A Cruel Man Delighting in Flowers
...the mildness to which men ... had yielded was only half of the intoxication of beauty, while the other half ... was of such surpassing and terrible cruelty—the most cruel of men delights himself with a flower—that beauty ... failed quickly of its effect...
Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil
Jeremy Davies is made of ink, but don’t dip a feather in him. It tickles. He once painted a fingernail black and no one really noticed. He was disappointed. He’s also an editor, a religious atheist, a liker of strong coffees, a Shakespeare-lover, a political anarchist and someone who rarely has a pen when he needs one. He has been a PhD candidate, a personal trainer, a life model, a bouncer, an infantry soldier and someone who rarely had a pen when he needed one. He has had words published in a variety of places, in a variety of publications, in a variety of forms, in a variety of moments: Canada, Wet Ink, SMS and twelve minutes past three in the afternoon being some of these. His first novel, 'Missing Presumed Undead', will be re-published by Satalyte Publishing in February 2014. A second is on its way.
As unlikely as the premise for this novel remains - Wilde as a Holmes - Brandreth manages to pull it off with the sheer energy of language and historical knowledge that he brings to bear on both his protagonist, who is superbly, if maybe a little apologetically - rendered, and his landscapes - the London and Paris of the late 19th century. The plot was suitably Holmes-ian, but perhaps the exercises in 'elementary' deduction were somtimes over the top. Although, Wilde was a somewhat over-the-top kind of guy, if not the bottom... Anyway, Brandreth keeps the plot moving along in a modern way, but manages to keep a kind of Holmes-y vibe throughout. For some reason, the overuse of the word 'obsequious' started to really clang with me, but as a major Wilde fan, and a somewhat Doyle fan, I throughly enjoyed the work as a whole. Shall seek out sequels in the future
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