The Devil In Amber - Mark Gatiss

Surely theed is not alone in getting annoyed when he finds actors and other personalities getting books published. Not so much when they're awful tat - they're easy enough to avoid, but when they're really good entertainment, well that’s different. Jealous or not, theed will still happily read them. The Devil in Amber is the second novel from Mark Gatiss from The League of Gentlemen, again featuring his hero Lucifer Box. Box really is the reason to read these books, as well plotted and intriguing as they are. He's handsome and knows it, talented and proud of the fact, and in his first person narrative just loves to tell you how rollicking his life ...  Read the complete review

Lucifer Box is a debauched painter and assassin working for the British secret service - which is of course based at the Royal Academy of Arts. In this second volume of his memoirs, some years after the events of The Vesuvius Club, we find our hero gently succumbing to the rigours of middle age. Is he a match for the dark forces of Fascism that are rising across Western Europe? Mark Gatiss is slowly conquering every medium available to him. Since the League of Gentlemen were catapulted to fame in 1999, Gatiss has been arguably the most successful of its members - performing across radio, film, theatre and TV (most recently in Doctor Who), script editing Little ...  Read the complete review

The Devil in Amber sees Lucifer Box returning to what he does best 20 years on. We join Lucifer in New York in the 1920's where the opening chapter sees him struggling with a drugs baron in a church. Lucifer's life is saved by a new and younger assassin by the name of Percy Flarge. Lucifer also has a new superior, who has inherited his old boss' name, Joshua Reynolds. The new Reynolds thinks it's high time that Box gave up the game now his is middle aged, and made way for the new younger Flarge to take his place as assassin extraordinaire to the Royal Academy. Flarge gives Box one last assignment, to investigate a fraternity called FAUST run by a man ...  Read the complete review

Many of you might know Mark Gatiss from the darkly surreal comedy 'The League of Gentlemen' or more recently from his appearance and scriptwriting for the new Doctor Who but a few years ago he also gained a reputation as a novelist with his successful debut book 'The Vesuvius Club' in which he introduced the world to Lucifer Box the rakish Edwardian secret agent and royal academy artist. 'The Vesuvius Club' was an enjoyable read and I was pleased to find that Gatiss had written a sequel called 'The Devil In Amber'. Lucifer Box is an intriguing literary creation a James Bond figure with the moral depravity that would make Harry Flashman look like a country ...  Read the complete review

Herioc dandy and hedonist, Lucifer Box, battles the evil minions of F.A.U.S.T and their demagogic (and demigodic, even) fascist leader Olympus Mons. Will Mons and his Amber shirts manage to get the devil on their side? Or can Box (far from an angel himself) make Beelzebub dance to his jig? This is the middle novel in what Mark Gatiss (the cannibalist butcher and others from the comedy horror show "League of Gentlemen") likes to call a "Lucifer Box Set". Whereas the first book ("The Vesuvius Club") was inspired by Oscar Wilde, this one is a pastiche of the kind of headlong thriller that was so popular in the '30s, and ...  Read the complete review