Vesuvius Club [Mass Market Paperback]

The inimitable and dapper Lucifer Fox, doyenne of Edwardian London society. He's handsome, debonair, and admittedly bisexual, and also lives at Number Nine Downing Street, "because someone has to." Lucifer is an artist by day, and a cold, calculating killer, by night, a ruthless assassin for the British government. So it comes as no surprise, that in the opening chapter The Vesuvius Club, we see him casually disposing of an enemy of the State.

When Professors Verdigris and Sash, two prominent scientists are discovered murdered, Mr. Joshua Reynolds, a dwarf in the employ of The Royal Academy of Arts, entrusts Lucifer with the task of finding the perpetrator. The scientists chosen field was something rather bewildering, to do with the molten core of the earth. They ended up forming some sort of research team and traveling to Italy. His search for their killers isn't as easy as Lucifer first thought, and as the trail thickens, our intrepid hero finds himself in danger of his life.

Author, Mark Gatiss peppers his narrative with eccentric Edwardian characters, "whey faced poets, frayed-cuffed artists; all the splendid flotsam of bohemian London life." Lucifer is equally at home in both London's Imperial grandeur as he is in the underworld of crazed vice that seethes beneath. He's a man who is geographically at the very beating heart of the Empire, yet as much as an outcast as the greatest of his calling has been.

Lucifer's search for the missing scientists eventually takes him to Naples, where he meets Charlie Jackpot, a young hunk, who also becomes his lover and servant. Charlie introduces him to the Vesuvius Club, a den of iniquity that in reality is a front for a sinister and catastrophic plan to destroy the world.

Gatiss has become popular writing the popular Dr. Who novels, and their trademark structure is evident here. Each chapter carefully plotted with a huge revelation and climax at the end of each. Layer by layer, character by character, mystery by mystery, the insidious and theatrical plot is revealed, more clues unveiled, all leading to the same, and irrevocable conclusion that the scientists have most likely met an untimely end, and that only Lucifer can possibly save the world.

Gatiss deliciously portrays a society roiling with pimps, tarts, and harlots, and where Edwardian sexual ambiguity reigns supreme. There's evenings of flagrant debauch, especially at the Vesuvius Club, where the primary protagonists are deceitful and amoral, taking pleasure at the prospect of doing harm to other, especially to Charlie and Lucifer. Other cast members prove surprisingly resourceful, although frequently compromised.

Gatiss also has an impressive command of idiom, capturing the sycophantic nature of the era in all its self-congratulatory grandeur. Full of dotty and eccentric characters with names like Everard Supple, Miss Fullalove, Jocelyn Poop, and Bella Pock, the author has created a world of thrilling ancient antiquity and combined this with all the excitement of a turn-of the century Dickensian thriller. Mike Leonard November 05.

I rarely give out five stars but this stylish, aloofly decadent novella is worth it. A tongue in cheek look borrowed from Wilde and partly from Flemming's delightful Bond. Lucifer Box is the perfect Victorian gentlemen, with their respect for values and morals-only upheld in the most hypocritical sense, devastatingly beautiful and leading the most successful dual personality since The importance of being Earnest. A bit of fluff certainly, blending all genres into one from horror-gothic, romance, drama and tragedy. With an exaggerated air for the melodramatic, Gatiss leads us on the most addictive journey around England and the 'continent'. One can almost smell the orchids and feel the sweltering heat of Italy and see the finely cut suits of Mr. Box as he fights 'the forces of evil' impecabbly cut and dressed with a dashing mysterious femme fatale hanging off his arm. Mr. Box explores all that is truely 'Victorian' (in the most underworld, revealing meaning) in a laugh out loud, yet charismatically seductive way. Read it. Well done Gatiss, a true tour de force.

Since the plot has been sufficiently covered, I'll just say that I picked this book up on a whim and I'm so utterly glad I did. I believe one of the reviews said it best in that one *despairs* when they see the pages disappearing behind them. Fantastically likeable protaginist, deliciously melodramtic plot, and a extrodinarily satisfying sending up of the Bond Girl. I've finished it but I can't bring myself to put it back on the shelf, so it's also proving itself to be quite re-readable. Honestly one of the most enjoyable books I've read in ages.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 16 reviews  3.9 out of 5 stars