“Moriarty”, by Anthony Horowitz

 

304 pages, Harper, ISBN-13: 978-0062377180

Moriarty is the second Anthony Horowitz book I have read, the first being Magpie Murders, reviewed on May 14^th, 2025 (and one of my Mysteries & Munchies selections for the Fraser Public Library). Beginning mere days after Holmes’ and Moriarty’s deaths at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, the Pinkerton Detective, Frederick Chase, arrives in pursuit of one Clarence Devereaux, a fiendish criminal mastermind and Moriarty’s Yankee counterpart who hopes to step into the void left by the Napoleon of Crime’s demise. He is aided by Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes’ methods of investigation and deduction originally introduced by Conan Doyle in The Sign of Four.

The majority of the book was a pretty standard mystery: things happen, the protagonists investigate, clues are discovered, suspects interrogated…and so on. All in all not very riveting, if I’m to be honest. And yet, throughout the book I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, that there was a malevolent presence that was lurking just off the page that was directing and hadn’t made its presence known. While I followed Jones & Chase in their quest to see justice done, I just knew there was more to the story – and I can’t for the life of me tell you why. Perhaps it was because Horowitz, a veteran storyteller, wrote it, or perhaps it is because I am becoming an old hand at reading mysteries.

And then I reached the last two chapters, and…hoo, doggy.

I won’t, I can’t, spoil the ending for you, only to say that my sense of dread while reading Moriarty was justified. Only…now, while I salute Horowitz for keeping me (mostly) fooled throughout the book, I have to say that I hated his rewriting of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Conan Doyle’s works are not holy writ, but to upend the author’s establishment smacks of chutzpah and has the effect of dragging Holmes down a little (come to think of it, perhaps Conan Doyle would have approved of Holmes being knocked down a peg). And as for the fate of one of the characters in the book – well, I grant you, it was shocking, but also disturbing. I tend to identify with the protagonists of the books I read, and to see this person’s fate was nothing less than heartbreaking.

Moriarty is a serviceable mystery with a rather shocking twist that I subliminally anticipated but still didn’t see coming. An excellent work by an author at the top of his mystery game.