Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders: A Mystery

Often when someone tells me a book is well-written, I want to run. I don't like the prose (or maybe it's the poetry) getting in the way of the story. To me, a well-written novel is one where the prose disappears and the characters stand there before you. In the case of Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders, I found myself reading aloud--proclaiming the words in much the same way that the fictional Oscar tends to do. The mystery is interesting, and watching Wilde as the true model for Sherlock Holmes is actually funny, but the detective's process isn't particularly unusual. As a novel, this book made me want to perform the pages, and that, I really have to say, is novel.