THE DOMINO MEN

The House of Windsor resembles that of Atreus while the Marx Brothers housesit, in this credibility-challenged sequel to British author Barnes’s debut period melodrama The Somnambulist (2008).

This one, while set in a recognizable present time, defies both logic and clear summary. Nevertheless, here’s what seems to be afoot. When civil-service filing clerk Henry Lamb visits his grandfather, who has suffered a stroke, Henry is accosted, in a way, as he leaves the hospital, when a window cleaner falls to his death, but not before uttering the last words, “The answer is yes.” That message will authorize Henry’s entry into the shadowy world of the Directorate, a secret society (also active in The Somnambulist) waging an ongoing war against the current royal family. For Good Queen Victoria, we learn, had done something quite naughty—selling the souls of her subjects to a monstrous entity known as Leviathan, presently chained below the earth (rather like poor Prometheus), but likely to be unleashed if the Windsors’ wickedness is not deflected by the hardy boys of the Directorate. You see, this drug-addicted Prince of Wales will keep mucking things up. Henry is a somewhat beguiling Unlikely Hero, and things do improve periodically with the appearances of two especially loathsome hired killers, who are perhaps on loan from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Alas, even their enthusiastic sadism grows tiresome. Likewise, the display of disgustingly visceral special effects loses its charm after several orgies of slaughter. The plot is kept boiling, but the effect is somewhat like that of a toy train repeatedly hiccupping each time it passes over the same bump in the rug. There weren’t this many climaxes in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer trilogy (besides, it was funnier).

Charles and Camilla will not be amused.