Readers' rating:
Published May 2013
352 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
In this new installment in the engaging mystery series Booklist called "pitch-perfect" and "enthralling" - currently in development as a BBC television series - the incomparable playwright, novelist, raconteur, and now ex-convict Oscar Wilde faces his most fiendishly puzzling case yet.
It is 1897, France. Oscar Wilde has fled the country after his release from Reading Gaol. Tonight he is sharing a drink and the story of his cruel imprisonment with a mysterious stranger. Oscar has endured a harsh regime: the treadmill, solitary confinement, censored letters, no writing materials. Yet even in the midst of such deprivation, his astonishing detective powers remain undiminished - and when first a brutal warder and then the prison chaplain are found murdered, who else should the Governor turn to for help other than Reading Gaol's most celebrated inmate?
"Starred Review. Brandreth returns to form with his outstanding sixth Victorian whodunit ... [integrating] details of Wilde's tormented existence behind bars and the sadism of the British penal system at the time into a complex mystery plot that only the most attentive reader will resolve correctly in advance of the denouement." - Publishers Weekly
This information about Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gyles Brandreth was born in a British Forces Hospital in
Germany, where, in the aftermath of the Second World War, his father, Charles
Brandreth, was serving as a legal officer with the Allied Control Commission and
counted among his colleagues, H Montgomery Hyde, who, in 1948, published the
first full account of the trials of Oscar Wilde. In 1974, at the Oxford Theatre
Festival, Brandreth produced the first stage version of The Trials of
Oscar Wilde, with Tom Baker as Wilde, and, in 2000, he edited the
transcripts of the trials for an audio production starring Martin Jarvis.
He was educated at the Lycée Français de Londres,
at Betteshanger School in Kent, and at Bedales School in Hampshire. Like Robert
Sherard, Brandreth went on to New College, Oxford, where...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Gyles Brandreth's Website
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