Product Description

Lucifer Box is the darling of the Edwardian belle monde - society's most fashionable portrait painter is a wit, a dandy, a rake, the guest all hostesses (and not a few hosts) must have. But few know that Lucifer Box is also His Majesty's most accomplished and daring secret agent. And so of course when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11278 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
The best way to deduce a murder weapon is, of course, to pour plaster of Paris into the victim's wound. This is Edwardian London viewed through the perversions and gothic excesses of League of Gentlemen member Mark Gattis. His hero Lucifer Box is a self-celebrating, portrait-painting belle monde whose decadent existence at Number 9 Downing Street ('somebody has to live there') hides a secret other life. Following an unmentionable indiscretion Lucifer has been blackmailed into His Majesty's service as a secret agent. The murder of two top scientists drags him from the cockney underworld to Naples, where an end of the world plot unfolds. An enjoyable if straightforward parody of the adventure stories of Strand magazine, Gattis provides some edge by incorporating genre-busting aspects of life that the traditional detective novel stuffs beneath the drawing room carpet. His Holmes figure mentions venereal disease, appreciates that he dehumanises his servants and succumbs guiltlessly to sexual desires towards his Watson. (Kirkus UK)

A popular Edwardian painter lives a highly satisfying double life as a government agent and assassin. Gatiss, author of four novels based on the Doctor Who television series and a member of the Pythonesque sketch-comedy team League of Gentlemen, presents the droll narrative of Lucifer Box, Number 9 Downing Street, thickly punctuated with barbed bons mots as his life is with recreational sexual encounters. After introducing himself to the reader and knocking off a portrait of Hon. Everard Supple, Lucifer knocks off Supple himself, revealing that he works for His Majesty's Secret Service and that Supple was a dangerous anarchist with violent plans. Then Lucifer's painter friend, Joshua Reynolds ("the dwarf"), also of the Secret Service, informs him of the murders of two prominent scientists in Naples, with more to follow. Meantime, Lucifer's begun taking on private art students to boost his income. The first is Bella Pok (a typical pun), a pert beauty who entrances her teacher. When Neapolitan agent Jocelyn Poop goes missing, Lucifer, who must investigate this case as well as the apparent murder spree, accedes to Bella's coquettish pleas to accompany him. In Naples, Lucifer teams up with breathtaking rent boy Charlie Jackpot and finds the eponymous hedonistic establishment, as well as a haunted estate and a gender-bending surprise, on his way to the solution. Cheeky, decadent fun, from start to finish. (Kirkus Reviews)

GUARDIAN
'A perniciously addictive piece of escapism'

TIMES
'If you're going to have humorous pastiche, give me this any day, with its evocations of Edwardian melodrama and derring-do'

Customer Reviews

Hopefully the first of a series
I've declined to give this book 5 stars for one reason; it's not long enough! Having devoured it in one sitting (pausing only briefly for the necessities of life) I find myself wanting more of Lucifer Box's adventures and wanting them NOW. A grotesquerie of characters leaps fully-formed like Athena from the page: Delilah, the indispensable domestic, Tom Bowler, the inappropriately cheerful undertaker, and Joshua Reynolds, the head of the Secret Service whose choice of office gives new meaning to 'meeting at your convenience'. Lucifer himself is arrogantly irresistible (and is it really arrogance when it's justified?) There is, of course, a fiendish plot for world domination and Lucifer finds allies and enemies in unexpected places as he attempts to foil the dastards. Sherlock Holmes was never this much fun, Harry Flashman never bettered Lucifer's savoir-vivre and Bulldog Drummond was a mere amateur in comparison. There is excitement, romance, gentleman's tailoring and, best of all, Charlie Jackpot.

N.B. Should there NOT be a sequel (nay, several) to the Vesuvius Club, I shall be contacting my MP forthwith to complain.

absurdities, profanities and bawdiness
I picked up 'The Vesuvius Club' purely on the strength of the quotes from Stephen Fry and the newspaper reviews on the back cover. Oscar Wilde is my favourite author and so I thought, if this is thought to be good enough for Wilde, it's good enough for me. And I was absolutely thrilled with Gatiss' debut.

I am not a fan of 'The League of Gentleman' and had never heard of Gatiss before, so I came to this novel with no preconceived ideas about its themes, characters or sense of humour (a fact, I think, that has led to many of the negative reviews on this website) and simply took the book on face value.

The hero, Lucifer Box, has a deliciously decadent voice and Gatiss successfully maintains this throughout the novel's 240 pages. I frequently found myself laughing out loud at the absurdities, profanities and bawdiness on every page, relishing the scrapes that Box and his companion Charlie find themselves in. As far as spy novels go, the story isn't that original; a megalomaniac trying to destroy the world, but the way that Gatiss approaches his subject matter is what made the novel stand out for me. Box undertakes his secret service missions with gusto, diving headfirst into perilous situations and always with a pithy aside to put down his opponent. The twists and turns keep the reader on the edge of his seat, despite the somewhat predictable ending, but the novel doesn't lose anything for this; just like Bond, the intrigue is not whether he is going to escape and save the day, but how he is going to manage it.

I wholeheartedly disagree with those who have condemned this novel for being simply "A bit of Fluff" (Gatiss' words), in my opinion it is exactly this that is the novel's strength; "a bit of fluff", yes, and all the more entertaining for it!

"A Bit of Fluff" - Precisely!
Like some of the previous reviewers, I too bought this book on impulse because of its fabulous cover,the nostalgic layout and the promise of illustrations. Not a fan of "The League of Gentlemen", I didn't immediately recognise the author's name, but it was a hardback, and half price in the sale, so this didn't matter! In my view, I got exactly what I paid for, and to look as deeply into the inaccuracies of language and period as others have seems to me to be self-indulgent and somewhat pompous. Mark Gatiss does not pretend that this is a great literary work - it is however fun, witty and ridiculous, with a comic, world-weary flavour of Wilde minus the cruelty. Personally, I look forward to more of Lucifer Box and his cute little assistant especially if the publishers retain the gorgeous packaging - the illustrations may not be perfect, but thankfully, I am sufficiently uneducated not to regard this as a major flaw. Lose your pretensions if you want to enjoy this little romp, 'cos that's exactly what it is - get over yourselves!