I am, like so
many, fascinated with Oscar Wilde as a personality & will pick up anything
that has his name inscribed upon it. So, I saw, this lovely cover art of fresh colours
with Wilde’s name written upon it, which quite belied any cover art of any of
the famous author’s own works, and picked it out of curiosity. The title &
the book’s back cover synopsis suggested it to be a fictional murder mystery
set in Wilde’s England, where Wilde steps out of his shoes as a celebrated
author/poet/playwright & plays detective to unearth a murder along with his
friends Arthur Conan Doyle & Robert Sherard!! The whole premise struck me
as so outrageous & scandalous that I immediately picked it up to see what
the book is all about.
It turned
out to be a good experiment for sure. The author Brandreth has definitely studied
the life of Wilde in great detail himself, and has thus taken a writer’s
liberty at presenting him as a detective. It might seem outrageous in theory,
but if you read a little bit about Wilde, you would surmise that the
kind-hearted yet quirky soul that he was, he would definitely go through all
motions in the book that Brandreth is making him go through.
To take you
a little to the plot, Wilde, one fine day discovers the mutilated body of a
young boy he knew very well. This propels him to investigate the case &
discover the identity of the murderer, but is met with little help from police.
The boy is poor & of low connections & does not interest police, who
seems to be occupied with further important cases. Wilde takes it upon himself
to solve the case with the help of none other than Arthur Conan Doyle (who can
be better than the creator of Sherlock Holmes) & Robert Sherard (another
author & poet at that time. A very close friend of Wilde in real life, and
great grandson of Poet Laureate William Wordsworth, Sherard wrote five biographies
on Wilde).
The novel is
smart & has pace, yet takes full care to re-create the London of 1889 with
significant detail. The London where Wilde, Conan Doyle and Sherard would sit
in a posh café, drinking the best of champagne and eating lobsters for lunch
discussing the plots of their new books & new characters that they pulled
out of their imagination in such gatherings, and which would later become
classics of World Literature!! This is interspersed continuously with the
murder mystery as well. Brandreth has taken care to show Wilde not engaged in
the case only but also writing his pieces of literature to make the story as
realistic as possible. Wilde’s personal life has also been touched upon
delicately & aptly; at the time of this novel (1889-90) his relationship
with his wife Constance grows from affection to becoming more & more
distant by the end, which was actually the case in Wilde’s real life. Even
Conan Doyle’s marriage to his wife Touie & his own personal life has been
touched delicately to maintain an aura of reality to the plot setting.
In its
intent, Candlelight Murders (written in 2007) might seem a fun read, but from
Brandreth’s point of view as an author, it was indeed a tough task. A little
less detailing and the book might have slipped into absurdity. Maintaining a
whodunit pace while maintaining realism in the lives of its focal characters
(as they are not fictional, but real and celebrated)...yet not detailing too
much of their real life wherein the focus might get lost from the main plot was
a tall order & Brandreth succeeded in this. A few chapters lesser &
this would be a perfect read.Still, I would recommend this book for a fun time pass. The author has written a series of Oscar Wilde Murder Mystery books,that have fared equally well. Pick them up at your nearest bookstore or simply flipkart them.
TIP: Pick it
up on a weekday, post coming back from work. The freshness of the book will
appeal more J
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