Oscar Wilde and a Game called Murder by Gyles Brandreth

Oscar Wilde's friend and admirer Robert Sherard recounts a tale of Oscar's life, in which he, Oscar and five of their friends and acquaintances formed a supper club called the Socrates Club that met on Sundays. At one of those supper meetings, they each brought a guest to dinner and played a game which Oscar called "Murder". Who, among all those that you know, would you like to kill? Each name will be read and the members of the club will try to guess who nominated the name on the paper.

Each guest submits a name on a slip of paper, which is read by the Club's secretary, Mr. Byrd. The names include Miss Elizabeth Scott-Rivers, a woman who broke off an engagement with one of the members of the club, Lord Abergordon, the uncle of another member, Captain Flint, the Cadogan Hotel Parrot, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Bradford Pearse, an actor, Mr. David Muirtree, a boxer of some reknown who happens to be a guest at the dinner is named four times, Old Father Time, Eros, a blank slip of paper, Mr. Oscar Wilde, and Mrs. Oscar Wilde.

While some of the names are found immediately when the person who named them confesses to the rest of the group, the game quickly breaks up the gathering, and they return home. However, early the next day, one of the guests, the honorable Reverend Charles Daubney knocks desperately on Oscar's House Door and informs him that Miss Scott-Rivers house is on fire, and she is dead, burnt to death. Although he wrote her name, he says that he didn't kill her. In fact, he tried to save her and was himself injured.

Oscar and the others go to see the fire, and Daubney confesses to trying to save her to the Police, but the death is ruled an unfortunate accident, that her dress caught fire when she got too close to the fire. Oscar knows how something like that can happen, as two of his half-sisters died in a similar way. One's dress caught on fire, and the other was killed along with the first as she tried to save her.

Everyone dismisses the death as a horrible accident and leaves it at that... until the next day, when Lord Abergordon is found dead. But this death, too, is judged natural, as Lord Abergordon was old and not in the best of health. But while Oscar is only mildly concerned, Robert Sherard is not happy at what Oscar's game may have unleashed. Could it be that among their company that night was someone who set upon real murders in response to the game? Considering that Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and other prominent men belong to the Socrates Club, this is a very dark thought.

The next day, the Parrot Captain Flint is killed, its blood splashed over the door and feathers everywhere, and the carcass dumped on Byrd's desk. Byrd, who owned Captain Flint and loved it like a child, is desolated by the death, wondering who could do something like that to his pet? Given that the bird was foul-mouthed and given to crapping where it wished and biting, it is not difficult to find those who hated the parrot. But who among them would kill the bird? Oscar now begins to take the possible threat to those who were named at the Socrates Club dinner seriously, and he sets out to talk to Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes, only to find that Doyle has been set on killing his famous creation for a while now. While Doyle has done well writing about his creation, Sherlock Holmes, he also feels hemmed in by the publicity and fervor around his creation, and wants to be free of him so he can write the things that really interest him. Other things that don't include his famous detective.

Next, Oscar tries to contact the actor Bradford Pearse, and tracks him down in a play he is contracted to appear in... an extremely *bad* play, which he and Sherard watch with another of Oscar's friends. But after the play is over, Pearse disappears, and although they watch for him at the playhouse, he does not appear. The next day, they find a bag belonging to him on the high cliffs overlooking the sea. They cannot tell if Pearse may have jumped in voluntarily or been pushed, but given that he would not have abandoned his bag, they conclude he is dead.

Oscar returns to London and attempts to warn the next possible victim, Muirtree, of the possibility of his dying or being killed. But Muirtree says he is able to take care of himself, and although he thanks Oscar for his consideration, he doesn't seem to think he'll be murdered. For the next two days, all is well. Muirtree invites Oscar to his boxing match on Monday, the first fought under the rules instituted by the Marquess of Queensbury, and Oscar invited him to the performance of his play, Lady Windemere's Fan on the night before, Sunday. While Muirtree doesn't show for the play, Oscar does show for the fight.

The fight is mostly bloodless for eighteen rounds, then is suddenly and shockingly won by Muirtree, who wins in a welter of blood and falls down dead afterwards. For someone has concealed razor-sharp blades in the lining of his boxing gloves that cut his hands and wrists to ribbons as he boxed and was protected by the adrenaline of the fight. With few targets remaining, including Oscar and his wife, the situation seems very dire, but Oscar has been in touch with the police, and he now knows enough to bring down that person or those persons responsible for the deaths. But can he do it before he and his wife fall victim to a murderer?

This was a remarkably engaging murder mystery, enlivened as it was with plenty of Victorian personalities and famous people. Although Oscar Wilde is famous for many things, one being a charge of indecency for which he served two years in jail, the possibility of Oscar Wilde being homosexual (or at least bisexual, since he was married and had two children by his wife) is never really broached in this novel, even if it does lend a certain frisson to scenes where Oscar is being kissed (always on the cheek or forehead) by one of his male friends.

The real Oscar Wilde, of course, was a very brilliant and quick-witted man, and here we see that part of his personality on display. This Oscar is capable of not only quick-witted literary bon mots, but has the kind of brilliance that enables him to solve crimes and deliver speeches that would be equally at home in the courts of law or in politics. Even more so than as a detective, Oscar Wilde is a fascinating character in his own right, and reading this book made me want to have met him in person while he was still alive, as the kind of scintillating conversations that he was capable of make you want to bask in such brilliance, even for a little while.

As a Detective, Oscar Wilde is a success, and as this is the second book in a series, I am definitely going to track down the first one and read it, too. I've found Oscar Wilde to be an interesting figure ever since I first discovered him, and this book adds to that feeling, even though it is pure fiction. The prose is witty, the mystery sufficiently murky and garbled to confound as it intrigues, and seeing Oscar at his best makes the reader sad that he was taken from the world so soon. (As the afterword indicates, he died when he was only in his 40's). I wish this Oscar, the literary Oscar, to have just as long a life as the original.