Black Butterfly is the third and final novel in Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock....

' Lucifer Box

Lucifer Box

Lucifer Box is a fictional character created by Mark Gatiss. He appears in the novels The Vesuvius Club, The Devil in Amber and Black Butterfly. A "lucifer box" is the same as a match box, lucifer being the old name for matches.- Persona :...

 trilogy, which deals with the exploits of a bisexual British detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

 and secret agent

Secret Agent

Secret Agent is a British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young...

. The previous volumes were The Vesuvius Club

The Vesuvius Club

The Vesuvius Club is a historical spy story by Mark Gatiss. It is the first novel in a series featuring the spy, Lucifer Box. The second novel, The Devil in Amber, was initially published in October 2006 and became more widely available from 6 November 2006.-Plot summary:Joshua Reynolds, of the...

 and The Devil in Amber

The Devil in Amber

The Devil in Amber is the second novel in a series featuring the fictional spy, Lucifer Box. It was initially published in October 2006 and became more widely available from 6 November 2006.-Plot introduction:...

.

Plot summary

It is 1953, shortly after the coronation of Elizabeth II. Box is now nearing retirement, and has also been left with an unexpected offspring, Christmas Box. However, he discovers that elderly pillars of the British establishment are meeting unexpected deaths through participation in reckless risk taking and accidents. He tracks the perpetrators to Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, is assisted by Turkish-Geordie

Geordie

Geordie is a regional nickname for a person from the Tyneside region of the north east of England, or the name of the English-language dialect spoken by its inhabitants...

 double agent Whitley Bey and meets Afro-Japanese gay agent Kingdom Kum, and also that the aforementioned figures were poisoned by a malignant chemical derived from the eponymous insect. From there, he travels to Kingston

Kingston, Jamaica

Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...

, Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, where he meets the chief culprit behind his misadventures- the progeny of an old enemy, who is using a "New Scout

Scouting

Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....

 Movement" to mask his mass poisoning schemes.

With that resolved, Box is knighted, and renews the acquaintance of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, whom he once met at a party on Armistice Day

Armistice Day

Armistice Day is on 11 November and commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day...

1918.