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'What do you know of the real world, with real people and real passions, Mr Sherlock Holmes? You just sit here in your dry and dusty room working on clues and theories, never considering the hurt, anguish, and tragedy in which your cases are soaked. People are merely pieces of the puzzle to you, like figures on a chessboard. As long as the mystery is solved you have no consideration of how their lives are affected by your actions. You do not care.'

So snarls the villain in Stuart Davies's latest 'continuing adventure of Sherlock Holmes', pitting our more-intrepid-than-usual hero against the cold, blond aristocratic madman, Sebastian Melmoth (whose name you will recognise as the one-time pseudonym of Oscar Wilde, taken in turn from Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer). Melmoth and his companion have more than a touch of Oscar and Bosie but, more importantly, will stop at nothing to acquire an ancient Egyptian papyrus supposedly containing the secret of resurrection and eternal life. And, as Melmoth warns, Holmes almost loses his life and reputation by being a shade too analytical. Almost – for he is the great detective, splendidly resurrected again by Stuart Davies, the ace Sherlockian. An easy page-turner.

Russell James

The Scroll of the Dead

by David Stuart Davies

Titan Books paperback, £7.99, 978 1 848 566 493 0