Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol

Starred review from March 18, 2013
After two subpar outings (most recently 2012’s Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders), Brandreth returns to form with his outstanding sixth Victorian whodunit, making the most of a difficult but intriguing premise. What if Oscar Wilde, while held between 1895 and 1897 in Reading Gaol, used his superior intellect to try to solve multiple murders at the prison? Earlier, at Wandsworth in London, an especially cruel warder dropped dead of uncertain causes in Wilde’s cell just before the disgraced playwright and wit was to be transferred. To Wilde’s shock, another warder dies at his new prison, the first of several mysterious deaths there. Brandreth smoothly integrates details of Wilde’s tormented existence behind bars and the sadism of the British penal system at the time into a complex mystery plot that only the most attentive reader will resolve correctly in advance of the denouement. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Ltd. (U.K.)

Starred review from May 1, 2013
On May 25, 1895, while Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest was playing to packed houses in the West End, the author himself was led from the Old Bailey into Newgate Prison and, finally, to Reading Gaol, where he served a two-year sentence for his immoral affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (the theater managers, Brandreth informs us, removed Wilde's name from the playbills and posters so as not to offend the public but kept taking in the profits). This sixth installment of Brandreth's series, in which Wilde and his real-life friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often team up to solve mysteries, may well be the best of a consistently terrific lot. For one thing, this book has Wilde narrating in the first person; earlier, the series' conceit was that Wilde's biographer, Robert Sherard, wrote these stories to be published after his own death. This last is as dictated by Wilde, and Brandreth captures both the witty and the remorseful author without sounding at all false or forced. The subject itself, which focuses on Victorian prison conditionspublic lashings, hard labor, and solitary confinement (and the odd detail like the fact that prisoners were given two books, the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress)is absorbing, especially delivered from Wilde's perspective. Two murders occur along the way, and Wilde is called upon to help solve them, but they take a backseat to the central story of Wilde's suffering and redemption in prison. Absolutely captivating and moving.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)