Why do straight men hate – and fear – gay men? Two reasons, sweethearts, both superglued tighter than a bigot’s butt, and they’re called desire and envy!
Face it, what sane human being would really lavish his entire career, sex appeal and lifetime salary on some moody, crab-tastic bitch determined to divorce him for fifty percent of everything the poor sap’s got? Worse still, she’ll squirt out more financial parasites – AKA sprogs –and make her snatch so loose it’s more fun fucking a sewage pipe! Christ, no wonder Oscar Wilde ran screaming from the entire nightmare, and locked his lips – and loins – on stud muffin rent-boys.
Which brings us to respected author and polymath Gyles Brandreth, whose latest tranche of novels, the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries, allows him to have his gay-friendly cake and eat it too. Now, while not wishing to speculate on Mr. Brandreth’s sexual persuasion, it’s perhaps telling that he recently staged a solo drag show in Edinburgh, and boasts a personal aplomb and verbal flamboyancy that wouldn’t disgrace Quentin Crisp! Numbering four so far, the books set Wilde as a deductive detective in classic, Sherlock Holmes mode, and cry out for Oscar to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the inevitable TV adaptations.
Does that mean there’s about as much sexual heat here as a corpse’s dick? Think again; avoiding the obvious – as in page after page of thrusting and spurting synonyms – lets Brandreth ramp up an incredible sexual tension in Oscar’s flirtations. Fastidiously filleting what’s not said and done, Brandeth lets the heady, almost cloying, literary and artistic symbolism of the period act as his erotic shorthand. Remember, less is always more – minimalism forces readers to apply their own, incomparably powerful turn-ons – and at times, Brandreth’s seduction scenes are like a slow, exquisite suffocation by the scent of ripe lilies! Never missing a stylistic trick, the prose is a languid, decadent bouquet, stuffed with culinary and sartorial pieces de resistance M’sieur Wilde would’ve adored.
Pleasingly – for gay activists and separatists, at least – Oscar’s sexual proclivities become more pronounced and risqué as the series progresses. Well, let’s face it, the British middle classes have never had a problem with the literary flamboyance they associate with authors like Noel Coward, Joe Orton and the teasingly indecisive Evelyn Waugh, to name but three. However, it’s undeniable that low-rent, easy porn explicitness would completely torpedo Brandreth’s intoxicating, highly erudite and hugely addictive literary camp; quite simply, the man’s recasting Victorian perversity as Mapp and Lucia meet Agatha Christie, the most extraordinary creation since whisky and absinthe cocktails!
• The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries by Gyles Brandreth. 5/5
