The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss
"For the well-bred gentleman there was surely only one recourse."
The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss (2004)
I was ready to be greatly irritated by this. Not because of any particular animosity towards Mark Gatiss, or out of any disdain towards rollicking pastiche — indeed, I quite like a good pastiche, rollicking or otherwise. As long as they can get the pastry right.
No, what irritated me came on the title page. Never judge a book by its cover, they say, underestimating just how petty I am. But even the most fairminded, most patient among us must surely agree that subtitling your book "A Bit of Fluff" is an extremely annoying thing to do.
It's silly! It's all silly! You don't like it? I was just being silly! Also it means emptyheadedly sexy! Two meanings! Collapse the meanings! This book is sexy and emptyheaded! If you want it to be! Good for a one-night stand! Don't take it home for Christmas! I'm starting to lose track of my point!
I suppose it sort of works. And the version I've got (Pocket Books, 2005) comes with Beardsleyesque illustrations and mock-period typesetting and it's clear that everybody involved is having enormous fun. More fun than me? Probably. But it all clips along nicely, and what seems at the beginning a transparent attempt to write a novel for a future television adaptation ends up enthusiastically debauched and appropriately daft.
(After writing that paragraph I went to check if had been optioned, and found that the BBC had announced it in 2007. However, it died a year or so later after becoming, in Gatiss's words, "more and more neutered". Get it on Disney Plus.)
One minor quibble, though. Almost every character in the book has a comedy name, one way or another. There's an Emmanuel Quibble (no relation) and a Bella Pok, a Christopher Miracle and a Charlie Jackpot, a Midsommer Knight and a Jocelyn Poop. Our hero is called Lucifer Box, and doesn't he enjoy it.
A question of taste how funny you find those. But more practically, I found that as I got towards the end of the book, it became increasingly hard to keep track of everybody. All names were read once, chuckled over or not, and then immediately filed away as Comedy Name. So by the end, as Comedy Name's dastardly plan was exposed by Comedy Name, who was then in turn saved by the great sacrifice of Comedy Name, only to be betrayed by Comedy Name, I became desperate for a still centre to the endlessly giggling universe.
But then, I suppose that might have ruined the bit.