The Remains of Sherlock Holmes

(Strawberry Press, £12.99)

The first Sherlock Holmes spoof is said to have appeared in 1892, and even Mark Twain once tried his hand.

Since then, hundreds more stories have appeared featuring Holmes and his fictional comrades than ever came from Conan Doyle. More recent imitators include the late Oxford author Michael Dibdin, better known for the Italian-set Inspector Zen stories, currently on BBC TV.

Now comes Paul W. Nash, a rare books expert who worked for 13 years at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and founded his own press in 1989. These seven stories, appropriately typeset in Baskerville, have painstaking footnotes and seem, to the casual observer, to be fairly authentic.

They are certainly entertaining, conjuring up a Gothic London peopled with hackney carriage drivers, giants, dwarves, hunchbacks and bizarre men’s clubs.

No doubt enthusiasts will find plenty to quibble with, and Nash is sometimes a little unsubtle in revealing his knowledge of period detail. But it’s difficult not to be won over by his humour, with in-jokes peppered throughout. One of the most ambitious stories, The Mystery of Dorian Gray, ends with Holmes suggesting that the narcissistic Gray’s diary might perhaps one day be published, disguised as fiction.