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Regular-article-logo Sunday, 09 February 2025

A WALK ON THE WILDE SIDE

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The Telegraph Online Published 09.04.10, 12:00 AM

OSCAR WILDE AND THE CANDLELIGHT MURDERS By Gyles Brandreth, John Murray, Rs 395

He had famously announced to New York customs that he had nothing to declare except his genius. Oscar Wilde is thus ideally suited to be cast as Victorian London’s most well-known detective. There is the hint here that he may have given his friend, Arthur Conan Doyle, the model for Mycroft Holmes.

The narrator of Wilde’s exploits as an amateur detective is Robert Harborough Sherard Kennedy (he later dropped the Kennedy), a great grandson of the poet, William Wordsworth. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde and also his biographer. Making him the narrator allows Gyles Brandreth the advantage of proximity to his protagonist.

The story centres around the brutal murder of a beautiful boy in a house located in the backstreets of Westminster. Wilde accidentally discovers the body, but when he goes back again to the spot the body and all signs of the crime have disappeared. At the suggestion of Conan Doyle, he goes to Scotland Yard to seek the help of Conan Doyle’s friend, detective-inspector, Aidan Edmund Fettes Fraser. The latter promises to look into the matter and assures Wilde that the matter is best left to the police.

This does not dim Wilde’s interest in the case, especially as he sees the police making no progress. The police even fail to discover the victim’s body. His own investigations reveal that Fraser has actually taken no steps regarding the case.

The author introduces Fraser’s fiancée, Veronica Sutherland, an extraordinarily beautiful and charming woman on whom the narrator develops a crush. She encourages him even sometimes in the presence of Fraser. Initially, this appears to be a subplot, somewhat distracting from the main murder story. This impression is quickly dispelled and Sutherland becomes a very crucial part of the unravelling of the mystery.

Dominating the story is Oscar Wilde of course. Brandreth builds up his character giving up all the fine touches that lovers of Wilde have come to love — his ostentatious lifestyle, his flamboyance and his epigrams. In the middle of the story, Wilde retreats from the case because he has a commitment to a publisher. He goes to Oxford and the book he finishes is none other than The Picture of Dorian Gray. These details give to the story a dimension well beyond a whodunnit.

What comes alive in this book is also the seemier side of Victorian London. On one hand, Wilde has his own version of what Sherlock Holmes described to Watson as the Baker Street Irregulars — the urchins of London who keep an eye on things, follow people and run errands. On the other hand is the world of London’s actors and actresses and of the circus. Linked to this latter world is a world of pimps, of clubs and individuals who supply young boys to well-heeled clients. The victim was one of those boys. This is a different London underworld than the one that Professor Moriarty controlled. Wilde walks on the fringes of this world, not quite as a participant but as an acute and sympathetic observer. The author does not strive to remove the shadow of this world from Wilde’s life.

The dénouement to this story is dramatic and tragic, and is entirely scripted by Wilde himself.

This is obviously a part of an ongoing series of books featuring Wilde as the detective. One waits for Wilde to declare more facets of his genius.

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