Moriarty

Professor James Moriarty is in the words of Sherlock Holmes "The Napoleon of crime, organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected" in the Victorian underworld. In this book John Gardner continues the story of his exploits begun in the two previous volumes The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty. The Professor has been forced to spend some years abroad to evade capture by the police. Slipping back into London he finds that his criminal empire is being taken over by a new master villain Sir Jack Idell popularly known as Idle Jack. How he re-establishes his organisation and deals with one of his close associates who is betraying him to Idle Jack is the substance of this book and very entertaining it is as one would expect from such an experienced writer. This work is the third part of what was planned as a quadrilogy (it is the right word, I've checked) un fortuately John Gardner died in 2007 with the fourth part unwritten. As Gardner wrote some sixteen James Bond novels at the behest of the estate of Ian Fleming is it too much to hope that perhaps someone could be found to complete the final volume of this excellent series.