You've tried the rest – updates by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss on TV, Guy Ritchie's big-screen franchise starring Robert Downey Jr – and they haven't been without merit.

But how about giving a more faithful rendition a shot? The creator of Foyle's War and the Alex Rider novels, Horowitz was asked by the Conan Doyle estate to write a new Sherlock Holmes mystery, and his respect and affinity for the Holmes canon simply shines throughout this novel-length adventure.

His great friend has been dead for a year (he's absolutely certain this time) and John Watson is writing his final Sherlock Holmes story. The one he could never tell. So incendiary is what Watson has to recount that he's not only saved it until last, he's instructed his lawyer that the manuscript is not be opened for 100 years.

What could be so awful that it would merit these precautions? That would be telling, but it begins with an art dealer who comes to 221b Baker Street in fear of his life, setting the duo on a trail which knits together two apparently unrelated plots, a ruthless police inspector, opium dens, an unfortunate member of the Baker Street Irregulars and an unnamed cameo from Moriarty.

This is not a revisionist, post-modern critique of the canon. However, through Watson's narration, Horowitz does address some issues of the original series. Standing in one of London's more deprived areas, the good doctor reflects on how little of this aspect of the city he has portrayed in his stories, and feels he should have made more of an effort to show its poverty.

Horowitz sticks closely to Watson's narrative style, but this Watson is sadder, more seasoned and shows somewhat more depth than the original. Horowitz also seems more comfortable with the novel-length format than Conan Doyle – and, although he's mindful of not ramping up the action to ridiculous proportions, he has injected enough paciness and scenes of life-threatening peril to keep modern readers happy without destroying the illusion. He's also plonked an enormous clue out in plain sight. I missed it at first, but astute readers will twig early on who is behind it, if not exactly what "it" is.

THE HOUSE OF SILK

Anthony Horowitz, Orion, £7.99