This collection is an excuse to find a home for the title piece, a 170 page novella stretching from ancient Egypt to a media-clogged 2025, rewiring Stoker, Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood along the way. In essence it’s a chase after the occult powers unlocked by the Jewel of the Seven Stars. Driven by the evil Mountmain and his descendants (think Aleister Crowley), and pursued by representatives of the Diogenes Club (after Conan Doyle), the X-Files branch of British Intelligence. Suave gents and feisty females - to paraphrase Henry Ford, any crime-fighting duo you like so long as it’s The Avengers (or at least Sapphire and Steel). It’s a romp and a good one (fun on film-sets a speciality), but, after resurrecting Quorum PI Sally Rhodes and demonic media magnate Derek Leech in 1999, it rather runs out of steam. Newman’s really not so hot at SF.

Which ‘Where The Bodies Are Buried 2020’ ably underlines. The latest in his dissection of horror movie media hoopla is hamstrung by terminology. Newman’s usually acute sense of parody tends to desert him in imagining the future rather than reimagining the past. Witness its prequel, ‘Where The Bodies Are Buried 3’, a witty if slightly heavy-handed attempt to redirect that furore back at its inky peddlers and their political task-masters. (New Labour, are you listening?) Point well made though.

If it’s theme we’re looking for then the largely camp remainder concerns itself mostly with the various doings of the Diogenes. ‘Angel Down, Sussex’ brings in the real Crowley and Conan Doyle for a Lovecraftian caper, starring the Club’s Edwin Winthrop and Catriona Kaye. Richard Jeperson (according to the author, his very first creation) and sidekick Vanessa have to deal with an out-break of the last war in what reads like Newman’s sly warning against Euro-scepticism (‘The End of The Pier Show’). And ‘You Don’t Have to Be Mad...’ is simply an Avengers cast-off.

Of course, with pop culture references flying at you faster than conspiracy theories at a JFK convention (Newman will no doubt eventually tell us vampires did it), it can all get a bit like gorging yourself on chocolate cake. So, remember, take it slow, and I'll leave you with the usual proviso when reviewing Kim Newman books - there are a lot of fakers around, but this man really is too bloody clever for his own good.