Exclusive interview with author Gyles Brandreth and a review of his new novel Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders.
Rating: 4 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 6/30/2011 – “The moment I discovered that Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, had once met at the Langham Hotel in London in 1889, I had the idea of writing a series of Victorian murder mysteries using them as my Holmes and Watson,” says Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders author Gyles Brandreth. “The vampire element came about because both Wilde and Conan Doyle were friends of Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. Oscar Wilde hoped to marry Florence Balcombe, ‘the prettiest girl in Dublin’. She married Bram Stoker instead.”
Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders is set in the spring of 1890. Wilde and Conan Doyle are attending a society party at the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle’s London house. Also in attendance are the Prince of Wales, psychiatrist Lord Yarborough and Rex LaSalle, a young actor who claims to be a vampire and who instantly captures Wilde’s attention. The following morning all are informed of the Duchess’s sudden death. She has two tiny puncture marks on her throat. Wilde and Conan Doyle are asked to investigate the crime by the Prince of Wales. What they uncover could threaten the monarchy. More deaths follow. Is there really a vampire killing people?
The brilliant teaming of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle solving mysteries is a fascinating twist in the mystery genre. Brandreth’s drops us right into Victorian times with his use of historical facts, locations and contemporaneous celebrities. Wilde’s dialog is so witty you’d almost think he wrote it himself. There is a depth and complexity to all the characters, so prepare to be thoroughly entertained. Although this is the fourth book in the series each volume stands on its own and the series can be read in any order.
“The joy of writing about the late Victorian era is that so much of it is still there,” says Brandreth, who has visited all the locations he describes in his books. “The novel is set in London and Paris and the characters include the Prince of Wales and a dancer from the Moulin Rouge, so the places I went to were pretty interesting. I try to get everything right, so I do a lot of research in the locations and in libraries, mainly in London and Oxford.”
Brandreth says he also relied on his friend Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson. “He kindly puts me right when I make a mistake. For example, I said that Oscar Wilde drank Dom Perignon champagne. Not so, Merlin told me. Oscar drank Perrier Jouet. I like to get the details right, though my chief task is to try to write a rattling good yarn.”
Gyles Brandreth lives in London. Brandreth grew up in London round the corner from where Wilde lived with his wife and two children. He has a small apartment in Paris, near the cemetery where Wilde is buried.
Brandreth is currently working on Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders, the fifth novel in the series. “As a young man, Oscar had a private audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome and that’s the springboard for my story,” says Brandreth. “The great thing about Wilde is that he went everywhere and knew everybody. He is a wonderful hero to have…flawed but endlessly fascinating.”
Brandreth says he was thrilled when an English expat reader e-mailed to say that he had been living in Baltimore for thirty years and the Oscar Wilde murder mysteries had brought him closer to home than he had felt in many years. “He told me I made murder seems such fun. I e-mailed back passing on to him Oscar’s sage advice, ‘Never commit murder…a gentleman should never do anything he cannot talk about at dinner’.”
Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders: A Mystery by Gyles Brandreth. Trade Paperback, 400 pages, Publisher: Touchstone; Original edition (May 3, 2011) Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-1439153680 $15.00
