READER’S DIE JEST. Moriarty rises?

My dear Holmes,

It will fill you with disquiet to be informed that you are conspicuous by your physical absence — although you are invoked frequently — in the work of fiction titled Moriarty, a title which, I daresay, warns us that the centre of gravity has shifted. I am not sure if that is entirely an unwelcome move, for I have often felt that you were something of a caricature, and more fortunate than perspicacious in resolving the mysteries that you became renowned for unravelling.

Be that as it may, I do not know if the decision of the estate of your creator to entrust the responsibility of continuing the chronicles of your adventures to one Anthony Horowitz filled you with dismay, but it has been some time since the first work, The House of Silk, was published, and I am certain your reservations have by now been buried under your Stradivarius.

Since I have reason to believe that you will not peruse the volume in question, it has fallen upon me to apprise you of its contents. It begins shortly after your immaculately staged death at the Reichenbach Falls, where a man who reveals himself as Frederick Chase has arrived from America in pursuit of his quarry, one Clarence Devereux, also from America where, it appears, crime is altogether more violent in nature. They even stoop to kidnapping children, Holmes, the brutes.

In any event, Chase (be so good as to applaud my restraint at not constructing a dreadful example of paronomasia with his name) is convinced that Devereux and Moriarty were planning an assignation with a view to create a transatlantic corporation of criminal activity before the latter’s death came in the way. Chase contrives to accidentally meet Detective Inspector Athelney Jones, who, it is evident, models himself on you, Holmes.

I am sure you remember Jones, the bumbling Scotland Yard policeman who arrested Bartholomew Sholto’s entire family. Like you, he is a compulsive interpreter of clues, but deprived of the strokes of luck that led you to hazard accurate guesses. It is easy enough for an arch criminal to have the measure of a man such as him.

The two of them travel back to England in a bid to apprehend Devereux, with the sagacious Jones convinced that he can surpass you. They resort to a most atrocious stratagem of impersonation, where Chase pretends to be Moriarty (with the hope that the ‘news’ of the professor’s death has not yet travelled back to the island), and is nearly killed for his troubles by a corpulent and ruthless boy named Perry whom you may — or, as is more likely, many might not — remember as one of the Baker Street irregulars.

I confess to utter bewilderment already, for there is as yet no evident crime — unless the foisting of what passes for American speech on an English novel counts as what is referred to in the New World as, I am given to understand, a felony. There are a number of easy clues that our disciple of Holmes and his American Watson — they even model themselves as such, my dear fellow — follow to arrive at a house occupied by one Scotty Lavelle, one of the group of American mobsters who have taken the boat to England to destroy the genteel character of crime under the King.

Fortunately, Lavelle, his female companion Hen and the household staff are all found gruesomely murdered in the most spectacular manner the next morning. As you would have said, Holmes, the game is afoot. A series of conveniently placed clues lead our intrepid investigators on a trail ending at the legation of the United States of America in London, with a handful of other murders strewn along the way to liven up the proceedings.

As an aside, I consider it my duty to inform you that one of Mr Horowitz’s subsequent works of fiction involves chronicling the adventures of the notorious espionage agent James Bond, in much the same manner as he chronicles yours. I suspect his mind was already in the vortex of that particular narrative, for the second half of this novel, which you have so wisely decided not to cast your beady eyes on, is in fact a breathless succession of improbable but bloodcurdling encounters with a meat market, an agoraphobic criminal, and a narrator who leaves so many hints that he is not who he claims to be that one is tempted to cry for mercy and ask for the denouement to be expedited.

Sure enough, following the proverbial twists and turns, Devereux is apprehended by the intrepid investigators and bundled into a Black Maria to be transported to Scotland Yard. It is at this juncture that Chase puts an end to our misery and reveals himself as… me.

As you will have surmised, if you have been able to lift yourself out of your habitual cocaine-induced stupor, my objective was to manoeuvre myself into a position where I could bring the entire machinery of Scotland Yard to locate and then arrest Devereux, who is, after all, my adversary in the battle to control the world — and I mean the world — of crime. With the help of the deluded Jones, for whom I had no need once Devereux was in my hands, it was not difficult to accomplish.

Admittedly, I am not the storyteller that your beloved Watson is. My narration was not as innocent or playful as his, but this is the underworld of real criminals, not cardboard figures playing at crime. I must, of course, in passing acknowledge my debt to Dr James Sheppard, from whom I have borrowed a certain ploy in telling this tale. You see, Holmes, that is what singles out the British criminal from his American peers — we are honourable men on this side of the ocean.

Yours truly,

Moriarty

(This monthly column helps you talk about a book without having to read it.)

(Arunava Sinha translates classic and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English)

Follow him on twitter @arunava

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