Mark Gattiss - The Vesuvius Club

[Johnlprobert]

THEY WORE DARK TROUSERS is my favourite of the Bunsens. I really liked Devil in Amber - far more than The Vesuvius Club because whereas the latter was a Jules Verne pastiche with added gay sex, Devil in Amber is a Wheatley pastiche with all kinds of sex. The third volume, Black Butterfly, is not as good but it's a quick read-in-an-afternoon job and all three volumes are staying in the Probert Towers library

[dem bones]

Jun 3, 2009 8:18:37 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Devil in Amber is a Wheatley pastiche with all kinds of sex.

And you didn't get on with it, FM?

I've been leafing through a modest stack of Wheatley reviews, interviews, etc., recently and can't help thinking the likeable old pompous, self-aggrandizing, chauvinistic ultra-snob is beyond parody. One of my favourite's is an interview he gave David Blundy of the Sunday Times in July 1971:

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC

....... He knows too much about the occult to dabble himself, although he’s invited to all the best orgies and Black Masses in Town. “I always turn them down. They can be dangerous. They can interfere with your work and your family.” Once one of his friends tried to tame a demon and lost all his teeth. In fact Wheatley doesn’t take today’s Black Magic people very seriously. “Only a few have real power. Most of them use it as an excuse for taking their clothes off and having an orgy. An excuse for rogering.”

..... Wheatley once had a reputation for raciness. “It used to be a canon in the old days that thriller writers never mentioned sex. I was the first to treat characters as human beings, jumping into bed with people who weren’t actually their wives". But he knows where to draw the line. “Some of these modern novels are too explicit. They have chaps doing absurd feats, rogering everyone. It’s impractical. You can’t be impractical. You can’t roger that many women, even in your youth.”

Just 'cause he couldn't get it up anymore ....

Still haven't finished Vesuvius Club but i will. This They Wore Dark Trousers sounds a good bet too, so thanks for nudging me in the right direction gents.

[franklinmarsh]

Jun 3, 2009 9:33:39 GMT dem bones said:

Jun 3, 2009 8:18:37 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Devil in Amber is a Wheatley pastiche with all kinds of sex.

And you didn't get on with it, FM? h1.ripway.com/Spook%20Puke/Folder%20Name/03deadfaint.gif

[/i]

I've been leafing through a modest stack of Wheatley reviews, interviews, etc., recently and can't help thinking the likable old pompous, self-aggrandizing, chauvinistic ultra-snob is beyond parody.
[/quote]

I know, I know. I read an interview in the Grauniad where MG cited Den as an influence, but that must come later. Might have to try Chapter Two at least. The third one does sound a bit more like my kind of stuff being in the Fleming/Le Carre mould (allegedly).

Sterling DW quotes, Dem. You couldn't make it up.

[dem bones]

Mark Gatiss - The Devil In Amber (Pocket, 2006)

Cover illustration: Paul Catherall: Cover concept: Ian Bass

Blurb
At last! LUCIFER BOX, His Majesty's most daring — and dissolute — secret agent returns in a mystery set some twenty years after the scandalous events of the best-selling THE VESUVIUS CLUB.

This time he faces treachery within his own service and a fascist messiah with a peculiarly Satanic design ...

Don't know what happened there. One minute I was getting along famously with The Vesuvius Club, a blink of an eye and I'd forgotten it existed. Good thing The Devil In Amber turned up in Charity Shop this morning to get me back on the trail. Moment of acute embarrassment as I read through the Bunsen Club titles and realised that they were possibly very made up - rushed home to erase They Wore Dark Trousers and 'Slapper's "Terrier" Masterton Hits Out from my wants list in case I ever show it to somebody important. . certain beastly cads are in for a jolly good Wheatley-style rogering from me next time I catch up with them if they don't have a care!

N.B. My absolute favourite of the Bunsens is the "also available "Fuck Off, Jeeves."

[Johnlprobert]

I'll be very interested to hear what you think, Mr D! I very much suspect you're in for a rollickingly good time!

[cw67q]

I read the first novel and didn't like it nearly as much as I wanted (and expected) to, despite being a big fan of Mr Gattiss.

Part of my difficulty was that the characters, humour, spirit and style of writing reminded very much of Kyril Bonfiglioli (although there isn't much of the supernatural, real or otherwise, about KB's art crime capers). It would be very difficult to come near to the perfection of KB's Mortdecai novels, and I think MG's book suffered by comparison.

My wife bought me a boxed set of the three Vesuvius Club novels last xmas, I might still crack one of the later ones open, but I have so many other books to get through.

Just so as to finish on a more positive note: MG's work in the arena of ghost stories and related genres for tv is legendry (and I don't even like tv very much for the most part).

- chris

ps if you haven't read KB, you really should, these are the three mordecai novels:

Don't Point That Thing At Me
Something Nasty In The Woodshed
After You With The Pistol

available in an omnibus edition.

I don't whether or not I've read the posthumous/collaboration "Mordecai's Moustache", but I might have. As is the way of things in the realms of my memory all the mordecai books have become megred together in my recollection. The high seas historical (and thoroughly amoral) adventure novel "All the Tea in China" is also good. Darker than the Mordecai series, but perhaps not quite as endearing.

oops my postscipt is longer than my message

[franklinmarsh]

Flap me sideways! Almost finished The Devil In Amber (just read the breathtaking Sabbat sequence which almost out-Wheatley's Pendennis) at the second go, and it's a corker. I haven't read enough Sallust stuff to decide whether the 1930s derring-do first half is a nod at DW's Greg, but the monstrously devilish second half is prime DW pastiche. Superb!