I wish I could say I had enjoyed Chris and Jen Sugden’s novel High Vaultage more than I did, because there are many individual elements of this story which work extremely well. Functioning as a stand-alone novelization of the audio fiction podcast Victoriocity (a work which was also co-written by the authors), High Vaultage is set in a steampunk version of the 1800s. Focusing on the comedically bureaucratic city-state of Even Greater London, the novel revolves around the exploits of the private investigators Archibald Fleet and Clara Entwhistle. Over the course of this story, Fleet and Clara (as they are referred to in the text) work to solve those crimes which the authorities of this city have deemed beneath their concern, and bring a sense of justice to a chaotic world whose inhumanly vast industries continually seem to be rewriting the basic fabric of reality itself.
As a setting, Even Greater London is a creatively imagined world, with Fleet and Clara likewise representing grounded voices from which this absurd and oftentimes frightening realm can be perceived. This is a city in which, among many other things, a massive electrical tower has mysteriously plunged much of England into a perpetual ice age, where agents of the incomprehensibly complex Brunel corporation routinely demolish and rebuild entire neighborhoods without warning, and where Queen Victoria, after enduring numerous partially successful assassination attempts, has been transformed into a giant robot that now rules over the city as a “mechanical monarch.”
Unfortunately, despite the creativity of this story’s world, the book is hampered by a style of humor that detracts from the novel’s broader potential for satire. On the moment-to-moment level, High Vaultage’s narrative is occupied by scenes in which its two protagonists confront a series of increasingly bizarre and cartoonish side characters, with the strange and absurd behavior of these individuals ultimately highlighted as the main source of the novel’s comedy. Yet, because these many one-off jokes never lead to a larger conclusion, this humor ends up coming across only as a flat distraction from the main story that the authors are trying to tell.
One example of this emerges early on. As the story opens, we are introduced to Fleet as he wanders the streets of Even Greater London in search of discarded newspapers. Having previously worked as an officer of Scotland Yard, Fleet has recently lost his job due to an accident, and for this reason he has teamed up with a friend of his—the aspiring crime journalist Clara Entwhistle. Together, they have founded “Fleet-Entwhistle Private Investigations.” Currently, Fleet and Clara run this detective agency out of a rented room located above a combination Coffee House, Beginners’ Pottery Studio, and “Museum of Nearby Horrible Murder” that is run by a friend of Fleet’s mother. Fleet begins each day searching every available newspaper for word of unsolved crimes via which he and Clara could build a reputation for their detective agency.
As Fleet arrives at his office on one such morning with his collected newspapers, he is confronted by his landlord, Mrs. Pomligan. As a very annoyed Pomligan reminds Fleet, she has provided him a room entirely for free, but only on the condition that he locate her missing dog. Yet, in spite of the favor, this is a task which Fleet has so far failed to accomplish. Consequently, now that Fleet and Clara’s detective business has been in operation for some time, Pomligan has begun wondering whether or not she should formally begin charging Fleet rent.
This exchange establishes the scenario from which the main story progresses. Despite their ambitions, Fleet and Clara have so far failed to draw more than a few minor clients to their detective agency, and the book thus begins as Fleet faces the possibility that Pomligan might start charging him a rent which he knows he will be unable to pay. Unfortunately, rather than focusing on the humor of this scenario—for example by providing a comedic description of Fleet’s so-far unsuccessful efforts to use his skills as a former police officer to locate Pomligan’s missing dog—the book instead uses this moment to turn its critique on Pomligan herself. As Fleet’s conversation with Pomligan continues, the scene highlights first her failure to understand pet ownership, and then later her inability to pick up on a pun that Fleet makes regarding the word “leads.” As a neglected pan of bacon begins burning in the background, the exchange reads:
Fleet ran a hand over his face wearily. “Didn't that dog just appear here one morning, and come and go every few days? Is he even yours?”
“He's spent enough nights kipping under this here counter.”Some bacon fat hit the ceiling.
“I’m not sure that's how pet ownership works, Mrs Pomligan.”
“And I’m not sure this is how getting me to recommend your detective business to prospective clients works!”
Fleet threw up his hands. “I’ll keep looking.”
Mrs Pomligan nodded once to indicate he had made the right decision.
“And I’ll keep you posted if I find any leads,” said Fleet, with an eyebrow.
“I should bloody hope so!”
“Any leads, Mrs Pomligan.”
"Yes! You’d better!"
Fleet stared at Mrs Pomligan, who stared back at him. He was not sure why he had attempted this. (pp. 24-25)
This scene represents the first instance of a pattern that unfortunately emerges repeatedly in High Vaultage’s humor. Fleet is, after all, the one who has promised to find Pomligan’s dog, and so, however innocent his failure may be, it seems natural that Fleet should be the one towards whom the story focuses its condescension. Instead, the scene concludes with a moment that seems to demonstrate how Mrs. Pomligan is apparently not very intelligent (and therefore not someone for whom Fleet should be required to work).
On its own this error could be minor, but similar moments appear repeatedly throughout the novel. As the book’s main plot begins to advance, Fleet and Clara become drawn into a mystery regarding a missing engineer and must navigate various levels of Even Greater London’s sprawling society as they investigate a series of kidnappings which the authorities have refused to examine. Yet rather than using this storyline as a framework for a larger social satire about the incompetence of this city’s institutions, the authors instead present the reader with a series of unrelated sequences in which Fleet and Clara are forced to interact with characters who, much like Pomligan, are very overtly presented as fools.
For instance, in one scene, Fleet meets with an elderly engineer named Percival Trombley, and discovers that Trombley is so obsessed with engineering that he is, at least at first, incapable of answering any question not related to this field. What follows is a lengthy exchange in which Fleet struggles to communicate that he is a private investigator investigating a crime, while Trombley comedically misinterprets Fleet’s words as evidence first that he is an engineer designing a sewer system, then that Fleet must be an academic studying engineering theory, and finally that Fleet must be an investigator of collapsed buildings.
In another scene, Fleet and Clara uncover a hidden code and meet with a famous cryptographer, Professor McCabe, in the hope that she can help them decipher it. The humor of the ensuing exchange derives from how McCabe not only cannot realize that Fleet and Clara do not have time for her impromptu lecture on the history of cryptography, but also (bizarrely) from her increasingly strenuous efforts to open a can of coffee beans which she keeps beside her desk. Similarly, in still another scene, Fleet and Clara meet with an eighty-year-old archivist named Miss Boothroyd while searching for an important document—but discover that this archivist’s vision is so poor that she is incapable of doing her job (the humor of this particular exchange, concerningly, deriving from a joke about how Boothroyd has too many pairs of reading glasses).
Sometimes this formula does produce funny interactions. However, the slapstick nature of these scenes can feel at best misdirected and at worst cruel. Even Greater London is established as an absurdly bureaucratic city whose vast but unthinking industries routinely fail to accomplish the tasks for which they have been designed. Yet rather than structuring this novel’s satire around an exploration of these systemic failures, High Vaultage instead focuses its moment-to-moment comedy on random side characters whose individual personality quirks are unrelated to the novel’s overarching themes. Over and over again, the humor of High Vaultage roots itself not in the ways that the institutions of Even Greater London prove ineffective, but in the inability of the individual people of this city to perform the jobs which Fleet and Clara require of them.
And all of this is unfortunate because, as becomes apparent over the course of this novel, there is actually an important story here, which Chris and Jen Sugden are using High Vaultage to tell—and one that moreover does utilize the potential for social satire embodied by this book’s setting.
The main storyline of High Vaultage begins after Fleet and Clara are visited in their office by a solitary woman named Kathleen Price. Living on the banks of the river Thames, Kathleen recently witnessed an apparent kidnapping outside her apartment—an incident in which a man whom she had spotted standing by the side of the road was dragged unwillingly into a passing carriage. Frightened for the safety of this stranger, Kathleen reported this crime to the police, only for her efforts to be ignored due to how Scotland Yard has recently diverted all available crime-fighting resources towards investigating a series of high-profile bank robberies—robberies so skillfully carried out that even the banks in question are unsure what was stolen.
It’s in this way that Fleet and Clara are soon drawn into an elaborate conspiracy that challenges their abilities as detectives. Ultimately, both characters begin investigating not only many other similarly ignored kidnappings, but also a plot by several high-profile businessmen to force their elderly competitor into retirement; a mystery surrounding a local governess who is living under a false name; the aforementioned bank robberies that have fully consumed the entirety of Scotland Yard; and finally (of course) the lingering conundrum of Mrs. Pomligan’s lost dog.
While these storylines at first come across as randomly as the “humorous” side characters, as the book nears its conclusion the true function of High Vaultage’s narrative begins to emerge. Fleet, as protagonist, is soon revealed to be recovering from a traumatizing accident in his immediate past—a bizarre incident which left him legally (though not physically) dead, and which resulted in his heart being replaced with a ticking metronome. As Fleet struggles to come to terms with his own recent confrontation with Even Greater London’s chaotic and dehumanizing reality, he finds himself driven to face a mystery that he seems to view as a manifestation of the accident which haunts him to this day.
It’s because of this more subtle storyline that, while Fleet and Clara’s many misadventures still unfortunately follow the same formulaic style of humor showcased in Fleet’s very first exchange with Pomligan, the book’s larger story develops into a more profound narrative in which Fleet and Clara struggle to find their own personal ways of responding to life within this chaotic world. In one unexpectedly reflective moment, Fleet meets with a reverend named Kilburn at a church which seems to worship machines, only to discover that this outwardly eccentric individual actually possesses a humble wisdom which Fleet desperately needs. As these two characters discuss Fleet’s trauma regarding his accident, Kilburn suggests what seems to be the intended function of this novel’s absurdist humor—that Fleet’s job as a detective, rather than being to uphold the law, or to impose some romanticized concept of order on Even Greater London’s sprawlingly chaotic society, is instead to affirm the value of humanity in the face of chaos.
”Does it occur to you, Inspector, that you and I are in the same line of work?”
“Ha!”
“It’s true! You bring wrongdoers to justice. You and Miss Entwhistle. People can feel that right has been done, that the world makes a little more sense than it otherwise would. And more to the point, with your agency, are you not helping people the police turned away? It strikes me that you are also in the business of giving people faith—not the same kind I dish out here, of course, but a solid bit of faith nonetheless—and that knowing that you do this will bring some people, the neediest people, peace.”
He paused, and caught Fleet’s eyes in his own. “You are the same person you were before.”
Fleet stared back at the reverend, who pulled a smile and took a swig of cocoa. Some moments passed, and Fleet was vaguely aware of an owl hooting somewhere outside. (pp. 353-354)
Had High Vaultage’s humor been less individualistic in its focus, then this later storyline could have balanced the book with a much gentler narrative. This would have been, by its ending, a novel which used its creatively imagined steampunk world not only to produce a deliberately outlandish story about a continent-sized city that is ruled over by a robotic version of Queen Victoria, but a book that used its exaggerated concepts also to better explore the ethical philosophy which both of its protagonists strive to uphold.
Like most mystery novels, High Vaultage ends with Fleet and Clara finally solving the crime which they have spent this story pursuing. In so doing, they succeed in affirming an order to Even Greater London’s society that leaves the book’s many disparate plots neatly resolved. By the book’s final line, even the subplot regarding Mrs. Pomligan’s dog has been definitively concluded, with Fleet managing to capture this escaped animal shortly after the climax, returning it to his landlord.
And yet, in spite of all of these carefully resolved threads, it’s hard not to feel that maybe there’s something in this novel’s story which not only Fleet and Clara have overlooked, but the authors as well. For a book that claims to be about the necessity of asserting human compassion in the face of chaos, there’s a lingering element of cruelty to High Vaultage’s humor which, unfortunately, remains undetected.