Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

Just finished Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders by Gyles Brandreth.

From the blurb.

Oscar Wilde makes a triumphant return to sleuthing in the fifth novel in the critically acclaimed historical murder mystery series based on real events, featuring Wilde as the detective aided by his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, and written by a premier British biographer.

Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders opens in 1892, as an exhausted Arthur Conan Doyle retires to a spa in Germany with a suitcase full of fan mail. But his rest cure does not go as planned. The first person he encounters is Oscar Wilde, and the two friends make a series of macabre discoveries among the letters—a finger; a lock of hair; and, finally, an entire severed hand.

The trail leads the intrepid duo to Rome, and to a case that involves miracles as well as murder. Pope Pius IX has just died—these are uncertain times in the Eternal City. To uncover the mystery and discover why the creator of Sherlock Holmes has been summoned in this way, Wilde and Conan Doyle must penetrate the innermost circle of the Catholic Church and expose the deadly secrets of the six men closest to the pope.

In Gyles Brandreth’s captivating and richly atmospheric novel, Wilde’s skills as a detective are put to the test in his most compelling case yet.

It is easy to lose track of who was a contemporary of whom. In this instance, not only did A.C. Doyle and Oscar Wilde live in the same period, they knew one another as well. Sufficient to create a series of murder mysteries.

If the rest are as good as this, very entertaining.

Page 6.

Do not misunderstand me. In the hurly-burly of the metropolis, in the crush bar at the opera house, or a drawing room in Mayfair, there could be no better companion than Oscar Wilde. He set every room he ever entered on a roar. I never knew a wittier man, and he was wise as well as witty. And his wit sparkled and soared: it was never mean or cruel, never exercised at a lesser man's expense. But Oscar Wilde was not a quiet person. He was Irish and he would not - could not - stop talking. He was a talent to amuse, excite, delight, and stimulate, not to soothe. He had a genius and charm, and in the years that I first knew him, before his terrible downfall, he was, at all times, a perfect gentleman. But he was not restful company.