Customer Reviews

The Vesuvius Club: Graphic Edition (Lucifer Box 1)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

I sort of won a free edition of this book through a Simon & Schuster UK LiveJournal giveaway. I'm so grateful for my wicked good luck, I'm writing a review! If it encourages anyone to pick up this novel (which you should do), I hope you enjoy it as much as I did (and I'm sure you will).

Lucifer Box is a socialite and a portraitist with dashing good looks, but he's also one of Britain's most witty secret agents working for His Majesty's Government. The Vesuvius Club is a first-person narrative of Edwardian high society with a behind-the-scenes (most secret) look at the people churning the cogs that make the world go `round.

This early 20th century who-dunnit tale is punctuated with black ink illustrations that are, appropriately enough, as grotesque and disturbing as some of the weird and dangerous goings-on in the novel itself. Lucifer mixes business with pleasure as he works to pay off a debt of indiscretion known only to him and his boss, Joshua Reynolds. The novel opens with a dazzling display of an artistry of the most deadly variety: a ruse to lure the Honourable Everard Supple into complacency and entrapment exercised by Mr. Box's indulgent talent for portraiture and a taste for fine dining. Soon after the messy deed is executed and with souvenir in hand, Lucifer makes his drunken way to the men's lavatory inside the Royal Academy of Art. A good sit and few minutes of waiting reveals a ludicrous meeting between Lucifer and Joshua Reynolds in a headquarters of the "Get Smart" variety. Cleverly (Or stupidly. Lucifer never mentions if the loos actually work) hidden between the stalls, JR assigns Lucifer's next assignment: Two highly respected scientists have died within a day of each other and the estimable Jocelyn Poop (agent to His Majesty and directly employed under Joshua), hot on their trail of evidence, has gone missing.

It's up to Lucifer to discover the connection between Poop's disappearance and the mysterious death of the two geologists. To bring all matters to justice begins an investigative journey of near-fatal carriage chases and harrowing, death-defying encounters. Lucifer must contend with all manner of sundry folk and hired help, opium dens, volcanoes, and pleasure domes, all while courting the lovely Bella Pok. And let no one (man or woman), however delectable, stand in his way. There is no task too difficult, no road too winding, no mountain too high, and no partner too unwilling to prevent Lucifer from discovering the horrific truths behind the mysterious Vesuvius Club and the vengeful motivations of a very injured and abandoned human being.

Imagine Artemis Fowl without magic, fairies, trolls and the usual fantastic iterations. Let him simmer until he grows very much into an adult. He remains egotistical and enjoys the finer things in life--no discretions made. Mix in a little of the mysteriousness of James Bond and detective work of Sherlock Holmes and this modest concoction reveals itself in Mark Gatiss's magnificently pleasant and serpentine plot of murder, revenge, sex, and scandal.

Mark Gatiss spins a delightfully refreshing mystery with witty prose, engaging characters, fantastic names, and a playful atmosphere. Lucifer's world is an indulgent one with plush velvets, immaculately tailored garments, fine cigarettes, and devilish secrets. The Vesuvius Club is hilarious and horrific--a fantastic blend of the elements that make for an engrossing and thrilling read full of surprises that kept me reading well into the night. At 240 pages the only crime Gatiss commits is leaving us with such a short installment of Lucifer's witty and instructive inner dialogue. The good news? There's already a second Lucifer Box novel available to whet one's appetite until the third installment arrives later this month.

This is, without doubt, the weirdest book that I've ever read. Try to imagine a mixture of James Bond, complete with a government license to kill, a cast of characters with Dickensian names like Jocelyn Poop and Tom Bowler, and an Oscar Wilde dandy, complete with an orchid in his button hole(except that this one is openly bi-sexual), and immerse the whole scene in the foggy, filthy London of the early 20th century, complete with cab chases and bawdy houses. Then take a massive step away from that into a sci-fi scenario of Naples at the foot of Mt.Vesuvius, and home to a brothel and opium den which caters to the most depraved tastes and is peopled, in the background, by zombies, serving a crazed master who plans to ignite the volcano, seeking revenge for a supposedly wronged father. The writing is rather elegant but the subject matter reminds me of the old serials one saw at the pictures on a Saturday afternoon, where the backgrounds were quite obviously made of papiermache. It was all a bit much for this reader!

Naughty, bawdy, silly, witty, over-the-top.

Just a few ways to describe Mark Gatiss's rollicking caper - which I enjoyed enormously.

Sure, it can be described as Sherlock Holmes meets James Bond (if they'd been brave enough to cast the estimable, dishy Rupert Everett in the role), but it seems to share more DNA with a lesser known British export, The Assassination Bureau, a film starring Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg. Like The Vesuvius Club it's an anachronistic mash-up of Edwardian starch, wild espionage spoof and hippie era sex comedy. In a word - delightful.

What I enjoyed most about the whole affair was that, at the heart of it, narrator and ostensible "hero" Lucifer Box, is rather a pompous ass. I suspect author Mark Gatiss is taking sly aim at the English class system, using the preening, egotistical Box as the perfect model of (in the parlance of Monty Python) the upper-class twit. Time and again, we see that Box's mission would fail utterly without the help of his "domestics," the servants and underlings who aide him nearly every step of the way - whether it be with investigating, researching, alluding capture or fisticuffs. Unlike with Holmes, there isn't a lot of deduction going on here, as every revelation seems to come to Box by chance or after the fact entirely. Despite all that, he continues to trumpet his virtues throughout. The only area in which he doesn't appear to overestimate his abilities, is in his powers of attraction, as evidenced by his multitude of conquests - both male and female. A fact that adds a delicous level of subversiveness to the proceedings.

This is a terrific, light romp - outlandish, funny, sexy - even a bit suspenseful and surprising. Perfect for a hot, lazy day at the beach.

One of the more fascinating things about the cleverly written The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss is that the story's protagonist, Lucifer Box, is a renaissance man extraordinaire. Forget that the story takes place in Edwardian England, or even that Lucifer is a second-rate portraitist and secret agent; note, rather, how his inhibitions and peccadilloes know no gender. That the reader will start the adventure around Box's womanly indiscretions and lead somewhere...else...is simply the sheer flippancy of such a piece of fluff, as subtitled by Gatiss. Box is perhaps an anachronistic anomaly, parading around and performing his HMS duties in a spirit of glam that would make David Bowie proud.

Said somewhere else covers a time and place when audiences weren't surrounded with formulaic, contrived villains trying to conquer and/or destroy the world. No, The Vesuvius Club is something different. Box's work for His Majesty's Service is more of a satire of what Bond and Bourne were combating when things were simpler, when your average villains had something smaller and more bizarre in their sights, like say, a volcano. Apart from the setting, Gatiss excels in his descriptions of eerily misty London cemeteries and runaway hansoms, hazy and writhing opium dens and slightly off antagonists. From London to Naples, the reader is carried swiftly in bewilderment in an overly witty, bizarre, and humorous adventure.

Mark Gatiss as a writer represents a wonderful mix of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rhomer and Monty Python. Part of the fun of the book is discovering the plot, so I won't divulge too much. You just need to know the action takes place in Edwardian England, where Lucifer Box is not only a revered painter and danddy. But, also a very active spy for King Edward's secret services, fighting his way from London to Naples to uncover a secret society plotting nothing less than the end of the modern world. There are many twists and turns, with witty dialogue Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond would have been jealous of. The plot is very fanciful and moves briskly, but Gatiss never lets a dull moment slip in. The humor is fresh and very British. There are some very kinky moments, but those are treated with taste and a sense of fun that is just irresisitible. Let's hope this is the beginning of a long series of novels. Just like James Bond, Lucifer Box will return in "The Devil in Amber" already published. Be there, before Hollywood jumps on the Lucifer Box bandwagon. Maybe Mark Gatiss has created here the Indiana Jones of the 21st Century. No small feat for a hero rubbing shoulders wth Oscar Wilde and the toast of early 20th Century London. Smashing!

If you read my recent review of "The Devil in Amber," than you already know I'm a huge fan of Mark Gatiss and Lucifer Box. I'll not bother you with another tired synopsis (other's have already done that). I'll just say "The Vesuvius Club" is more then simply amusing and diverting, it's clever, titilating and wicked good fun from start to finish. I love Lucifer Box (and Charlie Jackpot for that matter) and look forward to reading more of his adventures.

RE: the graphic novel. I enjoyed the iluustrations by Ian Bass, but the story has been abridged - so, I recommend the original.

I had pretty high hopes for this book because the synopsis makes it sound like everything you could ever ask for in a novel...espionage, intrigue, secret societies bent on world domination, a roguish anti-hero. Unfortunately, I couldn't even make it all the way through. It just got too ridiculous, and the plot was so simplistic it was like watching a cartoon. Another peeve of mine is that it was written in the first person with the main character Lucifer narrating, and he got on my nerves SO MUCH. He's thoroughly obnoxious, and was constantly making these little asides to the reader about how naughty and/or fabulous he feels himself to be. Plus, you can tell the author is trying SO hard to be witty and funny and he goes so over-the-top that it's like nails on a chalkboard.