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Camp bed

and Catherine Humble
Sat 9 Jul 2005 20.40 EDT

The Vesuvius Club

Mark Gatiss

Simon & Schuster £6.99, pp240

Not content with his small and large screen antics, The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss has upped sticks from Royston Vasey to try his hand in an altogether different setting. Witty, debonair and rakishly handsome, Lucifer Box, portrait-painter and dandy extraordinaire, cuts quite a dash in polite Edwardian society.

But few realise that he's also a secret agent in the employ of His Majesty's Government. So when Britain's leading scientists mysteriously start dying, who better to send for than the indefatigable Box?

Gatiss's fondness for outlandish character names such as Kitty Backlash and Miss Midsomer Knight may be reminiscent of Ian Fleming, the creator of a certain other English super-spy. However, since James Bond lacked both a sense of humour and a weakness for well-toned male buttocks, the similarities end there. Still, if you like your adventures rollicking and your heroes camp, then Lucifer Box is your man. SB

One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

Melissa P

Serpent's Tail £6.99. pp121

The cover describes this as 'the worldwide erotic bestseller', so it comes as a surprise to learn that the story is written by a 16-year-old girl. Melissa P's impressive autobiographical novel details a Sicilian schoolgirl's sexual conquests. Despite receiving condemnation from the Pope, the book isn't sexually gratuitous; instead it exposes a young woman's desperate drive to dispel the empty tedium of her life. She uses sex as a means to cure her deepening sense of nihilism. Yet each sexual encounter leaves her further deflated and in search of something more. The novel makes a rather sophisticated commentary on desire, showing it as stemming from a lack in the self which it ceaselessly attempts to heal. Combining adult subject matter with a child's imagination, the author succeeds in powerfully capturing a young woman's sexual coming of age. CH

The In-between World of Vikram Lall

MG Vassanji

Canongate £7.99, pp439

From his self-imposed exile on the shores of Lake Ontario, Vikram Lall looks back on a life that has led to him being condemned as one of the most corrupt men in Africa. Growing up as part of Kenya's Asian community during the unsettled Fifties, Lall is caught in a racial no-man's-land. As attacks by Mau Mau rebels come ever closer to home, even his friendship with a young African boy and two white British children isn't immune from the convoluted racial mores of colonial Africa.

But it is Lall's unwillingness to commit that will ultimately lead to his corruption. Both a powerful evocation of a chapter from recent African history and a moving family drama, Vassanji's novel is a personal story painted on an epic canvas. SB


Jeanette Winterson

Harper Perennial £7.99, pp260

There's an air of fable about this latest novel by the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. When a gust of wind carries her mother over the edge of the cliff where they live, Silver and her only friend and companion, DogJim are given a home by Mr Pew, the blind and impossibly old keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse.

As well as the rituals of lighthouse keeping, the old man entertains her by telling stories, chief of which is that of Babel Dark, a brooding and tortured 19th-century clergyman. As Dark's story unfolds, Silver begins to see her own life as yet another unfinished tale, a journey through love, loss and learning that she has to follow. With its lyrical narrative and slippery sense of time, this is an elusive yet satisfying novel, reminding us that truth isn't always to be found in cold facts. SB