If you live in the UK, then I suspect there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve come across something by Anthony Horowitz, who has been quietly prolific for some decades now – mainly as a novelist, but also as a screenwriter in TV and occasionally films. I think I first came across him in the mid-1980s when he was one of the writers recruited when Richard Carpenter couldn’t manage to do the third season of Robin of Sherwood single-handed; since then have come many children’s novels in different genres, various genre TV shows (prominent on the charge sheet must be that Horowitz was the creator of Midsummer Murders and the thankfully-almost-forgotten Crime Traveller), and novels for adults, including some more-than-half-decent Ian Fleming pastiches (one of which I wrote about here way-back-when).
So it’s not entirely surprising that the Conan Doyle estate got onto Horowitz with view to him channelling the creative essence of Sir Arthur, too: his heirs are well-known (one might even say notorious) for their hawkish attitude to protecting and promoting his literary legacy (not so long ago they were suing Netflix on the grounds that while Sherlock Holmes may have come into the public domain, Sherlock Holmes-with-functioning-emotions only featured in the latter short stories and was thus covered by copyright). One hears talk that the estate are set on doing unto the Sherlockian and wider Doyle canon what Sony seem intent on doing to Spider-Man – further adventures for Professor Challenger don’t sound like an instantly terrible idea, but you have to have your doubts about Irene Adler as a character capable of carrying her own series, to say nothing of the prospect of stories starring homicidal card-cheat Sebastian Moran.
Oh well. Anyway, ten years ago or so Horowitz wrote an authorised Doyle pastiche (is it a pastiche? Let’s be generous and call it a homage) entitled Moriarty, which looks very much like another case of the same thing, with the advantage that everyone knows, or thinks they know, who and what Professor Moriarty is. He’s Holmes’ arch enemy, well-known for such evil schemes as… er… well…
As Horowitz himself suggests in his introduction to The Final Problem (included in the paperback edition I came across, along with a ‘true’ Doyle pastiche of relevance to the text, which also purports to explain the true relevance of melting butter in the case of the Abernetty family), the thing about Moriarty is that he’s hardly Holmes’ arch-enemy (one might propose there is no such animal) – he’s Holmes’ nemesis, which is not quite the same thing, created solely to kill the great detective off. He appears in one short story, if ‘appears’ is quite the word – Watson thinks he spies the Prof from a distance, but apart from this we only learn of him indirectly via reports from Holmes. Doyle does a splendid job of bigging Moriarty up as a worthy terminal foe for Holmes, with some lovely incidental detail – but there’s virtually no substance. Perhaps this explains the multitude of very different versions of the character as presented in Sherlockian adaptations, played by actors as diverse as Orson Welles, Malcolm McDowell, Eric Porter, Jared Harris, Andrew Scott and John Huston.
Naturally this gives an inventive writer like Horowitz plenty of room to manoeuvre, even if it isn’t always perfectly clear what he’s up to. Doyle’s Moriarty is a smoke-and-mirrors figure, solely there to help the writer rid himself of a creation he believed himself to have outgrown; Horowitz’s Moriarty is a sort of literary conjuring trick, highly entertaining, but to talk about it in any real detail is to spoil the fun.
Well, let’s have a go anyway. The story is presented as an account of the adventures of a different detective duo, Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard (a minor character from the Doyle canon) and Frederick Chase of the Pinkerton agency. We first meet the pair standing over a corpse which has been fished out of the Reichenbach Falls – it seems that Professor Moriarty will trouble the world no more.
This is good news for Jones but bad news for Chase, for – as he is quick to tell his new colleague – an American criminal mastermind named Devereux has recently set up shop in London, a man possibly even worse than the late professor. Devereux and Moriarty apparently have arranged to meet, and it was Chase’s hope that Moriarty would lead him to his quarry. Jones agrees to assist Chase in running Devereux down, and so they commence their investigations…
A pleasantly twisty-turny plot ensues, clearly the work of (at least) a superior craftsman – it does a decent job of feeling like ersatz Doyle, with occasional diversions into the more macabre sort of gothic London explored by other writers in recent years. Horowitz limits himself to the actual Doyle canon when it comes to re-using existing characters, and we are treated to a Scotland Yard meeting with Lestrade, Gregson, Hopkins and Jones all in attendance, plus a chance to catch up with John Clay (late of The Red-Headed League). It’s not really a spoiler if I reveal that Colonel Moran also turns up before the end. But the original characters are also engaging.
Does it ever really feel like Conan Doyle? Well, possibly not – there are occasional diversions into gory unpleasantness with which Sir Arthur would probably have had no truck, implied torture and the threat of torture, and a juvenile psychopath who kills for pleasure. But it’s consistently readable and more than enough of a page-turner to keep the casual reader from wondering exactly why it is that this tale of two men named Jones and Chase, in pursuit of another man named Devereux (and his gang), should be entitled Moriarty…?
Well, as I say the book is largely a piece of sleight-of-hand intended solely to entertain, and I would imagine most readers will happily allow themselves to become complicit in their own misdirection. Horowitz obviously knows his stuff and his good-natured examination of the various plot holes that emerge if you consider The Final Problem and The Empty House as a whole is highly enjoyable – if he seems to be poking fun at Doyle, it’s done with love. But at the same time it never quite feels entirely authentic – an amusing and clever take on the whole mystery of the canonical Moriarty, but somehow less satisfying than some of the other takes on the character. A slick and very entertaining book nevertheless.
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