Review: Moriarty. A Novel

Welcome to the first review of 2020, “Moriarty. A Novel” by Anthony Horowitz. I made a list of books at the beginning of the year which I had bought in e-book format over the course of the years and never read for some reason or other and “Moriarty. A Novel” was on that list. What with all that social distancing and stuff, I decided to look into the book and found myself forging through it and enjoying the ride.

What I had expected is not what I got, which is good. I’m an avid reader and a writer and you learn to see patterns that way. Sometimes, that takes the surprise out of a good many plot twists, but not in this case. I was completely surprised when the twist came, despite the fact that there are many subtle hints beforehand which you can easily identify after the twist. Good writing, no question.

First of all, I had expected for the book to tell me more about Professor Moriarty (yes, that one), which didn’t really happen. There’s one scene which goes into his background, giving a look into how and why he became the ‘Napoleon of Crime’, but for most of the book, he’s not the main focus - and for a reason.

The novel has an introduction which suggests a Watson perspective, but the story begins in Meiringen a few days after the confrontation between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Fall. A body has been fished out of the river below the fall which fits with the description of Professor Moriarty. The first-person narrator, who introduces himself as Frederick Chase, a Pinkerton agent, wants to take a look at the corpse, but is not allowed to do so by the local police, so he approached Detective Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard for a permission to tag along. (Jones is a verified inspector in the Sherlock Holmes canon, featuring, among other stories, in “The Sign of Four”.)

After they have searched the body, Chase confides in Jones that he’s been looking for the professor because there were hints that Moriarty was working with an American crime lord whom Chase wants to catch, among other reasons, for killing a friend and colleague a little earlier in London. From there on, Jones and Chase travel together and work on finding said crime lord, a man called Deveraux whose looks aren’t known. They find themselves in dangerous situations, are threatened, almost killed. They form a friendship and there’s even talk of continuing together, especially as Jones finds himself on the verge of being fired after infiltrating the American consulate.

With rising stakes, the story steers towards a finale which feels a little like a let-down - until the twist. I will no spoil that one here, it would be a shame to take that moment of utter surprise from you. Just let me say there’s a reason why the first-person narrator introduces himself with ‘you can call me Frederick Chase’.

The novel is a delight to read for the first time. The writing is fluent and pulls the reader along. The characters are engaging and are given enough depth so the reader cares about them. The world is well-researched and it’s clear the author has read their Sherlock Holmes and can fit in all those little extras which make this novel, despite not containing Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson, feel like a true Sherlock Holmes story. Using a Watson perspective helps, of course, with Chase claiming he’s not a deductive type, but arrives at the solution of his cases more through perseverance and hard work. Jones, on the other hand, is striving to be like Sherlock Holmes, having studied the great detective’s methods and doing his best to emulate them. It doesn’t always work, of course.

The story gets personal with both, Chase telling Jones early how and why he became a Pinkerton man, Jones introducing him to his wife and daughter. Chase cares for Jones’ well-being, warning him off the case several times, especially with the inspector having a family. They look out for each other, they fight side by side, they risk their lives for each other. On every other turn, however, they’re thwarted. Clearly, there’s someone working against them. Is it the man they’re after? Is he behind the adolescent boy who threatens Chase with a razor and seems more than capable of killing? Is he the man who travels in a coach, picking the boy up before the telegraph room of Scotland Yard (which happens to be next to Jones’ office) is blown up?

Those questions do get answers in the end, there’s nothing which the plot rustled up which is not answered. All plot arcs are brought to a conclusion, even if some of those arcs end tragically.

I realize I’m coming back to the twist which I won’t spoil here again. It’s just that I don’t have seen this kind of twist done quite so well and convincing in a long while and thus I really enjoyed it. Getting surprised by a book gets harder the more you have read and the more time you’ve invested in writing yourself.

Foreboding is heavy in this book, but also very well done. From carefully chosen expressions, such as ‘you can call me Frederick Chase’ instead of ‘my name is Frederick Chase’ over a suggestion to bury the body of Moriarty under the name of a missing cook, so the crime lord would think that Moriarty is still alive, up to the moment of the twist, there are small hints hidden well which you will spot the second time through, of course.

First person is a difficult point of view if you want to pull this off, it’s much easier in third person perspective, because then, we know we’re not necessarily getting all of the thoughts or all the knowledge of the character. Yet, by very much concentrating on the here and now, by very detailed descriptions of where the characters are and what is happening, Horowitz manages to keep his big twist hidden well. There’s only a handful of chapters where ‘Frederick Chase’ (you should already have picked up that the narrator is not Frederick Chase) steps back from the story to explain more, breaking the fourth wall in the progress and addressing the reader directly. Most of the time, the reader is riding along on his shoulder, seeing what he is seeing, going through the story as it happens, getting thoughts and emotions which come with the situation. There’s no ruminating about the past or the future, no reminiscence about Chase’s life. From the moment Jones - and the reader - are aware of his past, nothing more is said about it.

“Moriarty. A Novel” is a great book to read, provided you enjoy Sherlock Holmes novels and the setting as a such. It is well-written, definitely by someone who knows his way around the canon. It has a great plot twist just as you think the climax is past. I can guarantee that, if you like this kind of novel at all, you’ll definitely enjoy reading it, so I fully recommend it.

About Using Torture

A word at the beginning: No, this is not a post about how you shouldn’t use violence or dark and gritty themes or suchlike in your stories. It’s not about not portraying things which happen in real life and are, agreeably, bad. Quite the other way around: it’s about realistically using torture and avoiding the pitfall of ‘it’s a reliable source of information.’

Let’s start with that right away. Oodles of novels, movies, TV series, and other types of media show torture as a way for the bad guys and the good guys (as long as they’re not too good) to gain information which is true and useful. Well, I have bad news for you on that front. One reason why we don’t use torture any longer is that it doesn’t work that way. If you hurt someone, they’ll do everything to make it stop at some point. That means that in most cases they’ll tell the torturer what they want to hear - or what the victim thinks the torturer wants to hear. Needless to say that that doesn’t have to be the truth.

In most stories, what the caught bad guy says under torture is true - but that’s not what happens in real life. Especially when you have a timed situation (bomb going off, hostage in danger, etc.), verifying the information would take time you may not have and you would need to verify the information.

So, unlike in shows like “24”, torture as a valid form of getting reliable information isn’t a reality. Don’t make it one, because it leads to people thinking it really is. To people saying ‘why shouldn’t the police rough up a suspect to find the kidnapped child?’, for instance.

There are places for torture and violence against a helpless person in fiction, just not when it comes to getting information. It took us a few centuries (or a few more), but we learned this lesson, don’t let it be unlearned.

So, after the ‘when not to use it’ part, now on to the other one. When can you use torture in your story (provided it fits with the tone)?

Your villain can use torture in different ways. They want to break someone’s will, perhaps even turn a friend against the hero. Torture, both psychological and physical, can do that. They want someone to confess to a crime they didn’t do. That’s what’s been done through torture for centuries, so you’re completely in the green. They just are sadistic bastards (or bitches) and want to see someone suffer for no higher reason. They’re villains, so there’s no reason whatsoever why they shouldn’t enjoy the view.

‘And what about my hero? Well, my antihero?’ you ask. Your anti-hero can get violent in certain situations. Perhaps they’re attacking a guy they’ve caught, because they have been taunted constantly. Perhaps they’re forcefully taking some object from someone, because they need it (or think they do). Do that, have them get violent towards someone who is not a threat, who is not fighting back. But, and that’s an important ‘but,’ show that it has negative consequences. The hero gets into trouble for roughing up that guy, despite the taunting beforehand. The object doesn’t work - it wasn’t what they really needed.

‘But my hero is an anti-hero, they’re allowed to be violent,’ you say. Yes, they might be allowed to be violent, depending on the setting. If you’re doing the whole dark and gritty setting, they will certainly be violent to a degree. There is, however, a difference between being violent towards attackers, towards people who are on the same level when it comes to fighting, and being violent towards people who are no threat to the hero and can’t protect themselves. The reason why an anti-hero is still a hero is that they have a code - a code of conduct or a moral code, created by themselves in most cases. It might not confirm to the law, allow for them to steal, lie, break in, even kill under certain circumstances, but there’s still limits, hard limits which the character will never ignore. Attacking someone who is in no position to defend themselves should be one of those. Your anti-hero can kill as many armed henches as they like, but they shouldn’t kill a civilian just as easily and without even a tinge of a bad conscience or hint of consequences.

Back to getting information, though. When I started writing the Knight Agency series, I made it clear early on that the agents are trained to withstand torture (yes, even the women), but also that the Agency doesn’t use torture. They interrogate, which is not the same. Interrogation techniques rely on psychology, on getting the person you interrogate to trust you. It’s essentially the opposite of torture. You want them to relax a little, to drop their defences, to let things slip because of it. Or you surprise them, you destroy their balance, you make them lose their cool, but not through pain. That is what Jane is taught to do, what she helps with throughout the series. Not how to cause someone as much pain as possible, but to get them to drop their defences and tell her more than they want to, because those slips are true - there’s no reason to keep silent about the lies.

That actually gives you a lot more to do, allows you to create a character tailored to that sort of thing - devious, manipulative, intelligent, charming, personable. Perhaps a colleague or friend - or someone the hero needs to hire, meaning they need to do some other jobs, a little subplot, in order to get the money or whatever else the interrogation specialist demands for their services. Perhaps that interrogator is a freelancer, perhaps they’re under control of the villain, perhaps they’re in trouble themselves and need to be rescued first.

Think of Black Widow in “Marvel’s The Avengers” as she’s questioning Loki. She plays him, she uses his own arrogance against him until he lets slip what she wants to know. That is a scene which is much more unusual and much less expected than simply torturing someone. Interrogation demands intelligence and knowledge about psychology, the ability to read people and the ability to act convincingly. I’m not saying that a successful torturer doesn’t have a certain specific skill set as well, but a well-created interrogation scene can be much more interesting and engaging for the audience.

Remember that there’s a reason torture is no longer used regularly in law enforcement: it doesn’t work for getting information. Interrogation does, though, and is used very successfully. Your villain can be as brutal as they wish, use torture to break their prisoner’s will, to get a false confession, just because they like seeing people in pain. Your hero, especially if they’re more of an anti-hero, can also use violence against helpless people, but they should be punished by the story for it, because it’s not something a good guy or a moderately not-bad guy should resort to. Using violence against attackers, though, is not a problem.

An Example of Problematic Plotting

As I mentioned in the last post, there are some plot problems in the stories “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House” by Arthur Conan Doyle which I now want to have a closer look at. They’re an example of plots which ignore the facts established before, which is a serious problem for a story.

In “The Final Problem”, Doyle wanted to kill Sherlock Holmes for good. To make it look good, he decided to give Holmes a spectacular death: locked in deathly combat with his equal on the other side of the law. That is not the problematic part of the plot, the problematic part of the plot is how Holmes gets to the stage for that last act, the Reichenbach Fall. After three attempts on his life and a threat from Professor Moriarty delivered in person, Holmes decides to take a trip to the Continent with Watson while the police is tightening the net and preparing to snatch all members of Moriarty’s organisation. So far, so good. Only - why would Holmes leave London and England in the first place? Holmes is known already at that point for his skills in disguising himself and going undercover. He has several hiding places throughout the city where he could stay for a few days - he tells Watson the net will be closed and everyone captured in three day’s time. Mycroft is already established with the readership, too, and a man who is sometimes said to be the British government should be able to hide his little brother for a couple of days. There is, in short, despite the threats, no reason for Sherlock to go gallivanting around the Continent, alone or in Watson’s company. This is the first part which is not quite logical, since Holmes is giving up his home turf where he has connections and knows every square inch, as Watson told us over and over again. The second part which is not quite logical is what happens in Strasbourg. There, Holmes receives a message from England that Moriarty and three of his lieutenants have escaped arrest. He even points out to Watson that Moriarty can never go back to England now, because he’d be arrested right away. Why, then, would Holmes not travel back home, where Moriarty now can’t touch him any longer? Escaping from England in the first place, the professor surely would rather seek a new life elsewhere than come back for revenge - and even if he did, he would no longer have that many agents to rely on and no longer be able to endanger Holmes like that.

Of course, those plot points are meant to direct Holmes to the Reichenbach Fall, to the place where he will die in deathly combat together with the Napoleon of Crime. Doyle needs Holmes to leave the security of England and travel to a far-away place where he can die heroically and his body will never be found (which can happen in such cases). Yet, Holmes is very much acting out of character (as fan-fiction writers would put it) in this story.

What would be better? Well, let me suggest a simple switch: Moriarty isn’t following Holmes, but Holmes is following Moriarty. Holmes has learned that Moriarty will leave England before he can be arrested and decides to follow to see where the professor goes, whether he’ll be able to apprehend him or leave it to the government afterwards to extract him. That would explain both why Holmes leaves London (he could take Watson along as a second gun, as during other adventures) and why he pushes on after learning that almost everyone has been caught. The biggest plot problems would  be solved and hunting down a criminal is perfectly within Holmes’ regular behaviour. Holmes forges ahead while Watson is kept back for some reason (you could even keep the fake letter), catching up with Moriarty at the Fall, getting into that fight. Everything else can, more or less, stay the same.

The story in which Holmes returns, “The Empty House”, also suffers from a major problem with the plot when it comes to explaining why and how Holmes didn’t die. Of course, Doyle couldn’t go back on the whole situation at the Reichenbach Fall. That had been published twelve years earlier and, clearly, all of the fans knew the story (and a lot had been upset about it, too). In “The Empty House”, Holmes explains that he wanted to hide from the three lieutenants of Moriarty who also escaped and decided to ‘fake’ his death because of that. That does make sense to a degree. He has climbed a sheer cliff wall (as not to leave footsteps leaving along the narrow path), lain on a ledge above the path for several hours, and then climbed down and left again. Before and while climbing down, one of said lieutenants, who clearly travelled with Moriarty, threw boulders at him, trying to kill him. He then disappeared for three years, not doing anything about those men, before the death of Ronald Adair brought him back home. Enter the lieutenant in question: Colonel Sebastian Moran, marksman and big game hunter - also, more or less, Moriarty’s right-hand man.

What is the problem with Holmes’ story? Well, there are two: first of all, even if he was tired of his life so far (as he mentions in the heavy foreshadowing “The Final Problem” delivers), he must be aware that the three men still alive and free will want him dead - and if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any reason for him not to tell Watson he was still alive, but preferred no longer working as a detective, as hinted. So as long as he didn’t perceive them as a danger to himself, he wouldn’t have to hide. If he perceived them as a danger, wouldn’t it be better to work on getting them out of the picture in some way? There is, essentially, no reason for Holmes to go into hiding in the first place - he could official say he’s no longer working or he could simply continue until those lieutenants are out of the way and then stop working. The second part which is a problem are the boulders. Not that there aren’t any suitable boulders up in the Swiss Alps, but that Moran would use them. As mentioned above and in the story, Moran is a sharpshooter. He’s also the proud owner of an air gun which shoots revolver ammunition and can be used without alerting anyone (he uses it to kill Ronald Adair). If he was, as Holmes suggests, watching proceedings from a hiding place above the footpath himself, there was no reason for him to round the area and get above the ledge to drop boulders - a good shot at Holmes, on the path, during his climb, or afterwards, would have taken care of everything.

How to change this part of the story? To be honest, I’m not sure what to do about that. If Holmes thought he could draw out the three lieutenants by appearing dead, he might have done so, but he wouldn’t have been gallivanting around for three years doing anything but detective work in this case. Instead, he would have spent three years following one or more of those lieutenants (why not Moran, while we’re at it?) and would now come back to finish the deed. Or he might have used one year each for each of the lieutenants, with Moran being the last one to target.

And the part on the ledge? Honestly, the only reason I could think of would be that Moran came along while Holmes was just recovering and he scrambled to hiding, climbing up a wall easier to scale than it looks in order to stay hidden, then decided to rather let the world think he was dead. No boulders, no attacks on him, just making sure people would believe him dead.

Those are the two things which vex me about the story of Holmes’ death and resurrection. Not the death or the resurrection as a such, but the plot devices used to get Holmes in place and provide information on how he didn’t die after all. With other plot points, the stories would definitely have been better. How to avoid it? Knowing your character is the first step - know what they would or wouldn’t do from their background. Ask yourself if that really makes sense and if a normal person acting on common sense would handle it that way - and if not, why your character should.

Faking Death Afterwards

The fake death is a difficult trope in itself, because it’s been done very often in recent decades and people almost suspect that certain deaths are fake. There are, however, also cases where the death was meant to be final, but was undone later for plot-related reasons. Let’s have a look at two of those and see how they worked out, shall we?

My first example is a rather recent one: Horst Cabal from the Johannes Cabal series. At the end of the first novel, “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer”, Horst, already a vampire, decides to go out into the sun and end his life, shocked at what has become of his little brother Johannes. In the fourth novel, “The Brothers Cabal”, Horst is resurrected by an evil organisation to become their ‘Lord of the Dead’. Needless to say that Horst, the nicest vampire ever (yes, including Edward), isn’t staying in that capacity for long and, eventually, the brothers are reunited against said organisation.

Of course, a series centred on a necromancer does have it a bit easier to bring a dead (or un-dead) person back to life. Magic clearly exists in Johannes’ world, it is possible to raise the dead again (several stories deal with that, although we only see Johannes raise two people). Horst is brought back with a complicated ritual which he can’t tell his brother about, on account of not having seen all of it and on account of not knowing as many dead languages as Johannes.

Given that Hammer Studios have raised Dracula often enough so he should have invested in a revolving door for his coffin lid, raising vampires isn’t a new idea. Horst’s ashes, for some reason, have remained gathered in the grass where he died (for the second time), so he can be resurrected rather easily. Once he’s also fed again (insisting on not killing the three ‘sacrifices’ brought along, but taking a bite from everyone), he’s back to normal.

I’m pretty certain that when “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” was written, Horst’s death was meant to be final. However, the fourth novel draws heavily on the relationship between the brothers and the whole ministerium tenebrae situation is introduced through his eyes. It would be hard to tell the first half of the story from Johannes’ point of view. Not to mention Horst has to nurture his brother back to health after the events of “The Fear Institute”.

My second example is much older - the death and return of Sherlock Holmes. When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “The Final Problem” as the last story of the second set of twelve to be published by the Strand Magazine, he wanted to get rid of Sherlock Holmes. The great detective was meant to stay dead, but twelve years later, realizing that Holmes was always good for income, Doyle brought him back to life in “The Empty House” (in-between, he published “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, but that one is set before “The Final Problem”). Now, there are some plot problems in both stories, but those I will tackle in another post. This one is about how Holmes was killed and later on resurrected again.

Since Sherlock Holmes lives in a world without magic, there wasn’t just a ritual to invent in order to get him back, instead, he needed not to die at all in the first place. Luckily, Doyle wanted to give him a hero’s death, which means he didn’t die in plain view, but was presumed dead after a confrontation with his nemesis at the Reichenbach Fall. Had Doyle decided to have Holmes shot or stabbed in plain view of Dr. Watson, leaving a body to deal with, his resurrection wouldn’t have been possible at all (unlike that of Horst Cabal).

Here the short story of Holmes’ death and resurrection. In “The Final Problem”, Holmes is after the head of a criminal organisation (one might even say the head of the underworld as a such), a former professor of mathematics named James Moriarty (whose brother, a colonel, strangely enough carries the same first name). He has worked hard to unravel the net and give the police all the information they will need to catch Moriarty and his men. For this, he’s been visited by the Professor and been threatened with death. He’s been in three suspicious ‘accidents’ in one day. Therefore, Holmes asks Watson to accompany him to the Continent, where they will stay for a week, well past the time when all members of the organisation should be rounded up. At Strasbourg, they learn that Moriarty and three of his lieutenants escaped the net and are still at large. At the Reichenbach Fall, high up in the Swiss mountains, Watson is lured from Holmes’ side and, when he comes back after realizing it, finds traces which lead him to deduce that Holmes and Moriarty met at the fall, fought, and went over the ledge together, dying in the gorge. None of the bodies is ever recovered, but that doesn’t seem unusual for the area. Three in-world years later, Watson’s interest is peaked by a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes - the death of Ronald Adair, a young nobleman who was shot with a revolver bullet in his locked first-floor (second floor, if you’re American) sitting room. While lingering outside the scene of the crime, Watson collides with an old, gruff bibliophile who comes to his house later to apologize and peddle books - only to turn into Sherlock Holmes while Watson, prompted to, turns his back on him. After recovering from the shock of seeing his old friend alive, Watson then learns that Holmes survived the fight, but decided to go into hiding because three lieutenants were still out there (and one was throwing boulders at him). The murder of Ronald Adair made him come back to finally deal with one of the lieutenants - Colonel Sebastian Moran. Moran is lured into a trap and arrested - though not for the attempted murder of Sherlock Holmes, but for the murder of Ronald Adair. How he did it? With a special air gun that uses revolver ammunition. The air gun, by the by, is already mentioned early on in “The Final Problem” as a danger Holmes fears.

During “The Final Problem”, Doyle drops massive foreshadowing twice that it will be the last story, having Holmes claim he would gladly die, if he could take Moriarty with him, and that he also has grown tired with his work and is in a financial situation in which he doesn’t need to work any longer. Therefore, having him die in a fight with Moriarty, indeed taking the professor along, is a good death for the great detective. Because there was no body, it’s also technically possible for Holmes to come back to life. A corpse would have been ultimate proof (although there are ways around that, too, as the modern interpretation of the TV series “Sherlock” proves). A man missing in action can come back, at least. That Holmes notified his brother, who kept his rooms cared for, but not his best friend, is explained, if badly so, during the story. Badly so, because Watson has proven he can keep secrets by not publishing some cases until a long while later (and only ever hinting at others). Yet, the story works well enough (the plot problems are not with the return as a such, but with other parts of the stories).

If you want to fake a death from the beginning, you can plot it out so that a second explanation is possible. If you decide after the facts, after the story is published and can’t be changed any longer, to raise someone from the dead, you have to be careful about how you explain things. In the Johannes Cabal stories, the resurrection of Horst Cabal works because magic exists and we’ve all seen vampires resurrected before. Sherlock Holmes’ return from the dead only works out because Doyle decided not to present a body in the first place and readers already know that Watson is not Holmes equal in deduction. Always be careful if, when, and how you kill off a main character - you never know if you’ll need them again!