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 | |  | | E-book Category: History, Mystery, Novels
E-book Title: Kill Or Curare
Author: Nigel Woodhead
Book Description: A novel of historical crime and conspiracy.
May 1897. A suicidal Oscar Wilde, just released from two years in prison, arrives in Dieppe, Normandy, under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth. On the same ferry is Captain Drake Hastings, sent by British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, ostensibly to "protect national interests", and to investigate conspiracies amongst the large British ex-pat community in Dieppe.
Hastings soon discovers there is far worse beneath the skin of the chic resort than mere political intrigue: against a "Naughty Nineties" backdrop of disease and drugs, of vice and violence, a serial killer appears to be responsible for the abductions and murders of several English prostitutes working in the town, as well as the detectives sent by mysterious third parties. Both the English and French authorities are strangely keen to cover up these crimes. Crimes which echo those of the Whitechapel (Ripper) murders of 1888, and others Hastings recalls from his tour of duty in India.
The plot develops during the summer social Season, the period leading up to Oscar Wilde's departure for Paris. Hastings infiltrates Wilde's coterie of decadent, bohemian writers and artists, aided by the eccentric Doctor Dinan, and by paranoid painter, Walter Sickert. It soon becomes clear that Hastings himself is a flawed hero with a murky mandate. A man with a secret past related to his service in the Hussars in India, and who doses himself daily with arsenic, against malaria. He meets Lady Middenware (a "Society hostess" and friend of Lord Salisbury, but also madam of the town's most exclusive English brothel). He has a torrid affair with her adopted "niece", Alice. A drug addict like her aunt, Alice lives in a dream world of fictional vampire tales. She despises the "Dirty Girls" who work in her aunt's "Academy for Unfortunate Young Ladies", but is equally jealous of their freedom (especially the sultry Faith, who also seduces Hastings).More... | 
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