Anthony Bathurst, the gentleman sleuth, was musing to his friend Chief Inspector Andrew MacMorran that is very rare to find a killer who kills simply for pleasure – but it seems that such a case has just fallen into his lap.

Months previously, Mark Kenriston disappeared on the day before his wedding never to be seen again. The disappearance was heralded by a phantom hunting horn blowing across the moor. Now in a month’s time, his sister, Juliet, is also about to be married. But something sinister is stalking her bedchamber, scaring her half to death. And the horn has started to sound once more…

As you may well be aware, finding copies of the Brian Flynn titles to get reprinted was something of a struggle at times. Even when the only copy was in the hands of the estate (and they didn’t have a complete set), my job for writing the introductions necessitated using my Oxford connections and reading the title in the Bodleian. Now I’ve read many a book there, including most of the Glyn Carr titles and many a John Rhode, but it’s not the cosiest place to read, and as such, you tend to speed-read a little and not really sit back and savour the books. So as the months, weeks and days tick down to the new Brian Flynn releases, I thought I’d help you get in the mood and at the same time treat myself by re-reading some of the titles that I’ve only read in the Bodleian.

The Horn is one such book. It’s a clear homage to The Speckled Band – Bathurst even says so on a couple of occasions – and has an appearance of another Holmesian… thing. It doesn’t go as far as The Triple Bite, which establishes Bathurst being in a world where Holmes was real, but the sinister atmosphere and young lady being terrorised in her own bed isn’t exactly subtle about its origins.

What I found fascinating on the second read is how little seems to be happening and yet how gripped I was. Mark is “disappeared” for most of the book – Bathurst doesn’t trip over his body in chapter two and it is late in the day when the villain makes his move against Juliet and her fiancé. But there is a sense of something nebulously terrible on the horizon. The arrival of an envelope containing the buttons, carefully cut from Mark’s suit, is a very sinister portent of the cruelness of the perpetrator, and as the wedding day gets closer, things get tenser and tenser until… well, spoilers.

Clue-wise, it’s not that desperately well-clued and I did think one bit of misdirection was a little obvious. I’d forgotten who the villain is, but when it got to that one scene (late in the day) and I remembered thinking the first time through how obvious it seemed to make their identity.

All in all, this is a fun book. Maybe not quite as much of a classic as I remember – it’s not very well clued and the villain does one particular cliché that usually (although not here) annoys me. A highly entertaining fun read. And a pittance as an ebook from the lovely folks at Dean Street Press – just skip the idiot at the beginning unless you like the sound of my own voice.