No Cliché Left Unturned
May. 7th, 2007 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselMar 2007
The Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss - Pocket Books, 2005
* * *
Well I suppose it’s what you would expect from a member of the League of Gentlemen and a writer for Doctor Who. The Vesuvius Club is an Edwardian-set comedy thriller peopled by grotesques and about as subtle as a brick to the head. Entertaining it is, profound it ain’t.
Lucifer Box is a louche secret agent who can best be described as James Bond as played by Oscar Wilde (with a touch of Sherlock Holmes). He is called upon to investigate the deaths of Verdigris and Sash, two prominent geologists with links to Naples. With the aid of a domestic called Delilah, his friend Christopher Miracle and the delectable love interest Bella Pok, Box sleuths his way to the mysterious Vesuvius Club and the dark secret at its heart.
To be honest, the whole thing is a farrago of cliches from beginning to end. Think of a character, setting or situation from turn-of-the-century fiction - the opium den run by shifty orientals, a chase in hansom cabs, romance in a gilded drawing room, dark doings in graveyards - and the chances are you that you will find it in here somewhere. The plotting is strictly James-Bond-by-the-numbers (complete with preposterous finale) and none of the characters are more than crude cartoons.
It is not entirely without merit, however. There are some quotable Wildean one-liners and the speed and energy of the plotting goes some way to make up for the stereotypical nature of the situations. It's also fair to say that the romantic sub-plot develops in a direction that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would never have dreamed of or dared to write if he had.
The profligate use of stereotypes, however, does not leave much material for sequels. Gatiss clearly intends to write a series; having raided the grab-bag of Edwardian cliches so thoroughly, it will be interesting to see how he does it.
The Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss - Pocket Books, 2005
* * *
Well I suppose it’s what you would expect from a member of the League of Gentlemen and a writer for Doctor Who. The Vesuvius Club is an Edwardian-set comedy thriller peopled by grotesques and about as subtle as a brick to the head. Entertaining it is, profound it ain’t.
Lucifer Box is a louche secret agent who can best be described as James Bond as played by Oscar Wilde (with a touch of Sherlock Holmes). He is called upon to investigate the deaths of Verdigris and Sash, two prominent geologists with links to Naples. With the aid of a domestic called Delilah, his friend Christopher Miracle and the delectable love interest Bella Pok, Box sleuths his way to the mysterious Vesuvius Club and the dark secret at its heart.
To be honest, the whole thing is a farrago of cliches from beginning to end. Think of a character, setting or situation from turn-of-the-century fiction - the opium den run by shifty orientals, a chase in hansom cabs, romance in a gilded drawing room, dark doings in graveyards - and the chances are you that you will find it in here somewhere. The plotting is strictly James-Bond-by-the-numbers (complete with preposterous finale) and none of the characters are more than crude cartoons.
It is not entirely without merit, however. There are some quotable Wildean one-liners and the speed and energy of the plotting goes some way to make up for the stereotypical nature of the situations. It's also fair to say that the romantic sub-plot develops in a direction that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would never have dreamed of or dared to write if he had.
The profligate use of stereotypes, however, does not leave much material for sequels. Gatiss clearly intends to write a series; having raided the grab-bag of Edwardian cliches so thoroughly, it will be interesting to see how he does it.