cast of historical characters to die for’
(Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times )‘A neat take on the big hitters in the book world just over a century ago ... Gyles is a joy to the nation’
(Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express )‘A clever concept spiced with great Wilde epigrams’
‘He has won great acclaim for his series of Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries ... as witty and entertaining as his hero, Gyles is renowned for his charisma and charm’
‘The last novel I read was The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries ... it was very good’
(Nicholas Parsons, Daily Telegraph )‘A carnival of cliffhangers and fiendish twists-and-turns’
(Sunday Express )‘An amusing and satisfactorily unlikely story’ (Jessica Mann, Literary Review )
‘One of the most enjoyable crime series around ... He slips easily into the 21st century, does this Oscar (imagine, if you can, an even higher-wattage Stephen Fry), just as, thanks to Brandreth, we as readers are able to travel effortlessly back to join him in his own age. It is well worth the journey - and I can't wait until the next one.’ (Scotsman )
‘Brandreth’s knowledge of fin-de-siecle London, of the social and political history of the period and, above all, of Wilde himself is most impressive. Wildean witticisms abound’
(Brian Maye, Irish Times )‘Terrifically well researched, it all whizzes along and the reader can have fun identifying the real Wilde’s witticisms from Brandreth’s’
(Scotland on Sunday )‘As much imaginative biography as murder mystery, this book paints a lively portrait of Wilde at the height of his fame’
‘It’s all mid-morning bracers, detections based on the shininess of shoes, hansom cabs and gems like “work is the best antidote to sorrow” as we gallivant around 1890’s London. Wilde is a tough subject to make boring, but this is great escapism’ (Danny Wheeler, London Lite )
‘Brandreth really has got the measure of his subject, catching the essence of the great man at almost every turn’
(Yorkshire Evening Post )‘[A] deservedly well-received series’ (District Messenger )
‘Gyles Brandreth has done a great job with this continuing series...I’m wild about Wilde’
(Birmingham Sunday Mercury )‘Sparking dialogue, as you would expect, mystery piled deliciously upon mystery, a plot with a pace and a panache and a London backdrop that would grace any Victorian theatre’
(Steve Craggs, Northern Echo )‘That curious, uneasy shadowland of late Victorian London, where Society, Art and Popular Entertainment overlap, is richly evoked, and the details of Wilde’s life are mentioned by Sherard ... in a perfectly natural, convincing manner: the man he presents to us is both the authentic Oscar and the authentic amateur sleuth’
(District Messenger )‘A good read’
(Woman’s Way )‘Utterly charming caper of murder and wit . . . my reader loves them’
(Bookseller )‘Brandreth characterises Wilde with great finesse and provides an unconventional and languid narrative to match’
‘Brandreth writes with a light touch, but conveys a sense of the moral hypocrisy and oppressive class system of the time. What raises this book several notches above most mysteries is the authentic historical detail and the engaging portrait of Wilde ... sparkling bits of wit and wisdom’
(Historical Novels Review )‘Highly acclaimed Oscar Wilde murder mysteries ... richly described background of fin-de-siecle London’
(Greenock Telegraph )‘Engaging, entertaining and skilfully written’
‘One of the most enjoyable (series) around’
(Diplomat Magazine )‘Gyles is a joy to the nation.’
(International Express )‘Wickedly imagined and wildly entertaining’
’An enjoyable read’
‘Give a big, fat, sloppy kiss to the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries, a sharply-written, deeply urbane and ongoing series’
‘Wickedly imagined and wildly entertaining series’
Scotsman
'I can't wait until the next one.'
Customer Reviews
beware the imposters!
As always Brandreth has produced two most original works .................... or has he ? beware, I bought two books from amazon one entitled " a game called murder " and one called "ring of death"
Goody, settle down by the fire two new novels to read.
Hang on they are identical.
I should have smelled a rat when the dog didn`t bark.
I think the law of public opinion (topical) should insist that messrs amaz** should make it clear they are selling the same book under two different names.
Buyer beware, I was taken once before when I bought a "New" John Grisham title It was in Spanish!
Fantastic Read!
I came across this book after searching for 'Oscar Wilde' and bought it on a whim. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read, made even more interesting by the references to a number of real-life Victorian figures. As well as capturing the tone of the 19th century perfectly, the mystery at the heart of the novel is a great page turner and keeps you hooked until the very end. I've since read the first in the series and will also be purchasing the third as a summer read. A great book!
Whelming....
The positive first. Gyles Brandreth has done a superb job evoking 1890s London, giving life to well-known historical figures (Conan Doyle, for example), fleshing out less well-known figures by the power of his invention (Wat Sickert), as well as inventing his own original characters.
There were drawbacks, unfortunately. There are two ways of making your protagonist seem clever. One way is to actually make him say and do clever things. Brandreth's Wilde does this often enough. The other way (much the weaker) is to surround your protagonist with irredeemable dolts to make him seem smarter in comparison. Brandreth does this rather prominently, alas. In the worst instance - well, there is really no excuse for making his police investigator so brain-damaged that in the middle of a murder scene he forgets to ask where the murder-weapon came from, simply so that Oscar can ask the blindingly obvious question to show off his 'brilliance.'
Some lesser points: if you were going to have your principal female character be both the wife of your sleuth and the lust object of two of the other male characters, one of whom is the narrator, I think the rhapsodizing over her beauty would be more effective if the author had included some description (however brief) of the woman's actual appearance (and no, I don't feel a meticulous description of her dresses counts).
Last but not least, I felt that there was something a little lacking in the killer's motivation for his crime.
All this is not to say this wasn't a fun book. It was great fun. Hopefully Mr. Brandreth can avoid these fairly minor errors in the next book in the series (which I will certainly read) so that the fun will be uninterrupted by such annoying distractions.
