The Devil in Amber

Set in the 1920s, British author Gatiss's second novel (after The Vesuvius Club), an awkward mix of P.G. Wodehouse and Seabury Quinn, finds English spy Lucifer Box targeted both by his country's foes and by rivals within the British secret service. After an assignment in New York almost costs him his life, Box comes across a mysterious parchment that appears to be of interest to a megalomaniacal fascist leader, Olympus Mons, who heads an international band named F.A.U.S.T., an acronym for the Fascist Anglo-United States Trinity. Box's chance discovery that his sister, Pandora, has become part of Mons's inner circle provides him with an in, leading him back across the Atlantic, and in and out of a variety of sexual encounters. The light-hearted action sequences don't quite mesh with a supernatural element involving the devil.