Disappearing Egyptologists, mummy’s curses, scarabs carved with mysterious and shape-shifting symbols, horrifying apparitions seemingly from beyond the tomb…. Not the usual scenario associated with the supremely rational Sherlock Holmes. Can it be that for once there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy?

Well, JM Reinbold, in her very first foray into the world of Conan Doyle’s detective, leads the reader a hardly merry but most intriguing dance into a sinister world where nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Ms Reinbold [right] is no first-time author, having already created a contemporary detective in the person of DCI Rylan Crowe. She has even published a well-regarded collection of haiku poetry. Now, having decided it is fun to write Sherlock mysteries, she has already embarked on the second, as well as another Rylan Crowe mystery: just like Charles Dickens, who was known to work on two novels at the same time!

The Adventure of the Black Pharoah starts when Lord Silverpin and his sister, the stunningly beautiful Vivienne (‘the most perfect specimen of feminity’ that Watson, with his usual uncritical eye for a pretty girl, had ever seen) approach Holmes to request him to discover what has happened to their father. Lord Convarron has been missing for two months, with no results to date from the police search. Having returned from an excavation at the Black Pyramid, so named because a cruel and blood-thirsty pharaoh was walled up alive inside it, Convarron disappeared while locked in his study one night, preparing for an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall in London. Was there a curse on the excavation as the local hired workers believed? One of the other explorers has already been found brutally murdered, with his hands chopped off….

Holmes agrees to investigate, but suspects Lord Silverpin and his sister are concealing something from him, which indeed they are: the existence of two ancient and powerful artefacts avidly desired by cultists, familiar and unfamiliar villains, and even the British government, in the rotund shape of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft. The subsequent search leads Holmes and Watson to the very brink of destruction.

A delightful piece of hokum, which should please Holmes fans everywhere. I look forward to Ms Reinbold’s next novel.     

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Black Pharaoh is available from MX publishing https://mxpublishing.com/collections/missing-an-audio-tag/products/sherlock-holmes-and-the-adventure-of-the-black-pharaoh-paperback and from Amazon etc.