SOURCE: "Directions from Afar," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4674, October 30, 1992, p. 21.

In the review below, Fitton puzzles out the mystery of The Mist in the Mirror, noting that some questions remain "satisfyingly unanswered."

The mood of [The Mist in the Mirror] is autumnal, very suitable for a ghost story set in a moist and misty past. Its general context is conventional, that of an M. R. James story. An aged habitué of a Pall Mall club urgently presses on a fellow-member, whose light conversation about ghosts he has overheard, the manuscript reminiscence of a personal experience which had distressed him as a young man. The more specific context is less easy to place, especially in time. There are indications that the main narrative is of the early 1920s, but the plot seems to belong more to late-Victorian England, with the cab-ranks, pea-soupers and ill-lit quaysides of Sherlock Holmes's...