Mycroft Holmes: rake, adventurer, intellectual; deductive mind without peer! The world is in grave danger, and Mycroft must find the missing blueprints of the Apocalypse Handbook or further attacks will surely follow… In order to find the blueprints, he must travel to America! But no sooner has he arrived than an encounter at the New York docks leaves him battered and bruised at the hands of impossible superweapons – and that’s even before he follows the trail out West, where an unexpected face boards his train, with robbery on his mind…!

Contrary to the image presented in the cover illustration shown above, there is no James Bond style chase on the top of a train in this issue. However, there is plenty of other excitement, right from the opening page, as Mycroft goes West, faces deep-sea divers armed with liquefying guns, carries out artificial respiration (helpfully informing us as he does so that the process had been pioneered a century earlier by the English physician William Hawes), and meets a great train robber.

His brother Sherlock gets a name-check, and there’s a flashback to the childhoods of both of the Holmes boys – a time when the now selfish and ruthless Mycroft betrayed a surprising level of humanity.

Certainly more humanity than is exhibited by the vile villain to whom we are introduced towards the end of this instalment of this thrilling Steampunk adventure…

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Richard McGinlay