Customer Reviews

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile: A Mystery (Oscar Wilde Mysteries)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Author Gyles Brandreth's latest Oscar Wilde mystery takes the reader on a journey that begins in the wild west of Leadville, Colorado circa 1882, and continues with an ocean voyage on which Oscar becomes acquainted with the LaGrange family, well known for its hundred year history in the theater. Invited by the senior LaGrange to add his personal touch to the script of Hamlet, Oscar follows the family to Paris. It is in this venue that Mr. Wilde encounters murder most foul and the reader is introduced to Mr. Wilde's inner circle.......a treasury of the famous and the infamous ranging from Sarah Bernhardt, complete with her animal menagerie, to Arthur Conan Doyle and James Russell Lowell. Complicit in this tale and cast as the narrator/chronicler of the story is Wilde's friend and compatriot, poet Robert Sherard.

Clever and unusual murders and the solution to the mystery aside, the historical aspects of the novel are engaging as are the salacious peeks into the dark underbelly of late nineteenth century Paris. Known to one and all for his pithy witticisms as well as his ability to regurgitate the equally amusing social observations of others, Oscar comes across as a varitable warehouse of pronouncements arrived at following intelligent scrutiny of the human animal, i.e., "The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions", or "In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking", or "Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read".

While the story does address Wilde's flamboyant style of dress and his preference for large amounts of absinthe and laudanum (opium/morphine) it neatly skirts his questionable sexual orientation and presents him as a man completely enamored of Constance Lloyd (the woman whom he later married). This is a forgivable sin, since Brandreth's Oscar is as completely captivating and entertaining a protagonist as one could ask for.

For anyone who enjoys their historical fiction liberally peppered with recognizable names coupled with an amusing, relatively easy read, OSCAR WILDE AND THE DEAD MAN'S SMILE are well worth your time.

Having greatly enjoyed Louis Bayard's "The Pale Blue Eye" (featuring Poe as a detective during a mystery at West Point) I thought it might be enjoyable to read a similar book featuring Oscar Wilde. The layout of this book is much like a Sherlock Holmes mystery: Wilde and his Watsonian sidekick, Robert Sherard, are dining at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum with, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle. They discuss a murder mystery that Oscar was instrumental in solving a few years previously, and at Wilde's behest, Sherard gives Conan Doyle a copy of a manuscript about that mystery. The main section of the book is the mystery, written from Sherard's point of view, and the epilogue is the recap of the mystery at another dinner with Conan Doyle.

The book has a fairly slow start. It seemed like the author was simply plugging the narrative with every Oscar Wilde quote I ever heard, but setting it in a scenario appropriate to the context of the quote. La Grange's description is very crudely done: a lot of blunt sentences starting with "He was" or "He looked" or "He had." Very awkward to read.

However, once we get to the point where Wilde is in Paris, things start to even out, and the book is quite good from that point on. I did stay up late to finish it. There is one big glaring thing that confuses me, though. During Wilde & Sherard's recap with Conan Doyle at the end of the book, they discuss the murders that took place. One of these took place on the boat coming back from America. Wilde emphasizes that a set of four murders had been planned, after which point all the killing would be finished. (We had learned about this "set of four murders" much earlier in the book, but here he recapitulates for the benefit of Conan Doyle.) However, at this point of the story when the first murder is committed, before the boat docks in England, there is not yet a motive for any of the three future deaths. The criminal mastermind has no reason to kill until much later in the book. So are we to believe that the mastermind simply wanted a set of four arbitrary deaths, just to show off, and that conveniently, this person later learns that there are people nearby who need to be killed?

I may reread it tonight to see if I misunderstood that part, but it seems to me that is a pretty glaring mistake.

Otherwise, this story hews very closely to the format used by Bayard, where the famous person and his non-famous sidekick work out the mystery to the gratification of the local authorities, and then in a closing chapter the famous person turns the explanation around and shows that it actually happened differently. I really hated this when Bayard did it, but it doesn't bother me in this book, and I don't know why that is.

The book was a satisfying read, and by the second third of the book I was quite content with its narrative and progression. There was a little bit too much about Sherard's personal life, which was slightly detrimental to the story, but these sections are mostly skim-worthy.

Maybe my expectations were too high! I read the first two installments of Mr. Brandwreth's Oscar Wilde mystery series and was quite amused and entertained. Therefore, I had high hopes for this third in the series.

Let's go back to the beginning. Mr. Brandwreth is a very good writer and has demonstrated the ability to spin an admirable yarn. That being said, I found Dead Man's Smile to be disappointingly long and tedious. Even the storyline grew hazy at times. There are a multitude of characters and although many are well depicted, too many characters can easily slow a book's pace.

I will concede that sometimes I am not in the mood for a specific type of book and/or writing style and this may have been the case; however, I found Oscar and Robert Sheridan's slow moving investigation somewhat irksome. Perhaps I missed the uniqueness of Mr. Wilde's campy sense of humor and unparalleled wit. To me, this installment presented him as being somewhat pedestrian, if not downright pedantic. Where was the "fun" that the first two books captured and presented so easily?

I initially found the fact that this "mystery" is 369 pages rather daunting, but it's highly readable, and quickly drew me into it: a hundred pages had passed before I realized it! It gives you a vivid picture of what Paris was like during la décadence, along with an entertaining semi-fictionalized treatment of Wilde's 1882 American tour. As is typical in books like this, the murder mystery plot is really just an excuse (though I found it clever, if a bit far-fetched). The book is really about what it would be like to have a wit like Oscar Wilde as a friend, and what life was like in the circles he moved in. There are two earlier books in the same series (it's coming out at six-month intervals) which I missed, and which I plan to read as soon as I can.

Brandreth is a Wilde student, and a student of the period, and he certainly has it down cold. He sometimes seems to be challenging his reader to say "hey, that's an anachronism." He makes half a dozen references to Lucky Strike cigarettes, for example, but a little research shows that they were indeed popular in the period. If Brandreth made any slipups, I couldn't catch them.

Surprisingly, Wilde's homosexuality isn't mentioned at all, except for a couple of vague hints. The reason is that the story is told through the eyes of Wilde's friend Robert Sherard, a real person, best known for his later Wilde biography which soft-pedals this aspect of Wilde's life (astonishingly, Sherard claimed to be ignorant of it until the scandal broke in 1895). This is the third of nine (!) books promised in this series, and I look forward to seeing what happens in the later books when Oscar starts feasting with panthers.

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile is an interesting combination of fact and fiction.

It is Christmas time in London, Oscar Wilde tours the famous waxworks. Meeting with his new friend Arthur Conan Doyle he presents him with a Christmas present. It is a manuscript which is missing the last chapter. The manuscript describes Wilde's travels to the United States and Paris in the 1889's.

Wilde lectures draw crowds in big cities and in mining towns. He is a celebrity and an oddity, foreigner in velvet trousers. As fascinating as his travels are the plot doesn't begin until well into the book when he meets a professional gambler and the famous La Grange Family, an acting dynasty. He travels with them to Paris in order to work on a translation of Hamlet. Strange and terrible events follow. Are they connected? Are they accidents, suicides or murder? Oscar Wilde plays detective but will he survive to sort out the truth.

Wilde and Doyle meet again at New Years. Doyle presents in solution to the missing chapter and Wilde reveals all.

While this book is well written and interesting, I had some difficulty telling the difference between the very detail facts and the fictional story. I believe if the notes at the end of the book were more detailed I would not have struggled so. Also the mystery is secondary to the story of Wilde himself and his desire for fame. At this point in his life he is almost the Paris Hilton of his time. Today's tabloids would have had a field day.

History buffs and English majors will love this book

Murder mysteries are not usually my favorite books, but I ordered _Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile_ because I love the works of Oscar Wilde. Gyles Brandreth does a superb job of using Wilde as a character; the authentic Wilde urbanity, charm, and kindness permeate every page. Although I recognized some of the classic witticisms, they are worth reading again. The incidents are believable and for readers who know something about Wilde's life and works, meaningful. For example, there's an incident regarding a bag with dubious contents deposited at Victoria Station, and Wilde visits a prisoner in Reading Gaol. Historical characters other than Wilde include Sarah Bernhardt and Arthur Conan Doyle. Brandreth also does a superb job of conveying a late Victorian atmosphere, and his language contains no jarring modernisms. He's clearly done ample research.

Unlike many murder mysteries, the emphasis, especially in the beginning, is on events unrelated to crime or detection, and the narrative exudes a pleasant sense of leisure. The first murder does not occur till the end of the third chapter. As in many murder mysteries, the victim is someone everyone hates--a highly obnoxious little dog. The dog belongs to the matriarch of the La Grange acting family, who are returning from America to France. Oscar Wilde is accompanying them to do an English-to-French translation of "Hamlet" for their upcoming performance. Oscar's curiosity is aroused by the dog's death, but it's hard to tell how serious Oscar really is. After the La Granges return to the Paris theatre they own, the plot becomes increasingly Shakespearean (or Websterean). Aided by his friend and narrator Robert Sherard, Oscar unobtrusively but intelligently pursues a series of peculiar and often violent occurrences related to the La Granges until all the mysteries are unfolded.

I'll be buying the two previous Oscar Wilde mysteries, and any future ones that are published.

The "Oscar Wilde Mysteries" concept sounds enticing, but "Dead Man's Smile" emerges as a missed opportunity. Author Gyles Brandreth's attention to detail is woefully lacking in this plodding narrative. The historic sleuthing unfolds and concludes at London's Madame Tussauds with plenty of tedium along the way. Devoted mystery readers are advised to look elsewhere.

Poor Oscar Wilde, so abused in life and now this in death. I, too, find this book unreadable. Love the concept, but turning Wilde into a mystery-solving detective would require imbuing the work with some of the wit and sensibility of the man himself. At least some crackling dialogue. As for this book on my shelf, clearly "one of us has got to go." I do recommend Richard Ellman's lengthy biography of Oscar Wilde.

It was a pleasure to read a book that is not a carbon copy of what an author has already written. Being a Wilde fan, it made it even more pleasurable.

If you love literary characters, you'll love this series. This book is the third in the series and I just loved Oscar Wilde as the "detective." As others have mentioned, the book is a tad slow to start, but well worth the effort in the end. For me, the mystery was almost secondary to being thrown into Oscar's world with his friends and acquaintances....his wit was legendary and the author stays true to his real-life character, despite the fictional mystery. (I especially enjoyed the dialogue!)

You really don't need to start at the beginning of this series (each could be a stand-alone), but if you love literary characters and cozy mysteries, you might want to start at the beginning and read the entire series. It's my understanding that there are nine planned for the whole shebang and I'll be collecting each of them since they do stand up for re-reads.