GATISS, MARK & IAN BASS – THE VESUVIUS CLUB 2005 Simon & Shuster

GATISS, MARK & IAN BASS – THE VESUVIUS CLUB 2005 Simon & Schuster. Hilarious and genuinely exciting highly irreverent ripping yarn boys own spoof graphic novel about the adventures of Victorian English spy, Lucifer Box. Lucifer is an MI5 Agent who poses as a Pre-Raphaelite artist. He is essentially Oscar Wilde in all but name. The book starts as he paints the portrait of a vain leading English politician. With the work completed, Box takes the man to a private club for lunch and shoots him dead there at the table. He then decides to keep the man’s glass eye as a grizzly souvenir of his work. Job well done, Box is quickly given his next assignment. Leading Vulcanologists have been disappearing. Some have been found dead. Box is ordered to find out why. He decides to inspect the body of one such man, and poses as a grieving relative to visit the absurdly named Tom Bowler (Tombola?) funeral parlour. A girl who turns up to serve as a fellow mourner assists him. The coffin that held the professor has alas just been sent to Naples, says the funeral home proprietor. Who has branches in Italy too? Box sails to Naples and starts his investigations afresh. He gets help from a young adventurous drug dealer with who he has a gay affair. The man tells him that the best place for a wild night out is The Vesuvius Club. It turns out to be a very decadent brothel. Joined by the girl from England, Box and his male friend investigate the cellars of the club and, surviving an attack by the purple zombies used to kill anyone asking to many questions, they discover the fate of the Vulcanology scientists. Their brains have been stolen and used to help one surviving scientist (now posing in drag as the Vesuvius Club brothel madam) to help him set off a bomb that will set off Vesuvius, Etna and other volcanoes to destroy Italy completely. The heroes get rid of the villain on the slopes of the volcano, but now the girl from England tries to kill Box. The man who’s glass eye he keeps washer father. Box and his male ally throw her into the volcano where she burns in the lava. The men decide to become lifelong partners in espionage and in other ways too…. Silly and exciting and shameless rollicking good fun.

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