First of all the art is wonderful, full of that scratchy menace that so much Fleetway thrillers with a horror bent of the period have. It manages to look exotic yet also traditionally British, with enough horror thrills to propel the story ahead

And what a story. What a fucking story. Firstly, if we ignore the rather odd two part prequel which ends the book (which bizarrely also manages to make Mesmer look sympathetic and a dick simultaneously), it’s basically the story of an Egyptian relic obsessive whose house is burgled and ends up on a wildly unsuccessful revenge spree with a mummy of a king who he initially is rude to, then is deferential to for a couple of episodes and then just thinks “fuck it” and starts shouting at it, by which point the mummy is visibly broken by Mesmer and just rolls with it all

The plot feels a bit like a horror story written by a hyperactive seven year old, with not so much plot holes as huge gulfs of narrative weirdness spread throughout. Mesmer can apparently travel through time and happily brings a bunch of ancient Egyptians into the seventies for a bit but never thinks he can replace his stolen relics by collecting them from their origin point. This would have saved him SO MUCH BOTHER. His enemies are two policemen who seem to just decide they are the Mesmer squad and frankly just dump their other duties to chase a man who, lest we forget, only starts with all this nonsense because someone nicked his stuff

And there’s also a really weird sense that every town in this seventies Britain has some sort of Egyptian exhibit of some kind. Even a travel agents has some relics just lying about. There’s not only a mummy film that our mummy comically turns up to a screening of - sometimes this book feels like it’s actually a comedy, like some kind of Indiana Jones farce via Ray Cooney - but he also interrupts filming of ANOTHER one (and briefly runs amock on the set of a western that’s being made, one of precisely no westerns made in the U.K. ever that weren’t comedies). At one point the army get some bazookas out and destroy some priceless relics because one of the policemen has accidentally got himself floating down a sewer in a sarcophagus

I tell you, it’s absolute nonsense. One of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. None of it ever makes sense and it feels like the writer had zero attention span and was almost certainly making it up as he went along. All of this sounds like it’s terrible and it really isn’t. It’s gonzo surrealist comedy knockabout genius and I adored it. Probably the funniest thing I have read all year