Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death

It was fun to follow Oscar and his friends around England. Obviously, the book was very well researched, even including a few historical footnotes. Amusing innuendos and witticisms are on every page. As a mystery though, it lacked tension and there weren't enough clues to keep the reader engaged in unraveling the puzzle. The evidence, once the answer is unveiled, so it is "fair" by mystery terms but the mystery still feels dilute in a way.

What's not to like, Oscar Wilde as detective! Wonderfully read by Bill Wallis all characters come to life. You'll find yourself immersed in life in London in the late 1880's. A lot of information and none of it boring or distracting from the story and a good story it is. It keeps meandering on and before you know it, you know whodunit... Read this, you won't regret it!

Another in the series of Oscar Wilde as a detective. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is again in it and also Bram Stoker, Walter Sickert and the Marquess of Queensbury.

During a dinner of the Socrates Club, Wilde proposes a game of Murder with the question of "Who would you kill?" Each attendee writes their choice on a slip of paper which are then drawn randomly and read. All is done in fun and games until the names on that list start turning up dead in the sequence they appear on the list. Who is the murderer? Are the deaths related or are they chance events?

Wilde and the amateur detectives find themselves searching in the realms of politics, theatre and hidden secrets while trying to solve the murders before the next one happens. Relationships show more and personal histories are revealed in their search for the solutions.

Once again I enjoyed the feeling of being in Victorian London. A not so proper period. The descriptions of the characters and their actions; the scenes of the events all contribute to the enjoyment. There is action and also puzzlement as the pieces of the puzzle start to fit in an order that will give the whole picture. show less

This book gets points for being a murder mystery about Oscar Wilde; I enjoyed the setting and writing. However, it didn't totally live up to its premise. Particularly, I thought the large cast of characters was established clunkily, the first-person Watson-like narrator was rather irritatingly non-present in his own life, and the murder mystery itself not particularly elegant. It also really bothered me that none of the characters, including Wilde, were particularly proactive about what appeared to be a serial killer on the loose, and kept chalking things up to coincidence.

It's possible that some of the problems I had with the characters are due to the fac that I couldn't get hold of the first book in the series; mystery novels are show more usually meant to stand alone, but possibly we got to know the narrator, for instance, better in the first volume. show less

Oscar Wilde nei panni di Sherlock Holmes è davvero simpatico: in questo secondo lavoro, per fortuna l'autore ci risparmia l'apologia di Oscar accusato-inquisito-condannato ingiustamente.
La rassegna di personaggi dell'epoca lo rende ancora più simpatico, tra Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker e amici vari.

Oscar Wilde and a circle of his friends,famous and not so famous,meet at a club invented by Wilde. On this particular occasion,the "Socrates Club" play a game thought out by Wilde called quite simple 'Murder'. Each member writes the name of someone he would like to kill he then places the slip of paper in a hat . The name is then drawn out by someone else and members attempt to discover who wishes to murder whom. When people begin to die in reality Oscar Wilde in his role of detective,sets out to discover just who is the killer.
This is the second in this series of books by Gyles Brandreth and they are certainly clever and enjoyable reads. I am always a little uncertain when real characters and fictional ones are mixed as it doesn't show more always work. Here however it seems to gel fairly happily. It is not too difficult a task to discover the killer but that doesn't spoil the overall enjoyment. show less

Terrific fun. Even better than the first in the series. I'm generally uncomfortable with creating fictional events involving real historic characters, but these books are so good that I willing put aside such scruples.