The Black Sphinx

Set in an alternate world of a Britain where London is only a small outlying village, this frenetic fantasy begins with the midstream murder of a mysterious gentleman called Malachi Pepper. Young Crispin Rattle is whisked off on a search for the famed black sphinx, joining forces with The Indomitable Callisto, a stage magician and his werewolf assistant. As the evil ‘mad as a mackerel’ Jasper Pepper summons up a demon, Crispin and his friends must face both him and the jackal-headed god, Anubis, down in the dreaded Halls of the Dead. The Devourer of Souls is not prepared to go away hungry.

The book contains a hieroglyphic code, bordering every page, each chapter containing a clue towards the solving of the mystery. Whilst these do give the young reader something else to ponder, the fact that the coded message is on every single page rather than just at the start of each chapter, adds about 40 pages, unnecessarily, to the book.