Moriarty
Belated new year greetings. The festive season is almost over for most today. Despite 6 January being not till Tuesday, I have taken down the tree and tomorrow begins this first normal working week of the year.
I have just finished reading my Christmas book, Moriarty by Antony Horowitz. This is AH's new novel set in the original ACD era. This first, The House of Silk, was a standard pastiche adventure ostensibly penned by Dr J H Watson in the ususal fashion. The exciting byline for this second stand-alone volume scarily states, 'Sherlock Holmes is dead and darkness falls'. So the story starts in Meiringen, Switzerland, in the aftermath of The Final Problem. Holmes and Moriarty are presumed to have both plunged to their deaths without trace over the Reichenbach Falls... and then a body is pulled out of the water.
The story is told by a narrator who introduces himself as Frederick Chase of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency of New York. He has a mission of his own involving an American crime syndicate headed by a master criminal as enigmatic as Moriary himself known as Clarence Devereux, who has recently extended his operations into Europe. Chase meets up with Inspector Athelney Jones of ACD canon Scotland Yard fame in Meiringen. Together via various means they identify the body as that of Professor Moriarty. However, so as to keep secret this discovery during further investigations, a deal is done to declare for the time being, the body to be that of a disappeared local chef. This new detective pairing then agree to work together to break Devereux's network.
Inspector Jones is a fan of Sherlock Holmes's methods, and although no longer young and fully fit, a fairly formidable detective. We return to Victorian London where Devereux has filled the vacuum left by Moriarty's departure, and the adventure continues apace, with appearances of ACD canon characters including the rest of the police forces' finest from Lestrade to Hopkins, and even The Red Headed League villain John Clay, out of gaol and back to his old tricks again.
Fun as all this was, by about two thirds of the way through the novel I was begining to wonder why it was titled Moriarty. There did seem to be a shady presence in the background at times, but the Napoleon of crime seemed as absent as Holmes himself. Of course in the end all is revealed - but not to the world at large. And not by me to you either. Spoilers!
AH's novel amuses me very much in the light of BBC Sherlock writers' love of misdirection and fakery. With the 'special' episode that is to precede series 4 about to start filming, I will be trying to glean clues as to what they are up to regarding the apparant reappearace of their own Moriarty. It is certainly true that he is far too good a character in any SH universe to lose. ACD invented Moriarty merely as a device to rid himself of Holmes and he is done with in double quick time. What a waste! Everyone else reconises that Holmes without his arch enemy is not nearly so exciting. We all want Moriarty to be as cunning and clever as Holmes himself and watch them play their game anew...
As a little gift from the author for having written an entire SH novel without featuring the man himself, at the end of Moriarty is a short pastiche entitled The Three Monarchs written as if by Watson for The Strand Magazine in the usual style. It involves one of those casually mentioned ACD canon cases never expanded upon, the case of the Abernetty family, featuring a deduction about how far a piece of parsley atop butter had sunk on a hot day [mentioned in The Six Napoleons].
I don't know if AH intends to write any more SH fiction, but if he does I will certainly read it. He knows his stuff. :-)
I have just finished reading my Christmas book, Moriarty by Antony Horowitz. This is AH's new novel set in the original ACD era. This first, The House of Silk, was a standard pastiche adventure ostensibly penned by Dr J H Watson in the ususal fashion. The exciting byline for this second stand-alone volume scarily states, 'Sherlock Holmes is dead and darkness falls'. So the story starts in Meiringen, Switzerland, in the aftermath of The Final Problem. Holmes and Moriarty are presumed to have both plunged to their deaths without trace over the Reichenbach Falls... and then a body is pulled out of the water.
The story is told by a narrator who introduces himself as Frederick Chase of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency of New York. He has a mission of his own involving an American crime syndicate headed by a master criminal as enigmatic as Moriary himself known as Clarence Devereux, who has recently extended his operations into Europe. Chase meets up with Inspector Athelney Jones of ACD canon Scotland Yard fame in Meiringen. Together via various means they identify the body as that of Professor Moriarty. However, so as to keep secret this discovery during further investigations, a deal is done to declare for the time being, the body to be that of a disappeared local chef. This new detective pairing then agree to work together to break Devereux's network.
Inspector Jones is a fan of Sherlock Holmes's methods, and although no longer young and fully fit, a fairly formidable detective. We return to Victorian London where Devereux has filled the vacuum left by Moriarty's departure, and the adventure continues apace, with appearances of ACD canon characters including the rest of the police forces' finest from Lestrade to Hopkins, and even The Red Headed League villain John Clay, out of gaol and back to his old tricks again.
Fun as all this was, by about two thirds of the way through the novel I was begining to wonder why it was titled Moriarty. There did seem to be a shady presence in the background at times, but the Napoleon of crime seemed as absent as Holmes himself. Of course in the end all is revealed - but not to the world at large. And not by me to you either. Spoilers!
AH's novel amuses me very much in the light of BBC Sherlock writers' love of misdirection and fakery. With the 'special' episode that is to precede series 4 about to start filming, I will be trying to glean clues as to what they are up to regarding the apparant reappearace of their own Moriarty. It is certainly true that he is far too good a character in any SH universe to lose. ACD invented Moriarty merely as a device to rid himself of Holmes and he is done with in double quick time. What a waste! Everyone else reconises that Holmes without his arch enemy is not nearly so exciting. We all want Moriarty to be as cunning and clever as Holmes himself and watch them play their game anew...
As a little gift from the author for having written an entire SH novel without featuring the man himself, at the end of Moriarty is a short pastiche entitled The Three Monarchs written as if by Watson for The Strand Magazine in the usual style. It involves one of those casually mentioned ACD canon cases never expanded upon, the case of the Abernetty family, featuring a deduction about how far a piece of parsley atop butter had sunk on a hot day [mentioned in The Six Napoleons].
I don't know if AH intends to write any more SH fiction, but if he does I will certainly read it. He knows his stuff. :-)