Listeners to the live stream of the latest edition of the Nerd Mentality were expecting something interesting. Wolf Tyler had a Special Mystery Guest, who was going to lift the lid on a secret from the past of the old TV show Vixens On The Void – not the flashy remake but the original version full of wobbly sets, skimpy costumes and countless obsessive fans. And those fans who tuned in certainly did get something interesting, when the Special Mystery Guest murdered Wolf live on air – and did it without ever being introduced…

Kit Pelham, a professional fan, was a friend of Wolf and she and her friends band together to find his killer. It all seems to centre around Lily Sparkes, an extra who appeared on the show twice back in the eighties and disappeared soon after. Engineering a reunion of the cast and crew who knew Lily in the guise of a blu-ray documentary, can Kit uncover the secret that killed Wolf? And will it kill her too?

This one sort of crept up on me. I’ve said before how much I love Nev Fountain’s fiction. The thriller Painkiller (as N J Fountain) is one of the best unreliable-narrator books that I’ve read and the Mervyn Stone mysteries – Geek Tragedy, DVD Extras Include: Murder and Cursed Among Sequels – are exquisite classic mysteries with a sci-fi setting that just hits the spot. And the audio play The Axeman Cometh is simply one of the cleverest things that I’ve ever heard.

[Note, if you’re reading this before the end of Sunday 28^th July, the ebooks of the Mervyn Stone books and the download of The Axeman Cometh are currently on sale for a pittance from the Big Finish website here. You will not regret it… And there’s a bundle of great Doctor Who stories too…]

This is a continuation of the Mervyn Stone universe, as Vixens From The Void was the core theme in those books too, Mervyn being the primary writer and script editor for the show, but we’ve moved on with a new set of lead characters. Interestingly the revival of the show seems to only get a few mentions, so I’m guessing Nev’s saving that for the next book in the series. And one of the reasons that I’m hoping that is that I need to read more of this series as soon as possible.

Let’s start with Kit, as I could talk about her for a while. She’s a complex lead character, clearly neurodiverse in some way, but detail is never given as to her specific issues. Anything different in her approach to life or her reactions is just presented as a given thing, and the reader and most of the cast of characters just go with it. There is no need to label her with anything, she’s just a bit different. One lovely touch, I’m sure based on a real thing, is that she wears a smiley face badge that if she is having trouble, she turns it upside down so that her friends know. She’s one of the most original sleuths that I’ve seen for a while and I really want to read more about her.

Nev has put a lot of work over the years into creating the world of Vixens From The Void and it provides the perfect background for the book. Readers who aren’t Fans of science fiction will not find themselves confused, but those of us with TARDIS pyjamas will find a lot of nods and in-jokes. But there are plenty of non-genre bits to raise a smile too.

And then we get to the mystery, both of what happened in the past and what happened in the present. There are clues all over the place and I saw some of them. I did. But I didn’t put things together and I’m really glad about that. I missed the murderer completely and, as ever with Nev’s mysteries, the story you think you’re reading is not quite what you’re actually reading. He’s a very clever plotter and an accomplished writer on top of that.

All in all, this is a wonderful book, that beautiful combination of something I couldn’t put down and something that I didn’t want to finish. What more could you ask for? Well, a sequel, obviously…

The Fan Who Knew Too Much is out now in paperback and ebook from Titan Books.