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Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance

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What to expect

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright, and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime—but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in the investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings. Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance is a classic murder mystery in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Critics Review

“A witty fin de siècle entertainment, and the rattlingly elegant dialoguen is peppered with witticisms uttered by Wilde well before he ever nthought of putting them into his plays.”

Sunday Times (London)

“Genius…Wilde has sprung back to life in this thrilling and richly natmospheric new novel…Magnificent…an unforgettable shocker about nsex and vice, love and death.”

Sunday Express

“This excellent novel…I’d be staggered if, by the end of 2007, you’d nread many better whodunits. Brandreth demonstrates supremely measured nskill as a storyteller.”

Nottingham Post

“A first-class stunner…[A] wow of a history-mystery…Fascinating.”

Booklist (starred review)

“Oscar Wilde makes a stylish sleuth in this clever series debut.”

Publishers Weekly

“Brandreth…spins a tale of human frailty and self-preservation…a promising start.”

Library Journal

“Brandreth’s accomplishment is evident in the force of Wilde’s npersonality, which fairly leaps off the page…readers will delight in nthe effortless characterization and deft portrait of late-Victorian nEngland.”

Stephanie Barron, author of Jane and the Barque of Frailty
Author Gyles Brandreth
Narrator Bill Wallis
Duration 10 hours and 25 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781609985714
Format Audiobook
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Genre Classic crime and mystery fiction, Historical crime and mysteries, Historical fiction
Availability US

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