This is a series that just gets better and better – and Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders, by Gyles Brandreth, is the best yet!
Oscar is so Oscar – the master of the pithy epigram, created on the moment and right to the point. Gyles Brandreth knows Oscar so well that much of the dialogue is actually direct quotes from – in the early 1890s – the most celebrated and feted writer in all of Britain.
In this book, Oscar and his detective sidekick, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (they were actually good friends back in the day), are in Rome, hanging out with priests, monsignors, cardinals, doctors, street urchins, diplomats and many others, looking for answers to what may have been a murder many years ago – with no body, no information, and very few helpers.
These books are full of actual people, and in many cases actual events. Plus, this is a singular and wonderful look at the Rome of 100 years ago – the food, the dress, the modes of transportation. And a surprise ending!
It just makes me totally happy – super fun, easy to read, clever. Aaaahhhhh.