There is a certain set of topics New Scientist calls ‘fruitloopery’ that experience tells us should be avoided at all costs. The older we become, the more glumly certain we are that we have heard it all before, whether it’s UFOs, Bigfoot, psychic phenomena or even just plain old homeopathy. Atlantis is firmly on this list and a book subtitled ‘My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City’ duly provoked a sigh as I opened it. Yet three hundred-odd pages later I am moderately glad to have read it, because Mark Adams proves sceptical, engaging and even informative in his exploration of this hoary old myth. As to whether his quest was obsessive before he began it is another matter. His account can easily be read as a genial excuse for racking up air miles as he shuttles about the world interviewing a collection of kooks and academics, nutters and scholars. Early on he confides,