Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders: Oscar Wilde Mystery: 5

Gyles Brandreth

Oct 2011 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

In 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle, exhausted by his creation Sherlock Holmes, retires to the spa at Bad Homburg. But his rest cure does not go as planned. The first person he encounters is Oscar Wilde, and when the two friends make a series of macabre discoveries amongst the portmanteau of fan mail Conan Doyle has brought to answer - a severed finger, a lock of hair and finally an entire severed hand - the game is once more afoot. The trail leads to Rome, to the very heart of the Eternal City, the Vatican itself. Pope Pius IX has just died. These are uncertain times. To uncover the mystery and why the creator of Sherlock Holmes has been summoned in this way, Oscar and Conan Doyle must penetrate the innermost circle of the Catholic Church - seven men who have a very great deal to lose.

About the author

Gyles Brandreth is a writer, performer, former MP and Government Whip, now Chancellor of the University of Chester and probably best known these days as a reporter on BBC1's The One Show and having been a regular on Radio 4's Just a Minute. On TV he has featured on Have I Got News For You, QI, Room 101, Countdown, and This is Your Life. As a journalist he writes for the Telegraph and Daily Mail and is a columnist for The Oldie. The founder of the National Scrabble Championships, his books about words and language include four best-sellers, The Joy of Lex, Word Play, Have You Eaten Grandma? and Dancing by the Light of the Moon. His novels include seven Victorian murder mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde as his detective and he has published two volumes of diaries and two acclaimed royal biographies. In 2020 he published The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes.