The Return of Moriarty

By John Gardner

The London mists dissipate one morning on the shadowy streets of Limehouse to reveal that Professor James Moriarty, arch rival of Sherlock Holmes, has returned…

Their dramatic encounter at Reichenbach Falls three years earlier, it seems, was not the fateful confrontation the world had been left to believe – and now, with his nefarious energies undiminished, Moriarty is back in England to resume control of the criminal netherworld.

But what really did happen in Switzerland in 1891? Why is the scrupulous Holmes being curiously uncooperative with Scotland Yard? And what is behind Moriarty’s plan to meet with the major crime organisations from America and the Continent? These are the pressing questions facing Detective Angus McCready Crow, whose mission it is to thwart and capture the elusive mastermind. The stakes are high: Moriarty’s goal is nothing less than complete control of the international crime syndicate.

In this classic, suspenseful tale of the Victorian underworld, John Gardner delivers the dramatic first novel in his bestselling saga that confirms Professor James Moriarty as one of the most vividly imagined villains in literature.

Before coming an author of fiction in the early 1960s John Gardner was variously a stage magician, a Royal Marine officer and a journalist. In all Gardner has fifty-four novels to his credit, including Maestro, which was the New York Times book of the year. Having lived in the Republic of Ireland, the United States and the UK, John Gardner sadly died in August of 2007 having just completed his third novel in the Moriarty Trilogy, Conan Doyle’s eponymous villain of the Sherlock Holmes series.