What do you think?
Rate this book
Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde
It's 1895 and deadly games are afoot in London. Against a backdrop of terrorist dynamitings, a humbled Holmes reluctantly accepts the aid of Oscar Wilde to unravel two tangled plots: the blackmail of an eminent Victorian with a name known all over the world, and the diabolical design of a demented nobleman to inflict 'Death! Or Worse!' upon Holmes himself.
Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde mingles melodrama and epigram, fact and fiction, as two men with so many differences in common pursue a hellish hound whose actions menace all of England.
Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde mingles melodrama and epigram, fact and fiction, as two men with so many differences in common pursue a hellish hound whose actions menace all of England.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
2 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 13, 2017
God this was awful. Sherlock Holmes was completely unrecognizable. I'm very tolerant of different interpretations of Sherlock being that I read and enjoy a shitton of fan fiction, but goddamn. He made him a aristocracy loving homophobic idiot because... I don't know. Plot? Character foil to Wilde? Wanting to explore a radical reinterpretation of the canon? The whole thing is so poorly writen it is difficult to discern a meaning for anything much less a massive character derailment.
February 1, 2016
Why did I give this four stars when most people give it only one or two?
Well let me tell you, this is one of the "best" gay novels around. Though its imitation of the 19th century is a bit weak, it is an excellent literary parody (though surprisingly subtle at times). What some hyper-sensitive people have misunderstood as homophobia is actually the author mocking Victorian repression. This book kept me laughing the entire time. I wouldn't really recommend it unless you have a decent recollection of the Sherlock Holmes stories because you won't understand the humour -so many of the lines are pulled from ACD's work and re-contextualized.
Additionally, and I was very surprised by this, but this book also has a lot of profound social commentary. It criticizes those who accept the status quo as morally correct just because it exists and asks people to evaluate laws rather than blindly following them. (Please see the quotes section of this book's page.)
Well let me tell you, this is one of the "best" gay novels around. Though its imitation of the 19th century is a bit weak, it is an excellent literary parody (though surprisingly subtle at times). What some hyper-sensitive people have misunderstood as homophobia is actually the author mocking Victorian repression. This book kept me laughing the entire time. I wouldn't really recommend it unless you have a decent recollection of the Sherlock Holmes stories because you won't understand the humour -so many of the lines are pulled from ACD's work and re-contextualized.
Additionally, and I was very surprised by this, but this book also has a lot of profound social commentary. It criticizes those who accept the status quo as morally correct just because it exists and asks people to evaluate laws rather than blindly following them. (Please see the quotes section of this book's page.)
May 2, 2023
Quede🤡🤡
Yo feliz porque pensé que era imposible odiar un libro que cuenta con mis dos amores : Sherlock y Oscar wilde. Spoiler sale mal
Lo homofóbico que es este libro señores 😷y la manera en que ridiculizan todos los aspectos respecto a la sexualidad de los personajes .
Me convirtieron a watson en homofóbico
Y a wilde lo describen físicamente de una manera grotesca que me hizo odiar el libro desde el primer instante , es más lo comparan con una libélula incluso.
Yo feliz porque pensé que era imposible odiar un libro que cuenta con mis dos amores : Sherlock y Oscar wilde. Spoiler sale mal
Lo homofóbico que es este libro señores 😷y la manera en que ridiculizan todos los aspectos respecto a la sexualidad de los personajes .
Me convirtieron a watson en homofóbico
Y a wilde lo describen físicamente de una manera grotesca que me hizo odiar el libro desde el primer instante , es más lo comparan con una libélula incluso.
June 10, 2011
Crap!...I can't even believe I was able to finish this book.
December 25, 2012
Soy un peligro público en una biblioteca y aparentemente voy a leer cualquier pastiche que caiga en mis zarpas.
...¿quién eres tú y qué has hecho con Sherlock Holmes?
...¿quién eres tú y qué has hecho con Sherlock Holmes?
December 11, 2020
As a longtime fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, this book does not deliver any of what makes those books timeless and the adventures fun. Here is a published story that borrows the Holmes and Watson universe and drops onto it a mesh of ideas, characters, further fiction, and even some reality. The parts are each greater than the sum. Together it lacks any real mystery and urgency; instead it bobbles along the streets of 1895 London at a pace inconsistent with what’s happening.
The inclusion of Oscar Wilde should have been more clever than it turned out to be. For most of the book he was reduced to nothing more than an “Oscar Wilde See-N-Say,” quoting himself and all his pithy maxims. It was frustrating to read and added nothing to help move the story along. But by bringing in Oscar Wilde, the truest point of this novel comes out and is done so without ever using the word. “Homosexuality” is never once spoken. Hints, innuendo, adjectives, codes, and unspoken looks are abound here and everyone at one time or another is cast as maybe being “so.”
And to borrow a line for the TV show Seinfeld about the same topic “not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
My problem with this story, besides Oscar Wilde’s speech pattern of quoting himself is two-fold. First, Sherlock Holmes’s character was not believable. He wouldn’t say and do what he said and did here. While John Watson was more so believable in his delivery of the adventure, Sherlock lacked his genius. We as readers needed to rely on previous adventures to decipher his meaning and add intelligence to his actions. Otherwise they’d be nothing more than luck, random guesses, and a bit of ego thrown in for good measure.
But more importantly is, second, the relationship between Holmes and Watson being called into question several times, both spoken and unspoken, as more than what it ever was. That their intimacy helped both Sherlock’s successes and Watson’s writing about them. It deviated too far from themselves as readers know them to be believable. It would be like reading a newly published article in 2020 about the Beatles and how evidence suggests that Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting success, which to this day is still considered some of the best ever collaboration, is attributed to a far more intimate relationship; by viewing old details in a different light...
In 1988 when this book was published, fan fiction was harder to come by than once the Internet was readily available nearly everywhere. I can appreciate that a new Sherlock Holmes adventure found in bookstores at the time was probably quite exciting. And in some ways, it had enough elements of classic Holmes and Watson to satiate a want for more and new adventures. Unfortunately for me, it completely missed the mark and I cannot recommend. There are some amazing fan fiction Sherlock Holmes adventures that don’t try to undo and redo what isn’t theirs to neither undo nor redo in the first place.
The inclusion of Oscar Wilde should have been more clever than it turned out to be. For most of the book he was reduced to nothing more than an “Oscar Wilde See-N-Say,” quoting himself and all his pithy maxims. It was frustrating to read and added nothing to help move the story along. But by bringing in Oscar Wilde, the truest point of this novel comes out and is done so without ever using the word. “Homosexuality” is never once spoken. Hints, innuendo, adjectives, codes, and unspoken looks are abound here and everyone at one time or another is cast as maybe being “so.”
And to borrow a line for the TV show Seinfeld about the same topic “not that there’s anything wrong with that!”
My problem with this story, besides Oscar Wilde’s speech pattern of quoting himself is two-fold. First, Sherlock Holmes’s character was not believable. He wouldn’t say and do what he said and did here. While John Watson was more so believable in his delivery of the adventure, Sherlock lacked his genius. We as readers needed to rely on previous adventures to decipher his meaning and add intelligence to his actions. Otherwise they’d be nothing more than luck, random guesses, and a bit of ego thrown in for good measure.
But more importantly is, second, the relationship between Holmes and Watson being called into question several times, both spoken and unspoken, as more than what it ever was. That their intimacy helped both Sherlock’s successes and Watson’s writing about them. It deviated too far from themselves as readers know them to be believable. It would be like reading a newly published article in 2020 about the Beatles and how evidence suggests that Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting success, which to this day is still considered some of the best ever collaboration, is attributed to a far more intimate relationship; by viewing old details in a different light...
In 1988 when this book was published, fan fiction was harder to come by than once the Internet was readily available nearly everywhere. I can appreciate that a new Sherlock Holmes adventure found in bookstores at the time was probably quite exciting. And in some ways, it had enough elements of classic Holmes and Watson to satiate a want for more and new adventures. Unfortunately for me, it completely missed the mark and I cannot recommend. There are some amazing fan fiction Sherlock Holmes adventures that don’t try to undo and redo what isn’t theirs to neither undo nor redo in the first place.
April 18, 2018
This story is chock-a-block with epigrams, bon mots and quotes from the writings of Wilde and Doyle. It gets a little tiring, honestly, when every sentence is a one-liner you start to long for a nice long paragraph about where you're going for lunch or maybe the weather.
That said. At the very end, there's a chapter that's entirely the author's own writing, and I liked it. I thought it was well done, and it made me wish there'd been more like that.
In terms of the story itself - the reference to Oscar Wilde makes one assume that this will be a speculation on Holmes' or Waton's homosexuality, and one would be right - my biggest objection here is that this Watson is an annoying, prating, slightly idiotic prig. It's very difficult to see why Holmes would endure him or why anyone would love him, and the impression that one gets at the end, that Holmes was quite relieved to see the back of him when he retired to the Downs, is quite understandable. Since Watson's the narrator, as is usually the case with Holmes stories, it's that much more damning - I mean, we're getting his POV and he's still unlikeable.
There's an incident about midway through, not articulated, where I suppose we should assume that Watson possibly made a move on Holmes, or - I don't know, something happened. We never know what it was. Watson won't even think about or acknowledge it. It was frustrating because it's apparently important enough for them to nearly come to a split over it, and then it's never referenced again.
I believe this Watson is in the closet, just, that doesn't redefine his and Holmes' relationship in any meaningful way, so what's the point?
It's certainly not hard to write Holmes and/or Watson as gay; it does no harm to the stories, though it does make for unkind portrayals of the various Mrs. Watsons. There are certainly one or two very gay moments in the original canon.
Were they gay? No. But writing them that way is as likely as writing Holmes and Irene Adler together. Holmes was never going to end up with anybody, and thank goodness for that; whatever else Watson was or was not, he was one of probably very few people who could have put up with the privilege and burden of living with Holmes. It's tempting to write him as a bit of an ass, but one should always remember that Watson is us; we would none of us come off too well in a comparison with genius.
That said. At the very end, there's a chapter that's entirely the author's own writing, and I liked it. I thought it was well done, and it made me wish there'd been more like that.
In terms of the story itself - the reference to Oscar Wilde makes one assume that this will be a speculation on Holmes' or Waton's homosexuality, and one would be right - my biggest objection here is that this Watson is an annoying, prating, slightly idiotic prig. It's very difficult to see why Holmes would endure him or why anyone would love him, and the impression that one gets at the end, that Holmes was quite relieved to see the back of him when he retired to the Downs, is quite understandable. Since Watson's the narrator, as is usually the case with Holmes stories, it's that much more damning - I mean, we're getting his POV and he's still unlikeable.
There's an incident about midway through, not articulated, where I suppose we should assume that Watson possibly made a move on Holmes, or - I don't know, something happened. We never know what it was. Watson won't even think about or acknowledge it. It was frustrating because it's apparently important enough for them to nearly come to a split over it, and then it's never referenced again.
I believe this Watson is in the closet, just, that doesn't redefine his and Holmes' relationship in any meaningful way, so what's the point?
It's certainly not hard to write Holmes and/or Watson as gay; it does no harm to the stories, though it does make for unkind portrayals of the various Mrs. Watsons. There are certainly one or two very gay moments in the original canon.
Were they gay? No. But writing them that way is as likely as writing Holmes and Irene Adler together. Holmes was never going to end up with anybody, and thank goodness for that; whatever else Watson was or was not, he was one of probably very few people who could have put up with the privilege and burden of living with Holmes. It's tempting to write him as a bit of an ass, but one should always remember that Watson is us; we would none of us come off too well in a comparison with genius.
June 17, 2025
If it wasn't for the fact that this book won an award, it would have been difficult for me to decide if this was written from a pro- or anti-gay perspective. The volume on the parody seems to be cranked up to 11, and I'm not sure if that is intentional, or not, either. That this was written at the height of the AIDs epidemic just adds to the chaos of trying to determine the author's intent for this being a parody or farce. On it's face, the story is vaguely a whodunit, as all of the minor characters are stereotypes and easily sorted. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and Wilde are constructed entire out of quotations lifted from the Holmes cannon and Wilde's works. It's like trying to get to know an actor personally, but they only are allowed to say lines from their movies. It's quickly frustrating and the longer this went, the fewer pages I read every day as it does not get better as it goes. The actual plot payoff is accomplished in a few pages of action and two subsequent chapters or narrating the details that were never shown and motives that were previously not revealed. The "Appendix" is just ridiculous in painting a Sherlock Holmes in retirement that runs counter to everything Conan Doyle ever wrote.
July 14, 2018
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The concept was a fun idea. Essentially, a published work of fanfiction for those that love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. The reality was that it was mainly quotes (that fans of the two know all too well already) fit together as puzzle pieces of dialogue into a story that felt as though it took longer than necessary to tell. Honestly, the quotations were more distracting than anything and I think going in that I was really hoping for original dialogue based on the men's personalities rather than just reusing their own iconic words. The cover makes for a great bookshelf addition, though. So, there's that.
July 10, 2024
The book went way over the top to convey Holmes’ and Watson’s disgust of homosexuality, which derailed any plot momentum until maybe the very end of the story. Maybe that was realistic for the historical period but it made for clumsy, repetitive, and slow writing. It also felt out of character for the main character Holmes who is famously open minded and fixated only with solving crimes. It’s an ambitious undertaking to create a mystery in the world of Sherlock Holmes and this one came up rather short.
Read
July 30, 2019I normally give a book 100 pages to pull me in. If I'm still engaged, I will finish. Otherwise, I move on. But I'm getting old so I will not hesitate to stop sooner if given a good reason. This book gave me very good reason. This is probably the worst Holmes pastiche I have ever read, and I've read some real stinkers. But 25 pages in, I was astounded; 35 pages and I was outraged, 50 pages and I was disgusted. No stars.
Currently reading
February 11, 2024I was excited hearing that this existed, and tried to open my mind. It seems very important to this author to be period accurate. Given the time I don't think it's unrealistic to think Holmes and Watson would have some conservative views. But the way these views are expressed doesn't feel like them. They don't need to be on the same page as Wilde, but it feels like they were made opposite just for the sake of tension.
did-not-finish
March 26, 2023I just couldn't finish this Holmes pastiche. It has none of the flavor of the Doyle narratives and Holmes & Watson are pretty unrecognizable.
June 20, 2025
Nice Me (rummaging bookcase on a Sunday morning): Oh here's this old thing. Remember finding this back in the 90s and being so excited about it?
Snarky Me: Yes. And hating it.
Nice Me: Well, that was a long time ago. It was probably during my Wilde Period™ when I was wont to take frivolous things too seriously. Anyhow, I can't even remember what I hated about it.
Snarky Me: Surely you remember that the characterisation of Holmes was just plain bad? So bad that you’ve had an aversion to Holmes fan fics ever since?
Nice Me: So cynical. I’m not ever sure that this was the one that did it. We did try a couple of other dire ones back then, and they went off to charity.
Snarky Me: How uncharitable of you.
Nice Me: Oh shush. Anyhow: I'm in the mood for some Victorian gays, let's give it a try...
Snarky Me makes a gesture of doomed acquiescence.
later that day…
Nice Me: Please make it stop!
Snarky Me: Just put the book down, sweetie. It’ll be fine. The nice man just couldn’t figure out how to write a Sherlock Holmes story including a famous manufacturer of bons mots without copying everyone’s homework.
Nice Me: dropping book on floor It’s the way he shoehorns them in that really gets on your nerves. There’s barely a line of normal dialogue in the whole damned thing. It’s just a giant collage of The Quotable Oscar Wilde, interleaved with a bunch of cuttings from Conan Doyle stories.
Snarky Me: nodding sagely, not saying ‘I told you so’ because we are snarky, but not a monster. And the characters?
Nice Me: Oh, all right: you were right. Holmes is a badly-drawn cardboard cutout.
Snarky Me: Indeed so. All the more irritating, because the author plainly spent months poring over the stories to extract random details and good lines from them.
Nice Me: Exactly!
Snarky Me: Some of which, he seems to have put in Wilde’s mouth, which … well, don’t start me. But the worst of it is that he seems to have deliberately changed Holmes’s fundamental outlook on humanity just to make Wilde look like the voice of Modernity and Reason against Holmes’s Victorian Values.
Nice Me: Yes! But if you’re going to change the character, give some of his lines to Wilde—why make it Holmes?
Snarky Me: Well, to sell your book, of course. And so you’ve got lots of stories to crib off.
Nice Me: well, I didn’t make it. I was going to give it a fair go, but I couldn’t stand a Holmes moralising about Family Values, while Wilde vapoured about making witty little Remarks and introducing his Perfect Family to the page boy.
Snarky Me: And that’s not eve starting in on the logical faults we’d already seen by about page 20.
How the fuck is that Sherlock Holmes? Any of it?
And that was basically it. Couldn't get past that, could we?
Nice Me: Nope.
Ssssooo … charity?
Snarky Me: We’d be doing the reading world a favour by just putting it quietly back on the shelf and pretending this never happened.
Nice Me: Agreed.
Snarky Me: Yes. And hating it.
Nice Me: Well, that was a long time ago. It was probably during my Wilde Period™ when I was wont to take frivolous things too seriously. Anyhow, I can't even remember what I hated about it.
Snarky Me: Surely you remember that the characterisation of Holmes was just plain bad? So bad that you’ve had an aversion to Holmes fan fics ever since?
Nice Me: So cynical. I’m not ever sure that this was the one that did it. We did try a couple of other dire ones back then, and they went off to charity.
Snarky Me: How uncharitable of you.
Nice Me: Oh shush. Anyhow: I'm in the mood for some Victorian gays, let's give it a try...
Snarky Me makes a gesture of doomed acquiescence.
later that day…
Nice Me: Please make it stop!
Snarky Me: Just put the book down, sweetie. It’ll be fine. The nice man just couldn’t figure out how to write a Sherlock Holmes story including a famous manufacturer of bons mots without copying everyone’s homework.
Nice Me: dropping book on floor It’s the way he shoehorns them in that really gets on your nerves. There’s barely a line of normal dialogue in the whole damned thing. It’s just a giant collage of The Quotable Oscar Wilde, interleaved with a bunch of cuttings from Conan Doyle stories.
Snarky Me: nodding sagely, not saying ‘I told you so’ because we are snarky, but not a monster. And the characters?
Nice Me: Oh, all right: you were right. Holmes is a badly-drawn cardboard cutout.
Snarky Me: Indeed so. All the more irritating, because the author plainly spent months poring over the stories to extract random details and good lines from them.
Nice Me: Exactly!
Snarky Me: Some of which, he seems to have put in Wilde’s mouth, which … well, don’t start me. But the worst of it is that he seems to have deliberately changed Holmes’s fundamental outlook on humanity just to make Wilde look like the voice of Modernity and Reason against Holmes’s Victorian Values.
Nice Me: Yes! But if you’re going to change the character, give some of his lines to Wilde—why make it Holmes?
Snarky Me: Well, to sell your book, of course. And so you’ve got lots of stories to crib off.
Nice Me: well, I didn’t make it. I was going to give it a fair go, but I couldn’t stand a Holmes moralising about Family Values, while Wilde vapoured about making witty little Remarks and introducing his Perfect Family to the page boy.
Snarky Me: And that’s not eve starting in on the logical faults we’d already seen by about page 20.
How the fuck is that Sherlock Holmes? Any of it?
And that was basically it. Couldn't get past that, could we?
Nice Me: Nope.
Ssssooo … charity?
Snarky Me: We’d be doing the reading world a favour by just putting it quietly back on the shelf and pretending this never happened.
Nice Me: Agreed.
April 30, 2017
Disappointing.
November 30, 2009
It was a book. Too many flaws to talk about right here, but the case was not as clear as the canon among other issues.
April 4, 2010
Good read and innovative idea.
June 1, 2014
Jajaja, bien raro, tiene sus momentos, pero ese Holmes, no es el mismo que todos conocemos)
Read
March 5, 2016Zero stars
August 9, 2020
Es despreciable como dibujan a uno de los mayores escritores de la historia.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews