book cover of The Vesuvius Club
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The Vesuvius Club

(2004)
(The first book in the Lucifer Box series)
A novel by

 
 
Awards
Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year Best Novel (nominee)
London on the 1890s. It is a world that seems familiar to us: Hansom cabs rattling through fog-choked streets, gin-swilling aesthetes rubbing shoulders with movers and shakers of British Imperial grandeur. And beneath the confident facade, naturally, an underworld of sinister Tongs, crazed anarchists, murder, and seething vice. So much for the familiar picture of comforting Victoriana. But this is the world of Lucifer Box and nothing is quite as it first appears. Lucifer Box is the most fashionable portrait painter of his day: trading bon mots with the best of them and ruthlessly exploiting his talent and dandified beauty to enter every level of this intriguing society. From his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (well, someone has to live there...) to his vast studio in Chelsea, from the snow-choked streets of Tsarist St petersburg to the sun-bleached hotels of Mentone, life is one long, dazzling party. Of course, leading a double life is terribly fashionable and Lucifer Box is not to be outdone. For what Box's fashionable circle would never believe is that their witty, cheerfully bisexual friend is also a secret agent...

Genre: Historical Mystery

Praise for this book

"Darkly erudite and fiendishly unputdownable - Lucifer Box is the most likeable scoundrel since Flashman." - Jasper Fforde


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