Moriarty

October 6, 2014
In this disappointing follow-up to Horowitz’s brilliant first Holmes pastiche, The House of Silk (2011), Sherlock Holmes appears only in passing, in a prologue in which narrator Frederick Chase, a Pinkerton operative, details the plot holes in Watson’s account of the fatal encounter between the great detective and the Napoleon of crime at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891. Chase is on the trail of Clarence Devereux, an American Moriarty, when news reaches him of the tragedy in Switzerland. Chase believes that Moriarty and Devereux had been in contact, and he travels immediately to Meiringen, where he winds up teaming with Scotland Yard’s Insp. Athelney Jones, who displays an unexpected gift for Sherlockian deduction. After decoding a message setting a meeting between Moriarty and Devereux at London’s Café Royal, Chase plans to impersonate the master criminal. As a pair, Jones and Chase are but a pale shadow of Holmes and Watson. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

August 1, 2014

Horowitz's mystery bona fides are impeccable: not only did his previous Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk, sell over 450,000 copies worldwide in more than 35 countries, but he created both Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA-winning Foyle's War. Here he reimagines what happened after the presumably lethal scuffle between Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from November 1, 2014
A Sherlockian pastiche without Holmes and Watson? Yes indeed, and it's a tour de force quite unlike any other fruit from these densely plowed fields.It is 1891. Holmes and professor James Moriarty are both presumed dead after hurtling over Reichenbach Falls, though the only body that's been recovered is thought to be that of a chef at the Englischer Hof. The Pinkerton Detective Agency has sent operative Frederick Chase to England to investigate rumors that Clarence Devereux, fresh from his triumphantly lucrative scheme to manipulate stock prices by sending false information over Western Union wires, has come to join Moriarty in an Anglo-American criminal empire-and, finding the Napoleon of crime deceased, has stayed to become his successor. Joining forces with DI Athelney Jones, whose admiration of Holmes is just this side of idolatry, Chase tries to trace the agoraphobic Devereux through his lieutenants Edgar and Leland Mortlake and safecracker Scotchy Lavelle. The only results of their search are a series of violent reprisals, and when they finally catch up with Devereux at a function hosted by American legate (and president's son) Robert Todd Lincoln, he turns the tables on them with insolent ease, leaving them both scurrying to hang on to their jobs. Since Jones talks and acts just like Holmes and Chase is every bit as enterprising as Dr. Watson, they seem likely to run their quarry to earth, with pauses along the way for lightning deductions and a drastically compressed sequel to "The Red-Headed League." But canny Sherlock-ian Horowitz (The House of Silk, 2011, etc.) still has more tricks up his sleeve. Readers who aren't put off by the Hollywood pacing, with action set pieces less like Conan Doyle than the Robert Downey Jr. movies, are in for a rare treat, a mystery as original as it is enthralling.

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Starred review from November 15, 2014
Horowitz is the fellow who gave us the wonderful Foyle's War on PBS and maybe the best Holmes pastiche ever, The House of Silk (2011). Now he's done it again, with a stunning riff on the Holmes-Moriarty clash. It's full of allusions to the Holmes canon that Sherlockians will congratulate themselves for spotting, then wince moments later when Horowitz gently reveals the prank. The hero here introduces himself as Frederick Chase, a Pinkerton agent sent from the U.S. to sort out Moriarty's gang. He partners with Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, whom Holmes walked over in The Sign of Four. The experience addled Jones, who has made himself a wannabe, breaking codes and analyzing writing and struggling to be a master of disguises. Horowitz spins his tale in pitch-perfect Watsonian prose, easy and flowing, setting readers up for a finale that is truly jaw-dropping. A few pages at the end let us know how the con was worked on us, and that's fun, too, but it takes a while before the shakes go away.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)