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Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile (Oscar Wilde Mysteries 3)
 
 
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Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile (Oscar Wilde Mysteries 3) [Paperback]

Gyles Brandreth
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile (Oscar Wilde Mysteries 3) + Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death (Oscar Wilde Mysteries 2) + Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (Oscar Wilde Mysteries)
Price For All Three: £17.84

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Product details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: John Murray (29 April 2010)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0719569907
  • ISBN-13: 978-0719569906
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 109,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gyles Daubeney Brandreth
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Product Description

Review

‘The atmosphere and setting are lovely and exquisitely recreated by an author who has an intimate knowledge of the world he describes ... I won’t reveal the denouement, but I can assure readers that the author knows exactly what he’s doing’

(Tangled Web )

‘It’s a great book ... there’s enough wit and intelligence here to make it more than a ‘guilty pleasure’ ... an intelligent read with good characterisation’

(Scotsman )

‘Highly acclaimed Oscar Wilde series ... excellent writing ... it’s a fun book that introduces you to many interesting characters ... a light-hearted and entertaining murder mystery’

(Irish Post )

‘An entertaining yarn – easy and pleasing to read – with an extensive set of vivid characters’

(Gay times )

Praise for Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde series:

(--- )

‘One of the most intelligent, amusing and entertaining books of the year. If Oscar Wilde himself had been asked to write this book he could not have done it any better’

(Alexander McCall Smith )

‘Hugely enjoyable’

(Daily Mail )

‘Genius . . . Wilde has sprung back to life in this thrilling and richly atmospheric new novel’

(Sunday Express )

‘A witty fin-de-siècle entertainment . . . rattlingly elegant dialogue’

(Sunday Times )

‘One of the most enjoyable crime series around’ (Scotsman )

‘...a cleverly plotted, intelligent and thoroughly diverting murder mystery. This novel is an educated page turner; a feast of intriguing and light-hearted entertainment.’ 

(Good Book Guide )

‘The third in an enjoyable, well-researched series’

(Sunday Mercury )

Product Description

The latest in Gyles Brandreth’s acclaimed series of Victorian murder mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Paris, 1883. Oscar Wilde, aged twenty-seven, has come to the city of decadence to discover its charms, to rekindle his friendship with the divine Sarah Bernhardt and to collaborate with France’s most celebrated actor-manager, Edmond La Grange.

Oscar discovers dark secrets lying at the heart of the La Grange company, and is confronted by murders both foul and bizarre. To solve the crimes, to unravel the mystery, Oscar risks his life – and his reputation – embarking on a dangerous adventure that takes him from bohemian night clubs to an asylum for the insane, from a duel in the Buttes de Chaumont to the gates of Reading Gaol.


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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the third Oscar Wilde murder mystery and this time we are treated to a prequel in which Wilde first meets his "Watson" and they go on to investigate a series of strange deaths connected with an acting family in Paris.

The problem for me is that as Brandreth has gone on his character (Wilde) has improved as a detective. Ordinarily this would be fine but it comes across as inconsistent when the story is set before the earlier two.

My other problem with this is that the true solution to the mystery is revealed at the end and many facts come out that would be very difficult for the reader to work out, or even guess, in advance. For me a murder mystery where I lack even a remote chance of working out the result before the end is a little disappointing.

Having said all that the book is enjoyable and you certainly feel like you have been transported to Paris. I very much look forward to the next adventure.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Maybe it's because I've read the first 3 back-to back and am now embarked on the 4th, but I'm finding this series a bit tiresome. The old Wildean aphorisms are all there, frequently in other mouths, making me wonder just how on the money Whistler was with his "You will, Oscar, you will" jibe; I did wonder if Mr Brandreth has taken Big Tobacco's corporate donations, given the startling number of references to "Lucky Strike" cigarettes; and there are some very 21st Century usages emanating from Victorian mouths. It's also difficult to imagine a fully qualified doctor describing someone who's just had an unpleasant experience as "being in a state of shock" - as any medical dictionary will confirm, this refers to a very specific medical state of reduced blood flow to the essential organs, eg in the case of serious blood loss.
However, there is no doubt that Mr Brandreth has researched his subject extremely thoroughly, even if the biographical details are not sprinkled through the text like caviar, but rather spread around like marmalade (to misquote Oscar himself).
The books are entertaining, and certainly well-written, but no-one could say that the learning has been worn lightly; it's all a bit overly clever for my liking.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Wilde about Brandreth 12 Aug 2009
Format:Hardcover
Gyles Brandreth began his Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries in grand style. The second book was actually better than the first, and the third, "Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile", consolidates and improves on that achievement. From a prologue in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's we are taken back eight years, to Wilde's tour of the United States in 1882, where he acquires a valet and is saved from robbery or worse by a sharp-shooting gambler. On the voyage back to Europe he falls in with the great actor-manager Edmond La Grange and agrees to assist him in translating "Hamlet" for production at the Théâtre La Grange in Paris. At Liverpool the customs officials find that, instead of books, one of Wilde's cases contains a dead dog. The greater part of the story takes place in Paris, where Oscar Wilde meets his Boswell for the first time, in the person of Robert Sherard, the narrator of these histories. (Sherard, who knew Mr Brandreth's father, actually was a friend of Wilde's, and his first biographer.) When Wilde's valet, now La Grange's dresser, is killed, Sherard takes over his rôle, and witnesses both the triumphant production of Shakespeare's tragedy and the disintegration of the company. La Grange's children, his Hamlet and Ophelia, die suddenly and spectacularly. Finally La Grange himself is killed in his dressing room. In an epilogue, again at Madame Tussaud's, Wilde and Sherard discuss the case with Arthur Conan Doyle, and the truth emerges at last -- as does the macabre significance of the book's title. "Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile" is an exceptionally good detective story (at one stage, I think, Gyles Brandreth borrows inspiration from John Dickson Carr, the greatest writer in the genre). It's also a fascinating historical novel. Paris in 1883, little more than a decade since the Prussian siege, is a mixture of beauty, decadence, high civilisation and deep cruelty -- a Jekyll-and-Hyde city that becomes a major character, as alive as Sarah Bernhardt, James Russell Lowell, John Tussaud and the other dramatis personae.
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