Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

Days after the encounter at the Swiss waterfall that claimed the lives of Sherlock Holmes and criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, Pinkerton detective agent Frederick Chase and Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes's methods of investigation and deduction, must track down a sinister figure who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty's successor.

I enjoyed this, and didn't exactly see the twist coming. I think it's well written, but I was ready for it to finish when it did.

Ik vond deze geweldig!
Hoewel ik vrij snel vermoede wat de plottwist ging zijn, kwam die toch als een schok.
Uitstekend geschreven, meesterlijk geplot en gewoon super leuk.

Horowitz took a risk in changing up Doyle's tried-and-true formula, one he imitated very well in House of Silk, but unfortunately the risk did not pay off.

Had Horowitz written this book as cleanly as his previous one, and had it been plotted and edited just as well, it might have worked. But this book never left the “that could be interesting” stage. It felt like he did not completely think it through and that the publisher rushed it to market.

At most Moriarty was mildly entertaining. With reluctance, I followed two new characters that Horowitz gave me no reason find interesting. For most of the book I knew almost nothing about them, had no idea why they continued to put themselves in the path of (unnecessarily excessive) bloodshed, and cared little whether or not they would succeed.

That was the book's biggest failing: it sacrificed many of the necessary conventions of writing and storytelling all for the sake of... the twist! Personally I cannot stand when authors make this mistake. It tends to happen more in thrillers than mysteries. It means that, unless I fall for the twist, the book falls flat. I want to be interested in the story even if I guess the ending, and that means having developed characters and a solid plot.

While other reviewers seemed taken aback by the ending, I was not, and I doubt avid fans of the mystery genre will be surprised. I had hoped for a double twist, perhaps with the reappearance of our great hero, Holmes, if only Horowitz would have pushed himself that much farther...

Moriarty is a Sherlock Holmes novel written by author Anthony Horowitz. Published in 2014 it is the sequel to The House of Silk. Moriarty takes place in 1891, after the events of Doyle's “The Final Problem”. Sherlock Holmes only appears at the end of the novel. Those detectives that Sherlock has worked with in previous cases, such as Athelney Jones and Lestrade, are the main characters.

The novel follows Frederick Chase and Athelney Jones as they try to prevent a new criminal mastermind taking over the streets of London after Moriarty's demise. Moriarty is a fair mystery novel. It has traps, disguises, adventures and a twist. But it never scratched my Holmesian itch. It is a fairly melancholy affair.