Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile

Starred review from July 13, 2009
Oscar Wilde once again makes a convincing detective in Brandreth's excellent third whodunit to recreate the late Victorian age (after 2008's Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder
). Framed as a puzzle posed by Wilde to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle in 1890, this adventure concerns a series of mysterious deaths plaguing a French acting troupe, the Compagnie La Grange, which Wilde encounters aboard ship in 1883. The first death is of a poodle, Marie Antoinette, whose body a customs officer in Liverpool unearths in a dirt-filled trunk that Wilde believed to be full of books he was bringing home from America. Human victims follow, forcing Wilde and his Watson, real-life journalist and Wilde biographer Robert Sherard, to untangle the complicated nest of emotions at play among the members of the Compagnie La Grange. John Dickson Carr fans will be gratified to find echoes of his style in several places, including the use of false endings.

August 1, 2009
The inimitable Oscar triumphantly tours America and Europe, meeting a pantheon of stars and solving a murder.

Confidant and biographer Robert Sherard, again playing the Dr. Watson role (Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder, 2008, etc.), begins with an 1890 Christmas Eve visit to Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London, as Wilde presents to friend and admirer (and rival) Arthur Conan Doyle a manuscript documenting a singular adventure. Flashback to Wilde's successful tour of America a decade earlier, a cross-country jaunt through the heartland ending in New York. Wilde is delighted to make the acquaintance of childhood idol Edmond La Grange, esteemed actor-manager and patriarch of his own acting dynasty. When Wilde and the La Granges return to England together aboard the SS Bothnia, the most foreboding event of the voyage is the death of Marie Antoinette, pet poodle of La Grange's elderly mother. From that point the plot rattles amiably forward through London and Paris, from Sherard's first meeting with Wilde in 1883 to the appearance of divine diva Sarah Bernhardt, a frequent La Grange costar. At length, there's the requisite murder, of La Grange's dresser Washington Traquair. The locked-room mystery provokes Wilde once more to dangerous investigations and deepens his friendship with Robert, who replaces Traquair as La Grange's dresser. Fatalities even closer to La Grange lend urgency to Wilde's efforts.

Episodic and irrepressibly droll, Wilde's third case benefits from a full-bodied cast of supporting characters and a looser narrative flow.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 15, 2009
Sailing back to England after lecturing in the United States, Oscar Wilde ("Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder") meets a group of actors going to Paris to put on "Hamlet". Soon people are dead, and Wilde enlists the help of his friend Robert Sherard to uncover a murderer. VERDICT For series fans.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2009
Brandreth has enjoyed considerable critical success for his two previous mysteries starring Oscar Wilde as a late-Victorian-era sleuth: Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance (2008) and Oscar Wilde and a Game Called Murder (2008). This series offers a wonderful counterpoint to the slew of contemporary mysteries that reanimate Sherlock Holmes (often as clumsily as Dr. Frankenstein assembled his monster). It comes as a shock to think of the aesthete Wilde as a detective, but Brandreth easily shows how the writers quickness of mind could lend itself to deductive brilliance. The latest in the series is much more expansive than the first two, encompassing 1882 through 1883, the year of Wildes American tour and its aftermath in Paris. This wide range seems more of an excuse to work in Wilde biography and witticisms than part of the mystery, which doesnt come into play until far into the book. But Wilde enthusiasts will love all the extra detail. Brandreth ties together a gambler Wilde meets in Leadville, Colorado, a valet won at cards, Sarah Bernhardt, and a series of grisly accidents and murders that befall Frances foremost acting dynasty. This is all told from the perspective of one of Wildes actual friends, put in the role of his Watson, the journalist Robert Sherard. This device gives readers front-row seats to Wildes fascinating personality. One of the most consistently entertaining historical series starring a real-life sleuth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)