Did James P. Blaylock really steal the ideas for his popular series of Langdon St. Ives Adventures from a pile of old manuscripts found hidden in an old steamer trunk in the back of a garden shed outside a stately medieval church in Bristol?

I admit, I find his confession in the Afterword of The Ebb Tide an unlikely, if amusing, tale of plagiarism. But it does show how thoroughly invested Blaylock is in the fiction of St. Ives, his narrator and companion Jack Owlesby, and the other quirky characters who populate his secretly steampunkian world of Victorian England.

The Ebb Tide is the latest of Blaylock's St. Ives novellas that I've unearthed, and as always I've found it a delightful foray into his creation. In this volume, St. Ives is moved to action when he's given a map to the supposed resting place of an unearthly, possible extraterrestrial artifact lost in the Morecambe Sands, a treacherous array of mudflats, quicksand and fast-moving tidewaters in northwest England.

St. Ives and his companions set out to recover the artifact while avoiding the machinations of Dr. Hilario Frosticos and his ruthless minions. Their efforts are aided by an antiquities merchant, his sand-combing uncle, a conveniently useful lad who ran away from the circus, and an ambulatory diving bell they just happen to find in a secret underground shipyard below a disreputable gin shop.

It's everything steampunk enthusiasts could hope for. Blaylock has a clever way with a narrative that puts readers in a Victorian mood, primed for an uppercrust British adventure with tea and scones at the ready. Although I suppose we have a stack of old manuscripts, tucked into a steamer trunk and hidden away in a Bristol shed, to thank for it.