Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
Gyles Brandreth
338 p.

John Murray, 2007.

Back cover blurb:

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 and the bohemian demi-monde of the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings.

Set against the exotic backgrounds of fin-de-siècle London, Paris, Oxford and Edinburgh, Gyles Brandreth recreates Oscar Wildes’ trademark sardonic wit with huge flair, intertwining all the intrigue of the classic English murder mystery with a compelling portrait of one of the greatest characters of the Victorian age.

Chosing to read this novel after reading Arthur & George was a Seriously Bad Move. Had I read the back cover blurb, I probably would have put it aside for a few more days. Why? Because while Barnes’ novel was beautiful and dazzling, Brandreth’s is unimpressive and more than a little frustrating, for several reason. Firstly, and most importantly, Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders let Oscar Wilde have a Sherlock Holmesian  way of deducing things. As if that was not enough, Brandreth let Arthur Conan Doyle be baffled and Mighty Impressed. Now, I don’t know much about the first Sherlock Holmes stories, but there must be something of a kind there, and even suggesting that it was Oscar Wilde, and not Arthur Conan Doyle, who use that kind of deduction, is just outrageous! Secondly, Brandreth went to great lengths to convince the reader that Oscar Wilde was certainly not homosexual. A constant praise of Constance, and other women, was present and, the fact that Wilde, in the novel, was a member of a gay club, wasn’t even explained! It made me so angry. Thirdly, the title lies. I am used to blurbs lying, but titles? Rarely ever. There is one murder in candlelight. The second and third murder are completely devoid of candles. Or interest.

Finally, it just wasn’t interesting. It failed at being a gripping who-dunnit. It failed even at being a gripping description of nineteenth-century Britain. Brandreth must have got so lost in writing witty lines for Wilde, which to be honest felt more over-the-top than witty, that he forgot to actually have a proper plot. Additionally, when he finally remembered that he was supposed to have a murderer, not just an orgy in naked boys, he first lets Wilde talk for pages about how another person is extremely guilty of a lot of extremely sordid things. Then, as an afterthought, he says that this person didn’t do it, but another person did. In the space of half a paragraph or so.

This was not very good.

Arthur & George
Julian Barnes
505 p.

Vintage Books, 2006.
(First published by Random House, 2005.)

Back cover blurb:

Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

With a mixture of intense research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner workings of these two very different men. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all it is a profound and moving meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove.

I’ve owned this book for a couple of years or so, without reading it. I intended to read it last summer, but I didn’t, because it seemed so time-consuming and a little boring. Now, however, I picked it up, because how long can you own a book without reading it? And after a few pages, I was caught. This book I must say is the most beautiful I’ve read this year. The story, based on real-life events, was, albeit terrifying at places, described so beautifully. I don’t know what is true, or what is false, but I don’t really care - I will assume it’s all true. If it isn’t true, it ought to be.

I have never before read anything by Julian Barnes, so I don’t know what his other stories are like. In this story, however, the characters were described in so much depth that at places I felt as though I was them. Which sounds ridiculous, but there you are. I can’t phrase this properly, but this novel was so impressive; it’s not strange it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is, I think, it didn’t win it. Of course, I can’t say I know who won it, or if they didn’t deserve it. This book, however, would have deserved it.

Often I am critical to novels based on real life happenings, but because this case was so unheard of (I had never heard of it; it’s to do with ripping of horses and Arthur Conan Doyle), I feel it was all right. (had it been, say, Jack the Ripper, I’d been less impressed.) I really felt for George Edalji, the unfairly accused, and I also felt that everything concerning Arthur Conan Doyle was believable. I know very little of him, what I know is mainly based on Murder Rooms, which is perhaps not 100% true, either. If I mix together all the literary facts I know about Conan Doyle, I’ll maybe get some truth in there, somewhere. Except, when it comes to stories, truth isn’t really in an issue? Whether what is said in Arthur & George is true or not, it’s still hell of a work of art.

A Strong and Sudden Thaw
R.W. Day
331.

Iris Print, 2006.

Back cover blurb:

Dragons in Virginia?

Nearly a hundred years after the Ice changed the face of our world, the people of Moline work to reclaim the frozen land, both from the cold and from the dragons that now live in the hills outside of town—dragons that the government won’t believe exist.

David Anderson knows very little of the world outside of his family’s farm, until Callan, an assistant healer from the south, arrives in Moline and begins to teach him of a world he never knew, full of books and ideas, and history long forgotten. When Callan is found in the arms of another man—a crime in this post-Ice world—David learns a frightening truth about himself, and the difference between what is legal… and what is right.

After trouble hits the nearby town of Crawford, David and Callan discover the seeds of a plot that affects not only their home, but towns just like Moline across the world. Now they must fight to save their home, not only from the dragons, but from a government that wants them dead!

I had run out of books when visiting Love, so I was leant this book, after hearing heaps of praise for it. And it was brilliant, and so lovely. I adored the way David’s and Callan’s relationship was described; it was so loving and full of life. I really believed in it, even before it was made explicit. And it made me feel more confident that love existed than I felt… for quite some time.

The story, too, was really intriguing and there, too, believable. A sudden ice spreading over the ice? I can buy that. People going crazy as a result? Yeah, sure. Dragons in the aftermath? Of course. When I read the back cover, I felt a little “right, so?”, but Day makes it so believable and oh, this could really happen, I’m sure. (though, I don’t WANT this to happen - too much religion and too little electricity for my personal taste.) It was such a fantastic story. The only bad thing I can say about this was the open ending, but on the other hand, this might mean that there might be more gay adventure to be had. We can hope.

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
299 p.

Penguin Classics, 2007.
(first published by John Murray, 1927.)

Back cover blurb:

Revealed at last! The final twenty cases of Sherlock Holmes…

From the rooms at 221B Baker Street, the mind that strikes fear into the heart of London’s criminal fraternity turns its attention to some of the strangest and most intriguing cases ever to be set before the great Sherlock Holmes.

Adventures involving an illustrious client and a Sussex vampire; the problems of Thor Bridge and of the Lion’s Mane; puzzles concerning a creeping man and the three-gabled house; disappearances of secret plans and a lady of noble standing; all test the courage of Dr Watson and the intellect of the greatest detective of them all, Mr Sherlock Holmes.

This final collection also features the story ‘His Last Bow’, the last outing of Holmes and Watson…

More stories with Sherlock Holmes! Stories that were much more fun than those in His Last Bow. I can’t say much about what happened in them; in one there was poison and another a mutilated woman. Whatever the stories were about, they were much more fun to read than those in His Last Bow. This might be due to that I have gotten used to Doyle’s writing, which I perhaps wasn’t before. Or maybe, this collection is better. However it was, I quite enjoyed it!