Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

Arthur Conan Doyle plays Watson to Oscar Wilde in Brandreth’s strong fifth whodunit featuring Wilde as a Holmesian sleuth (after 2011’s Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders). In July 1892, Holmes’s creator runs into his friend Wilde while on holiday in a German spa town. Doyle is beside himself because of the many letters to his creation that his publisher insists must be acknowledged in writing. Wilde volunteers to help cull the correspondence, and in the process makes a grisly find—a human hand cut cleanly off at the wrist. The Rome postmark leads the pair to seek out other mail from the same sender and to the discovery of a human finger addressed to Holmes. Since the ring on the severed digit bears the pope’s symbols, Wilde and Doyle travel to Rome, where they learn the ring was previously owned by a priest suspected of murder. The mystery is more engaging than the previous book’s, even if the solution isn’t Brandreth’s cleverest. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Ltd. (May)