Fun Edwardian tale full of adventure

The Vesuvius Club, by Mark Gatiss, Simon & Schuster, €16.30.

Noel Coward once remarked upon the strange potency of cheap music. He forgot to mention that cheap literature can be just as powerful. Few people like to admit it, but it's an undeniable fact that popular fiction provides more straightforward enjoyment to the great reading public than most of the so-called literary masterworks that critics like to fawn over.

And while this hack ...