code meets music

This is Mark Gatiss’s second novel chronicling the adventures of Lucifer Box, an Edwardian portrait-painter turned secret agent/assassin for His Majesty’s Government, tasked with saving the world.

The first, The Vesuvius Club, told the tale of how Lucifer saved Italy from the destructive intentions of the titular secret society. The second, set 20 years later with our hero starting to feel his age, takes in 1920s New York; a ‘cruise’ aboard a cargo ship and the Swiss alps as Lucifer tries to clear his name after being framed for a murder, not forgetting to save the planet from the attempts of a fascist organisation to summon the Devil.

It will come as no surprise to people familiar with The League of Gentlemen that the stories are somewhat ridiculous, with exaggerated characters and plenty of cliché. It’s a good job then that the plots contain plenty of little twists, and that the writing manages to maintain a good mix of excitement and humour.

There is a 3rd book planned, which according to an interview with Gatiss in The Guardian will be called Clawhammer and will be set in the 1950s, with Box in his 70s.