By James Lovegrove

Titan, out now

In the aftermath of the Great War and the Spanish Flu, Watson picks up his pen to recount three cases, all linked to one family…

More than usual, there’s a side to James Lovegrove’s latest Holmes and Watson tale that brings it within SFB parameters – each of the three cases that are delineated within have a supernatural, or other paranormal, element to them, even if, as one might expect, Sherlock Holmes has little time for such superstitious claptrap. Lovegrove/Watson revels in the descriptions of the appropriate backgrounds and there are times you almost don’t want Holmes to reveal the truth.

Inevitably some of this involves sleight of hand, but there’s an even cleverer piece of prestidigitation at work here. On the surface, this is another excellent addition to Lovegrove’s Holmes canon, with some sparkling dialogue between our two protagonists, well-drawn landscapes, moments of pure horror and deductions that come from the evidence (something that a few pastiches of recent times have failed to achieve). But delve beneath, and it’s also a very well composed psychological study of the development of someone truly evil – not in the melodramatic sense of Professor Moriarty or some cruelly deformed henchman attacking the noble Watson as he goes about his business, but true banal evil that may eventually reveal itself in someone of the ilk of the BTK Killer or the Son of Sam… but which, more frighteningly, often never reaches such levels of recognition, and might be the never caught killer of your local cats. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems considerably more terrifying…

Verdict: A strong Holmes novel with a sharp edge. 9/10

Paul Simpson