Into this foetid atmosphere arrives a famous English writer. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has crossed the Atlantic for a lecture tour, but together with his friend, the great Harry Houdini, is plunged into a dark, nightmarish world of Poe, murder and spiritualism. Doyle gets to speak, albeit elliptically, to Poe, even though this is many years after the macabre-mister's tragic early death; one writer appearing to the other as a vaporous melancholic spirit. While each is engaged on their respective countrywide career, to Doyle and Houdini falls the unenviable role of detective as they recognise the ever-tightening circles this killer is inscribing about the celebrated escapologist.

Nevermore is author Hjortsberg's first novel in a while, since Falling Angel, his malodorous Faustian tale turned, to mixed effect, for the screen as Angel Heart. (Hjortsberg's book is a far more intimidating prospect than Parker's over-loaded film). And as a novel this will inevitably suffer, coming as does so soon after Twin Peaks-man Mark Frost's not dissimilar The List of Seven. There the embryonic author chased secret societies across Victorian England and uncovered the template for his most famous creation. Here Doyle is moving towards his twilight, a successful and esteemed writer, playing Watson to Houdini's more flamboyant, youthful Holmes.

It would be hard to pull all this off as straight suspense, although Hjortsberg hints towards darker dealings with his seances and the cod-Egyptian trappings of renowned medium Isis - one Opal Crosby Fletcher - who sports not altogether honourable designs on one-half of this partnership. This is then an elaborate pastiche, laced with considerably more humour than Frost, but one certainly not raising quite so many laughs from the grim dialogue (those Dick Van Dyke cockney accents) that parades through much of that particular book.

Unlike the Frost novel however, as Nevermore simmers towards its climax it never seems to build any head of steam. There is a desperate cross-country flight that has a nicely turned denouement, but elsewhere it seems to be stumbling in the dark, nowhere more so than in unmasking the so-called Poe-Killer. We wait and wait for the final twist that doesn't come, the identity finally flopping into our laps tired and lame. Better is the ship-board epilogue that will no doubt leave you reaching for your handy pocket-Poe to reread the marvellous The Oblong Box, but it's too little, too late. This is one novel that's never less than readable, but sadly, given that Poe is credited with the first detective story (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1841), seldom is it anything more.