A deliberately alternative-canon Sherlock Holmes novel.
After Dr. John Watson’s death, his final manuscript shocks the world with an unthinkable accusation: Sherlock Holmes was Jack the Ripper.
The evidence is intimate, horrifying, and apparently conclusive. But Professor James Moriarty refuses to let the verdict stand. Writing from the shadows, he offers the only defence Holmes can no longer make: a confession.
The Whitechapel murders were Moriarty’s. The Ripper letters, the clues, the room opposite Baker Street, and the terrible sight Watson believed he witnessed at Miller’s Court were all parts of a design intended to turn Holmes’s closest friend into the instrument of his ruin.
Set in a deliberately altered version of the Holmes world, Moriarty’s Defence of Sherlock Holmes is not a continuation of the original canon, but a dark Victorian counter-narrative of false testimony, friendship poisoned by appearances, and reputational murder. At its centre lies the final question Moriarty cannot ignore: what becomes of truth when the most honest witness is wrong?
A deliberately alternative-canon Sherlock Holmes novel.
After Dr. John Watson’s death, his final manuscript shocks the world with an unthinkable accusation: Sherlock Holmes was Jack the Ripper.
The evidence is intimate, horrifying, and apparently conclusive. But Professor James Moriarty refuses to let the verdict stand. Writing from the shadows, he offers the only defence Holmes can no longer make: a confession.
The Whitechapel murders were Moriarty’s. The Ripper letters, the clues, the room opposite Baker Street, and the terrible sight Watson believed he witnessed at Miller’s Court were all parts of a design intended to turn Holmes’s closest friend into the instrument of his ruin.
Set in a deliberately altered version of the Holmes world, Moriarty’s Defence of Sherlock Holmes is not a continuation of the original canon, but a dark Victorian counter-narrative of false testimony, friendship poisoned by appearances, and reputational murder. At its centre lies the final question Moriarty cannot ignore: what becomes of truth when the most honest witness is wrong?
After the death of Dr. John H. Watson, there appeared among his papers a manuscript unlike any of the narratives by which he had previously preserved the exploits of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It did not celebrate his friend. It accused him.
The manuscript alleged that Holmes, celebrated throughout Europe as the keenest detective of his age, had in secret been the author of the Whitechapel murders. Watson presented the charge not as idle conjecture, but as a conclusion forced upon him by private observation, mounting suspicion, and, at last, an encounter in Whitechapel which he believed allowed no other interpretation. In that scene, Watson understood himself to have witnessed Holmes in the act of murder.
He further read the later tragedy at the Reichenbach Falls through the same terrible conviction. What the world had accepted as the last contest between Holmes and Professor James Moriarty, Watson recast as the final movement in a darker truth: the exposure and destruction of a man he had once loved, but had come to believe monstrous.
The manuscript’s publication caused an immediate scandal. To admirers of Holmes, it was blasphemy. To others, it offered the irresistible pleasure of seeing genius unmasked as horror. The accusation was more ruinous because it came from Watson, whose loyalty had been regarded as incorruptible and whose sorrow appeared beyond calculation.
The pages that follow are presented as the answering statement of Professor James Moriarty. He does not ask that Watson be dismissed as a liar. He contends instead that Watson was made to believe a falsehood, and that the crimes he attributed to Sherlock Holmes belonged elsewhere.
As always, these Sherlock Holmes continuations hit home! The moment I saw this pop up in my inbox I was clicking faster than light because I had been hoping and anticipating for a new release. And as I expected, this one didn't disappoint!
Unlike the previous books, which follow Watson's POV to describe Sherlock Holmes' ingenuity and conclusions, we follow the mind of James Moriarty, Holmes' enemy, who decides to clear Holmes' name after he's accused of being Jack the Ripper...by Watson of all people! That was the most shocking part to me when I started reading because...Watson?? Watson had gone through so many journeys with Holmes and had been his closest friend and confidant! To say that Watson accused Holmes of all people to be Jack the Ripper was a shock!
This story threw me for a whiplash when I kept on reading to learn Moriarty's true intentions, inner thoughts, and more. The amount of betrayal, deception and backstabbing that was in this book had me bookmarking so many chapters to re-read because I genuinely had to take moments just to digest all of the information I was getting. Moriarty's character was written in such a complex yet somehow simple fashion where we finally got to understand the depth of his rivalry with Holmes, and it's so satisfying to see his downfall after years of him and Holmes playing cat-and-mouse. I think for me, it also made Moriarty less of an irredeemable villain and more like a man wrought with feelings of underappreciation.
Everything about this book was incredible for me, and the ending really took the cake! I was awed once more while reading and I can't recommend this book enough, along with all the other Sherlock Holmes books that MX Publishing has published! Truly, I will definitely be re-reading this one!