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Playwright and raconteur Oscar Wilde embarks on another adventure as he sets sail for America in the 1880s on a roller coaster of a lecture tour. But the adventure doesn't truly begin until Oscar boards an ocean liner headed back across the Atlantic and joins a motley crew led by French impresario Edmond La Grange. As Oscar becomes entangled with the La Grange acting dynasty, he suspects that all is not as it seems.
What begins with a curious death at sea soon escalates to a series of increasingly macabre tragedies once the troupe arrives in Paris to perform Hamlet. A strange air of indifference surrounds these seemingly random events, inciting Oscar to dig deeper, aided by his friends Robert Sherard and the divine Sarah Bernhardt. What he discovers is a horrifying secret - one that may bring him closer to his own last chapter than anyone could have imagined.
As intelligent as it is beguiling, this third installment in the richly historical mystery series is sure to captivate and entertain.
"Starred Review. Oscar Wilde once again makes a convincing detective in Brandreth's excellent third whodunit to recreate the late Victorian age." - Publishers Weekly
"Episodic and irrepressibly droll, Wilde's third case benefits from a full-bodied cast of supporting characters and a looser narrative flow. " - Kirkus Reviews
This information about Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile 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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