"Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol," by Gyles Brandreth

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

This is the most recent in Gyles Brandreth's series of novels that feature Oscar Wilde as detective, and you can also find reviews of some of the previous entries in the series on this blog.  This novel takes place at a time nearing the end of Oscar's tragically short life, so it looks likely that this is the last in what has been an entertaining series.

The framing narrative for this novel takes place after Oscar Wilde has left Reading Gaol.  Oscar is in Dieppe, and is approached by a mysterious man who asks him to write about his time in prison - it is this account that forms the spine of the story.  This finds Oscar at his lowest ebb, having just been found guilty of gross indecency, suffering dysentery in prison, deprived of books, writing materials, fine food, drink and society.  In the solitary hell of Wandsworth Prison, a brutal warder bursts into Oscar's cell at night, raging against him, and then drops dead.  When Oscar is moved to Reading Gaol, the mystery follows him.

This is a more pared down entry to the series with a smaller cast of supporting characters by dint of its claustrophobic, insular setting.  Neither Conan Doyle nor Bram Stoker feature as characters - and I did miss them - but, according to the acknowledgements, many of the other characters were real-life figures at the time who Brandreth has similarly fictionalised.  The lack of Conan Doyle, although he is mentioned, does mean that the element of reverse engineering of Holmesian plots - which I wrote about in previous reviews of the series, and sometimes found problematic - is less prevalent in this novel.

I am still less adept at recognising where Oscar Wilde ends and Brandreth begins than I am spotting the Conan Doyle allusions.  I keep thinking that I should read more of the classics - I have read very few since leaving academic life - and then I get distracted by the latest Janet Evanovich or Howard Jacobson (granted, the latter is rather more literary than the former). I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," so some of Brandreth's phraseology might be trying to emulate it in ways that I am too poorly read to recognise.

This is a good breakfast book series, which I enjoyed (although I am not sure reading about dysentery is the best breakfast reading) and I always find it interesting when an author merges real historical figures with fiction.  They are entertaining mysteries that draw on Wilde, Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker but - aptly as I did write that I should read more classics - I do feel inclined to go back and re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories or novels, "Dracula," or "The Picture of Dorian Gray" while I doubt that I would return to read this series again.

How I am contributing to authors' cavities...

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

As I was walking home from work tonight, I thought that I would start listening to my backlog of Guardian Book Podcasts. I am now quite depressed.

I thought that I would start with the oldest on my ipod and work forwards. The oldest podcast happened to focus on the release of Public Lending Rights information, and the statistics relating to the most borrowed library books. In some ways, it was quite a demoralising listen.

According to this podcast, the majority of authors struggle to earn £4000 a year. This makes my fantasy of writing a book and being able to pay off the mortgage seem ever more distant. I currently have better odds on winning the jackpot on the lottery than I do earning a living by publishing a novel. This is, admittedly, partly because I buy a lottery ticket but have not yet finished a novel (or, let's be honest, started one; I am very talented at procrastination and I currently spend rather too much time on Twitter). Also, however, those authors who can make a living solely from writing are the very, very lucky ones.

I have just googled the Public Lending Right, and have found their website. In their media centre you can access lists of the most borrowed authors, and there are also lists broken down by region (I'm pleased to discover that we seem to rate Kate Atkinson quite highly in the South West). In simplified terms, the PLR provides a pot of money from which authors are paid a yearly sum depending on the frequency with which their books are borrowed. According to the amount that I found mentioned in a document published in March 2009, an author gets 5.98p for every book borrowed (although payments of less than a pound are not made, which must be a bit of a bugger if you only had 16 copies of your book borrowed). PLR payments can help to supplement the income of an author who is not managing to garner the big awards, or the patronage of Richard and Judy. These payments aren't automatic - authors have to register - so high earning authors who have less need for this additional income might choose not to dig into this fund.

Previous to listening to this podcast I hadn't paid much thought to PLR, but I like the idea that I am making a small contribution to an author even when I decide to borrow a book rather than purchase it. I would love to have the money and the bookshelf space to support authors and buy every book that interests me, but this just isn't the case. If I did I would need a house to rival the British Library.

So I would just like to say to the authors whose books I currently have on loan from the library - David Hewson, Simon Hall, Chris Ewan, Jane Harris, Gyles Brandreth and Michael Jecks - I hope you enjoy your 5.98 pence from me (if you have registered for PLR). Perhaps you could treat yourself to a penny chew (given inflation, you might just have enough). I recommend Fruit Salads.