Boxing clever (The Devil In Amber - Mark Gatiss)

Member Name: theediscerning

Product:	The Devil In Amber - Mark Gatiss
Date:	14/11/07 (46 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great narrator

Disadvantages: Very minor lapses in drive; too strong original to look up to.

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 as a secret agent has been.

Interestingly this book is set twenty years on from the first in the series, as if Gatiss is hedging his bets and allowing him to move on past Box at some point. This generation gap takes Box from the Edwardian era where he was so at home to start this book in Jazz Age New York. The age of side characters called Sal Volatile. The age of a fascist rouser whom Box is employed to investigate.

This adventure follows The Vesuvius Club in delving into underground, occult and bizarre crimes, with a hint of the vicious, a touch of the macabre, and a dash of bisexuality. There is not enough of any aspect however to put anyone off.

The comedy touches are fine - especially the lead, Lucifer. He is one of the instances where the words enjoyably and contrived can be successfully put together. Whatever he does, the one person in the world who could help his mission's success will always fall into place at the right time - or, if he can help, into his bath with him.

Box has a great comic timing for his memoirs, but on the whole the events are played straight - and quite deadly serious at times. The thriller elements are played with all due gravity, and there are a couple of didn't-see-that-coming moments to be had.

This volume is not flawless - the trans-Atlantic voyage is a little over-long perhaps, making us forget the earlier thrust of the plot, which may be the point. We lose the quirky inventiveness of the secret services of the last book - where assignations were plotted in secretive public lavatory cubicles.

Neither quibble deserves it to lose a full dooyoo star from its rating, especially when we gain a delightful cameo from Mrs Croup halfway through, and although there are a couple of questionable elements to the plot the whole is great fun, jolly entertaining, and very easy to recommend to anyone, not just a thriller genre fan.

What cannot be recommended is reading the hardback's cover blurb, as it surely gives away too many elements of the plot.



This review has been slightly edited since first appearing on the bookbag site, where it appeared under another pseudonym of theediscerning’s.

Summary: A four and a half star-rated adventure in the macabre,