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Oscar Wilde And The Dead Man's Smile (2009)

by Gyles Brandreth(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0719569214 (ISBN13: 9780719569210)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

John Murray Publishers Ltd

series

The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries

review 1: Gyles Brandreth's series of Oscar Wilde mysteries continues with a tale centred on Paris with trips to Colorado, New York and London inbetween.The tale has a theatrical background with Sarah Bernhardt featuring strongly as Edmond La Grange, himself a top actor/manager, taking centre stage. He has his family with him, son, daughter and mother as between them they play and produce the perfect Hamlet.Unfortunately things happen that disrupt the proceedings dramatically and it is left to Oscar Wilde, who later relates everything to his pal Arthur Conan Doyle, to determine what exactly has happened.Ane everything does not happen as it would appear, or as Felix Malthus of the Prefecture of Police thinks it has. Fortunately Wilde, full of his usual witticisms and sagacity, with t... morehe help of Robert Sherard, who relates the tale as a faithful Watson, eventually unveils the culprit.Brandreth captures the age superbly and from the very first easily transports the reader into 19th century mode.
review 2: Anti-rec. ALL of the victims are people of color. There's a hideous apologia for father/daughter incest. The deaf character is proved a liar and cheat. The American is a killer. And the narrators' attitudes toward the victims is to treat them as unfortunate collateral damage in the course of telling a story. Appalling. And that doesn't even begin to touch the gender politics. Bizarrely, the gay relationships were the only ones that weren't offensive.I need to go sanitize my brain now. less

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