Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character
in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories written
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal
mastermind whom Holmes describes as the "Napoleon
of crime". Doyle lifted the phrase from a
Scotland Yard inspector who was referring
to Adam Worth, a real-life criminal mastermind
and one of the individuals upon whom the character
of Moriarty was based. The character was introduced
primarily as a narrative device to enable
Conan Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and
only featured directly in two of the Sherlock
Holmes stories. However, in more recent derivative
work he has been given a greater prominence
and treated as Holmes' archenemy.
Appearances in other works
Moriarty's first and final appearance occurred
in The Adventure of the Final Problem, in
which Holmes, on the verge of delivering a
fatal blow to Moriarty's criminal ring, is
forced to flee to continental Europe to escape
Moriarty's retribution. The criminal mastermind
follows, and the pursuit ends on top of the
Reichenbach Falls, an encounter that apparently
ends with both Holmes and Moriarty falling
to their deaths. In this story, Moriarty is
introduced as a crime lord who protects nearly
all of the criminals of England in exchange
for their obedience and a share in their profits.
Holmes, by his own account, was originally
led to Moriarty by his perception that many
of the crimes he investigated were not isolated
incidents, but instead the machinations of
a vast and subtle criminal ring.
Moriarty plays a direct role in only one other
Holmes story, The Valley of Fear, set before
"The Final Problem" but published afterwards.
In The Valley of Fear, Holmes attempts to
prevent Moriarty's agents from committing
a murder. In an episode in which Moriarty
is being interviewed by a policeman, a painting
by Jean-Baptiste Greuze is described as hanging
on the wall; Holmes remarks on another work
by the same painter to show it could not have
been purchased on a professor's salary. The
work referred to is La jeune fille à l'agneau;
some commentators have described this as a
pun by Conan Doyle on the Thomas Agnew and
Sons art gallery, which had a famous painting
stolen by Adam Worth, but were unable to prove
the claim.
Holmes mentions Moriarty reminiscently in
five other stories: The Adventure of the Empty
House, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, and
His Last Bow. More obliquely, a 1908 mystery
by Conan Doyle that was named "The Lost Special"
features a criminal genius who could be Moriarty
and a detective who could be Holmes, although
neither is mentioned by name.
Doctor Watson, even when narrating, never
meets Moriarty, and relies upon Holmes to
relate accounts of the detective's feud with
the criminal. Conan Doyle is inconsistent
on Watson's familiarity with Moriarty. In
"The Final Problem", Watson tells Holmes he
has never heard of Moriarty, while in The
Valley of Fear, set earlier on, Watson already
knows of him as "the famous scientific criminal".
In The Empty House, Holmes states that Moriarty
had commissioned a powerful air gun from a
blind German mechanic surnamed von Herder,
which was used by Moriarty's employee/acolyte
Colonel Moran. It closely resembled a cane,
allowing for easy concealment, was capable
of firing revolver bullets at long range,
and made very little noise when fired, making
it ideal for sniping. Moriarty also has a
marked preference for organising "accidents".
His attempts to kill Holmes include falling
masonry and a speeding horse-drawn van. He
is also responsible for stage-managing the
death of Birdy Edwards.
Personality
Moriarty has full respect for Holmes' intellect,
but is also willing to kill Holmes should
he oppose him any further. He has a fiery
temper, furiously elbowing aside people in
the train station when Holmes escapes him,
and pursuing Holmes to Switzerland to kill
him for destabilizing his organization. When
his men fail to kill Holmes, he pursues Holmes
by himself; and when his agents fail to kill
Birdy Edwards, Moriarty is implied to have
done so. The only individual who appears to
have Moriarty's complete confidence is his
henchman Colonel Moran.
Holmes described Moriarty as follows:
He is a man of good birth and excellent education,
endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical
faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote
a treatise upon the binomial theorem which
has had a European vogue. On the strength
of it, he won the mathematical chair at one
of our smaller universities, and had, to all
appearances, a most brilliant career before
him. But the man had hereditary tendencies
of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain
ran in his blood, which, instead of being
modified, was increased and rendered infinitely
more dangerous by his extraordinary mental
powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in
the University town, and eventually he was
compelled to resign his chair and come down
to London. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.
He is the organiser of half that is evil and
of nearly all that is undetected in this great
city...
Holmes echoes and expounds this sentiment
in The Valley of Fear stating:
But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are
uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and
there lie the glory and the wonder of it!
The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer
of every devilry, the controlling brain of
the underworld, a brain which might have made
or marred the destiny of nations—that’s
the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion,
so immune from criticism, so admirable in
his management and self-effacement, that for
those very words that you have uttered he
could hale you to a court and emerge with
your year’s pension as a solatium for his
wounded character. Is he not the celebrated
author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book
which ascends to such rarefied heights of
pure mathematics that it is said that there
was no man in the scientific press capable
of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce?
Foulmouthed doctor and slandered professor—such
would be your respective roles! That’s genius,
Watson.
The "smaller university" involved has been
claimed to be one of the colleges that later
comprised the University of Leeds; but in
Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography,
the "smaller university" is said to be Durham
University.
Conan Doyle's original motive in creating
Moriarty was evidently his intention to kill
Holmes off. "The Final Problem" was intended
to be exactly what its title says; Doyle sought
to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in
a blaze of glory, having rid the world of
a criminal so powerful and dangerous any further
task would be trivial in comparison. Moriarty
appeared in only one book as the author felt
having him constantly escape would discredit
Holmes, and would be less satisfying. Eventually,
however, public pressure and financial troubles
impelled Doyle to bring Holmes back.
A point of interest is that the "high, domed
forehead" was seen as the sign of a prodigious
intellect during Conan Doyle's time. In giving
Moriarty this trait, already apparent in both
Sherlock Holmes and the detective's brother
Mycroft, Doyle may have intended to portray
Moriarty as a man having an intellect equal
or greater than that of Holmes, and thus the
only man capable of defeating him.
Moriarty's personal history
"Moriarty" is an ancient Irish name as is
Moran, the surname of Moriarty's henchman,
Sebastian Moran. Conan Doyle himself was of
Irish Catholic descent, educated at Stonyhurst
College, although he abandoned his family's
religious tradition, neither marrying nor
raising his children in the Catholic faith,
nor cleaving to any politics that his ethnic
background might presuppose. Doyle is known
to have used his former school, Stonyhurst
College, as inspiration for details of the
Holmes series; among his contemporaries at
the school were two boys surnamed Moriarty.
The stories give contradictory indications
about Moriarty's family. In his first appearance
in "The Final Problem", Moriarty is referred
to as "Professor Moriarty" — no forename
is mentioned. Watson does, however, refer
to the name of another family member when
he writes of "the recent letters in which
Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory
of his brother". In "The Adventure of the
Empty House", Holmes refers to Moriarty on
one occasion as "Professor James Moriarty".
This is the only time Moriarty is given a
first name, and oddly, it is the same as that
of his purported brother; to wit The Valley
of Fear, Holmes says of Professor Moriarty:
"He is unmarried. His younger brother is a
station master in the west of England."
Simon Newcomb and other real-world role models
ln addition to the master criminal Adam Worth,
there has been much speculation among astronomers
and Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts that Doyle
based his fictional character Moriarty on
the American astronomer Simon Newcomb. Newcomb
was revered as a multitalented genius, with
a special mastery of mathematics, and he had
become internationally famous in the years
before Conan Doyle began writing his stories.
More to the point, Newcomb had earned a reputation
for spite and malice, apparently seeking to
destroy the careers and reputations of rival
scientists.
Moriarty may have been inspired in part by
two real-world mathematicians. If the characterizations
of Moriarty's academic papers are reversed,
they describe real mathematical events. Carl
Friedrich Gauss wrote a famous paper on the
dynamics of an asteroid in his early 20s,
and was appointed to a chair partly on the
strength of this result. Srinivasa Ramanujan
wrote about generalisations of the binomial
theorem, and earned a reputation as a genius
by writing articles that confounded the best
extant mathematicians. Gauss's story was well
known in Conan Doyle's time, and Ramanujan's
story unfolded at Cambridge from early 1913
to mid 1914; The Valley of Fear, which contains
the comment about maths so abstruse that no
one could criticise it, was published in September
1914. Irish mathematician Des MacHale has
suggested George Boole may have been a model
for Moriarty.
Jane Stanford, in That Irishman, suggests
that Conan Doyle borrowed some of the traits
and background of the Fenian John O'Connor
Power for his portrayal of Moriarty.
The model which Conan Doyle himself cited
in The Valley of Fear is the London arch-criminal
of the 18th century, Jonathan Wild. He mentions
this when seeking to compare Moriarty to a
real-world character that Inspector Alec MacDonald
might know, but it is in vain as MacDonald
is not so well read as Holmes. It is averred
that surviving Jesuit priests at Stonyhurst
instantly recognized the physical description
of Moriarty as that of the Rev. Thomas Kay,
SJ, Prefect of Discipline, under whose aegis
Doyle fell as a wayward pupil. According to
this hypothesis, Doyle as a private joke has
Inspector MacDonald describe Moriarty: "He'd
have made a grand meenister with his thin
face and grey hair and his solemn-like way
of talking."
Depictions and references
Radio
Orson Welles played Professor Moriarty opposite
Sir John Gielgud's Holmes in the 1950s series
broadcast of The Final Problem.
In the BBC Radio 4 November 1992 broadcast
of The Final Problem and 24 February 1993
broadcast of The Empty House, Moriarty was
played by Michael Pennington.
In the BBC Radio March 1997 broadcast of The
Valley of Fear, Moriarty is eventually revealed
to be the narrator of the story; the narrator
was played by Ronald Pickup.
On The Goon Show, Spike Milligan played a
character. "Count Jim Moriarty", which has
sometimes been implied to be based on Professor
Moriarty.
In the 1999 BBC radio comedy series The Newly
Discovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty
was played by Geoffrey Whitehead.
Film
Norman McKinnel appeared as Moriarty in the
1931 film Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour.
Booth Conway appeared as Moriarty in the 1916
silent film The Valley of Fear.
Lyn Harding portrayed Moriarty in The Triumph
of Sherlock Holmes and Silver Blaze.
George Zucco appeared as Moriarty in The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes.
Lionel Atwill appeared as Moriarty in Sherlock
Holmes and the Secret Weapon, in which he
is working for the Nazis in World War II.
Henry Daniell appeared as Moriarty in The
Woman in Green.
Moriarty is the only character in the Sherlock
Holmes films to have been killed off three
times in the same series. All deaths occurred
in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Holmes films,
and all three involved him falling from a
great height.
In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes
throws a straight left into Moriarty's jaw,
sending him through a battlement and off the
top of the Tower of London.
In Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon,
Moriarty fell sixty feet into a sewer.
In The Woman in Green, he fell from a high
building when a drainpipe that he was clutching
onto broke.
Leo McKern portrayed a comedic Moriarty in
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter
Brother.
Laurence Olivier appeared as Moriarty in The
Seven-Per-Cent Solution. However, in this
version he is not the story's villain, but
merely a harmless man who becomes an increasingly
paranoid victim of Holmes' delusions, based
on the fact that Moriarty indirectly contributed
to the death of Holmes' mother, who was his
lover.
In Young Sherlock Holmes, Anthony Higgins
plays Holmes' schoolmaster, Rathe, who turns
out to be an evil mastermind. During the long
credit roll at the end of the film, Rathe
is seen walking to an inn and signs the ledger
as "Moriarty", indicating he will become Holmes'
archenemy. Higgins portrayed Holmes in Sherlock
Holmes Returns, making him one of only two
actors to portray both Holmes and Moriarty
on film
In the Disney animated film The Great Mouse
Detective, the character called "Professor
Ratigan" is an obvious parallel and tribute
to the character of Moriarty. Basil also describes
Ratigan as "The Napoleon of Crime", the same
designation Holmes gave Moriarty in "The Final
Problem". After his plan to replace the Queen
fails, Ratigan is killed when he falls off
Big Ben after a clash with Basil. Ratigan
was voiced by Vincent Price.
Paul Freeman appeared as Moriarty in Without
a Clue; the film revolves around the premise
that Holmes is a fictional creation of Watson,
who is the real crime-solving genius. Moriarty
is apparently aware of the deception, with
'Holmes' clearly terrified at the thought
of facing him, although he shows his skills
when facing Moriarty in a duel at the film's
conclusion.
Anthony Andrews appeared as Moriarty in Hands
of a Murderer.
Vincent D'Onofrio appeared as Moriarty in
Sherlock: Case of Evil.
In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
the film adaptation of the graphic novel by
Alan Moore, Richard Roxburgh portrays the
main villain named the Phantom, whose true
identity was eventually revealed to be Professor
James Moriarty, who also posed as the League's
recruiter M; with a blackmailed Dorian Gray
as his agent, Moriarty acquired samples from
the League with the intention of duplicating
their powers for his own goals. Three clues
to the Phantom's real name were subtly slipped
into the course of the film's dialogue. In
the climax, Moriarty alludes that he somehow
survived his confrontation with Holmes at
Reichenbach. After a confrontation with Allan
Quatermain ends with him stabbing Quatermain
in the back while he is distracted, he is
shot down by Tom Sawyer while trying to escape.
Roxburgh also portrayed Holmes in the 2002
TV adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles,
making him one of the only two actors to portray
both Holmes and Moriarty on film.
In the 2009 film, Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty
appears as a shadowy, mysterious villain employing
Irene Adler. The role is uncredited, although
rumors circulated that the character was played
by Brad Pitt, who had expressed interest in
playing the character. Jared Harris played
the role in the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A
Game of Shadows. In addition to his credentials
as a mathematical genius, celebrated author
and lecturer, he is described as a boxing
champion during his school days at Cambridge,
and a close friend and consultant of the British
Prime Minister. Mycroft Holmes describes Moriarty
as one of England's foremost intellectuals.
During the film, he attempts to provoke a
war using advanced weaponry that he has developed
while sending an assassin into a crucial conference
using an early form of plastic surgery. With
Watson having deduced his assassin's identity
while Moriarty is occupied in a chess game
with Holmes, Moriarty and Holmes clash, with
the fight ending as Holmes pulls Moriarty
over the edge of a balcony into a waterfall,
knowing that he cannot defeat Moriarty in
a direct fight due to a recent injury and
wanting to protect Watson from Moriarty's
revenge. Although Holmes is shown to have
survived at the end, Moriarty's fate is left
ambiguous.
In the 2010 Warner Brothers cartoon Tom and
Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty appears
as a jewel thief and was assisted by some
evil cats. A comparison to his role in "The
Red-Headed League" is also made.
Television
Eric Porter portrayed Moriarty in two episodes
of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring
Jeremy Brett as Holmes: "The Red-Headed League"
and "The Final Problem", and briefly in the
Return of Sherlock Holmes episode: "The Empty
House". The first two stories were filmed
in 1985, with Jeremy Brett as Holmes, and
David Burke as Watson, and the third in 1986
with Edward Hardwicke taking over the role
of Watson. He also appeared as a hallucination
in the Return of Sherlock Holmes episode "The
Devil's Foot". In the feature-length episode
The Eligible Bachelor, Holmes describes Moriarty
as "a giant of evil" and says, "Moriarty combined
science with evil. Organization with precision.
Vision with perception. I know of only one
person that he misjudged. Me. ... I regret
Moriarty's death [because] without him, I
have to deal with distressed children, cat
owners—pygmies, pygmies of triviality."
In the cartoon Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd
Century, Moriarty was the one behind nearly
all the crimes. He had been cloned back to
life by a rogue geneticist, requiring Holmes
to be 'resurrected' as well in order to match
him. The body of the original Moriarty was
still covered in ice behind the waterfall
he fell from during his battle with Holmes.
John Huston portrayed Moriarty in the made-for-TV
movie Sherlock Holmes in New York opposite
Roger Moore's Holmes, attempting to rob the
Bank of New York while threatening Irene Adler's
son to prevent Holmes from investigating,
although Holmes and Watson are able to rescue
the son and solve the crime, regardless.
In the Soviet series of television films The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
by Igor Maslennikov, Moriarty was played by
Viktor Yevgrafov and voiced by Oleg Dahl in
the second film of the series.
In the Russian-produced Sherlock Holmes and
Sherlock Holmes series by Andrey Kavun, Moriarty
was played both times by actor Alexey Gorbunov.
A holodeck simulation of Professor Moriarty,
played by actor Daniel Davis, appeared in
the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes
"Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle",
accidentally achieving an artificial sentience
when Geordi LaForge asks the holodeck to create
an opponent able to defeat Data.
Moriarty appears as a holographic character
in the Futurama episode "Kif Gets Knocked
Up a Notch", where he comes out of the Holoshed
of the Nimbus with Attila the Hun, Jack The
Ripper, and Evil Lincoln.
In The Strange Case of the End of Civilization
as We Know It, Connie Booth plays Moriarty's
granddaughter, Francine, who is disguised
as the modern-day Mrs. Hudson.
In the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode
"Trials of the Demon!", both Holmes and Watson
guest star. Watson mentions Moriarty, suggesting
he might be the one responsible for stealing
the souls of women. Holmes quickly ruled out
Moriarty as a suspect based on the choice
of weapon.
"Elementary My Dear Winston", the third episode
for the 1989 season of The Real Ghostbusters,
features Holmes, Watson and Moriarty by way
of "belief made manifest": so many people
believed in them that they became real. Moriarty
now has supernatural powers and employs the
Hound of the Baskervilles as his henchman.
Holmes and Moriarty are both sucked into the
Ghostbusters' storage facility while wrestling,
in the same manner as the conclusion of "The
Final Problem".
Anthropomorphic incarnation of Moriarty appeared
in the anime series Sherlock Hound, voiced
by Chikao Ōtsuka for Japanese and Hamilton
Camp for English. During the series, Moriarty
is the main villain behind every crime in
almost each episode. As many characters were
depicted as an anthropomorphic dogs, Moriarty
himself is seen closely resembling wolf.
James "Jim" Moriarty is played by actor Andrew
Scott in the modern-day BBC adaptation, Sherlock,
as an extremely volatile "consulting criminal"
who develops a murderous obsession with Holmes.
In the Series 2 finale The Reichenbach Fall
he frames Holmes and threatens his friends
to drive him to suicide. He seemingly shoots
himself to make sure Holmes commits suicide.
However, at the end of "His Last Vow", his
face appears on TV screens across the country
as a mostly static image, only the mouth moving,
similar to that of a ventriloquist's dummy.
Moriarty appeared in two episodes of the animated
series BraveStarr.
In the US television series Elementary, Moriarty
is equated with Irene Adler. As with Moriarty,
she is first mentioned in the twelfth episode
of the first season. Holmes tracks an apparent
serial killer who uses the name "M"; upon
his capture, he is discovered to be Sebastian
Moran, Moriarty's henchman, whose seemingly
random murders were actually assassinations
carried out for his employer, whom he claims
to have never met. In the season finale, "Irene
Adler" is revealed to be an alias created
by Moriarty in order to get close to Holmes
and observe him. The episode "We Are Everyone"
reveals her true name as Jamie Moriarty and
she continues to write letters to Sherlock
from prison.
In the Russian television series Sherlock
Holmes, Moriarty is a mathematics professor
who attempts to assassinate the Queen. He
appeared as the head of a London-wide criminal
network called "The Cabmen Gang".
Theatre
In the William Gillette play, Moriarty was
played on Broadway in the original run by
George Wessells, then by Frank Keenan, John
Miltern and Philip Locke, Clive Revill and
Alan Sues from 1974–76.
In the play Sherlock Holmes by Ouida Rathbone,
which ran at the New Century Theatre in New
York City for only three performances from
30–31 October 1953, Moriarty was played
by Thomas Gomez.
Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke played Holmes
and Watson in the Sherlock Holmes TV series
made by Granada Television. Eric Porter played
the professor. In the late 1980s, Brett and
Hardwicke appeared in the stage play The Secret
of Sherlock Holmes by Jeremy Paul, a regular
contributor to the series. The only characters
in the play are Holmes and Watson and it highlights
many aspects of their relationship from their
first meeting to the Reichenbach Falls. In
the second half it is indicated that Moriarty
never existed: he was a figment of the imagination
of Holmes who needed a worthy enemy as much
as he needed a devoted friend like Watson.
In The Final Problem, Watson and Moriarty
never actually meet in person.
Literature
T. S. Eliot, a fan of Sherlock Holmes fiction,
used the phrase "the Napoleon of crime" in
homage to describe Macavity in Old Possum's
Book of Practical Cats. There are further
likenesses between the two as T.S. Eliot talks
of Macavity's virtues in stealth, his tall
and thin stature with sunken eyes and a domed
forehead. All of these descriptions are matched
precisely to the Moriarty of Conan Doyle.
In Neil Gaiman's Hugo Award winning short-story
A Study in Emerald, the Moriarty and Holmes
of an alternate history reverse roles. Moriarty
is hired to investigate a murder. The murder
has apparently been carried out by Sherlock
Holmes, and Dr Watson. The story is narrated
by Colonel Sebastian Moran, given the rank
of Major by Gaiman.
In Detective Comics 572, the fiftieth anniversary
of Batman's first appearance, Batman and several
other DC characters met descendants of Moriarty
and Dr Watson. Prof. Moriarty appeared in
a flashback sequence; a 135-year old Holmes
had a brief cameo at the end of the story.
In a 2006 comic book story featuring Lee Falk's
The Phantom, the 19th Phantom has to fight
Prof. Moriarty; the climax of the story features
the Phantom and Moriarty falling down a waterfall
in the Bangalla jungle. At the end of the
story, Moriarty is shown to be alive, as he
returns to London to find "a detective named
Sherlock Holmes".
Dorothy Sayers's story The Adventurous Exploit
of the Cave of Ali Baba is consciously modeled
upon "The Final Problem". Lord Peter Wimsey
is apparently killed, only to return from
the dead at the end of the story and reveal
he had faked his death in order to trap a
very dangerous super-criminal. The debt to
the original Doyle story is explicitly acknowledged
in Sayers' story, in a passage in which Wimsey
refers to the criminal he is tracking as "The
Moriarty of this gang".
In Nicholas Meyer's 1976 novel, The Seven-Per-Cent
Solution, Prof. Moriarty is portrayed as Holmes'
childhood mathematics tutor, a whining little
man with a guilty secret. He is incensed to
hear that Holmes, apparently under the influence
of cocaine, has depicted him as a criminal
mastermind. Due to Holmes' worsening condition,
Moriarty threatens to tell the authorities
about Holmes' addiction. Dr. Watson seeks
the help of Sigmund Freud, who uncovers the
truth behind Holmes' perception of "the Napoleon
of Crime". This is one of many works to seize
on the fact that Moriarty never actually shows
his face in the Holmes canon. The novel, The
Seven-Per-Cent Solution, was made into a 1976
film and starred Laurence Olivier as a very
different sort of Professor Moriarty.
In the 1979 novel, Enter the Lion: A Posthumous
Memoir of Mycroft Holmes, written by Michael
P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright, Jerrold Moriarty,
the father of the Moriarty brothers, is Mycroft
Holmes' immediate superior in the Foreign
Office and plays an important part in a plot
by former Confederate officers to involve
the British government in a scheme to overthrow
the United States government. His exposure
by Mycroft and Sherlock leads to his suicide
to avoid arrest, for which Professor Moriarty
blames the Holmes brothers, and provides an
explanation as to the antagonism between Sherlock
Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The Professor
himself makes two appearances in the novel.
Michael Kurland wrote a series of novels in
which Moriarty is the hero: his crime organisation
is the method whereby he raises funds for
his experimental physics apparatus. In the
first book of the series, The Infernal Device,
he foils a plot against Queen Victoria, reluctantly
allying with Holmes.
John Gardner has written three novels featuring
the arch-villain: The Return of Moriarty,
in which the Professor, like Holmes, is shown
to have survived the meeting at the Reichenbach,
The Revenge of Moriarty and Moriarty. In these
novels, Moriarty is depicted as a Victorian-era
Al Capone or Don Corleone, single-handedly
controlling London's organized crime structure.
"The Professor" is not really Moriarty, but
Moriarty's younger brother, also named James,
and as brilliant as his older brother, whom
he impersonates, disgraces, and murders, later
stealing the deceased man's identity.
Moriarty appears in Alan Moore's The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Recruited from
university by British Intelligence, he supposedly
set up his criminal empire as part of an undercover
operation to monitor crime in London which
got out of hand, to the point where the 'cover'
became more real to Moriarty than his role
in British Intelligence. Having survived the
encounter with Holmes, he went on to become
head of British Intelligence under the code-name
"M" but still maintained his criminal interests.
He instigated the creation of the League as
a covert ops unit with plausible deniability
and used them to recover an anti-gravity mineral
called Cavorite which had been stolen by his
crime lord rival The Doctor. He used the Cavorite
to bomb the East End of London in an attempt
to destroy The Doctor but was thwarted by
the League which had uncovered the double-cross.
Following his supposed death, he was ironically
succeeded as "M" by Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's
older brother. In The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen: Black Dossier, it is suggested
that Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty is his great-grandson,
and the rivalry between the two criminals
is continued by the fact that The Doctor's
great-grandson is Kerouac's other creation,
Doctor Sax. In the third volume, set more
than six decades later, Mina Murray comes
across his carcass, still holding onto the
cavorite inside a block of ice floating through
space.
Kim Newman's novel Anno Dracula depicts Moriarty
as the spokesman of a league of villains drawn
from popular fiction. In this Moriarty is
a vampire and is no longer interested in criminal
pursuits as he now has an eternal life which
he can dedicate to intellectual contemplation.
Newman has also written a series of short
stories about Moriarty, narrated Watson-style
by Colonel Moran, in which Moriarty interacts
with many of his fictional contemporaries.
They have been collected in Professor Moriarty:
The Hound of the D'Urbervilles. One of the
stories, "The Red Planet League", first appeared
in Gaslight Grimoire. Another story, "The
Adventure of the Greek Invertebrate", features
Professor Moriarty's two brothers, also named
James, the colonel and the station master,
and offers an explanation for the lack of
variety in their forenames. The last story,
"The Problem of the Final Adventure", retells
The Adventure of the Final Problem from the
other side, revealing there was more going
on than Watson realised.
Commenting on Nero Wolfe's prolongs struggle
with the powerful crime boss Arnold Zeck,
Michael Dirda — book critic for The Washington
Post — wrote "I was thrilled when Wolfe
finally encountered his own Moriarty in the
archvillain Arnold Zeck". British author and
literary critic David Langford noted that
the relationship between Zeck and Wolfe may
be seen as comparable to that of Moriarty
and Holmes.
Philip José Farmer's science fiction/steampunk
parallel novel The Other Log of Phileas Fogg
asserts that Moriarty and Jules Verne's Captain
Nemo were one and the same person.
Moriarty appears in a short story by Donald
Thomas, in his collection The Secret Cases
of Sherlock Holmes, as the mastermind of a
blackmail plot involving the alleged bigamy
of Prince George. His younger brother, Col.
James Moriarty, appears as the antagonist
of another short story in Thomas' The Execution
of Sherlock Holmes.
In The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, set during
Holmes' three-year fake "death", Holmes encounters
Moriarty during his trip in Tibet, where he
learns that Moriarty is actually "the Dark
One", a former Tibetan mystic possessing great
psychic powers who lost his memories in an
attack on the Dalai Lama, only for his near-death
experience on the Reichenbach Falls to restore
his memory, albeit leaving him horribly crippled
and disfigured by his injuries. He attempts
to acquire a legendary crystal that would
allow him to wield even greater power, but,
although Moriarty acquires the crystal, boosting
his powers and healing his injuries, he is
defeated when it is revealed that Holmes is
partly possessed by the spirit of the Dark
One's old rival, allowing Holmes to wield
similar powers to Moriarty's and delay him
long enough for Holmes' ally, Huree Chunder
Mockerjee, to knock the crystal away from
Moriarty and into Holmes' hands, allowing
Holmes to turn Moriarty's powers against him,
vaporising his body and destroying him once
and for all.
In The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R.
King, an elderly Holmes and his protégée,
Mary Russell, are pursued by Moriarty's middle-aged
daughter, also an Oxford mathematics don,
and a criminal kingpin in her own right, who
threatens Holmes' remaining friends as she
attempts to force Holmes to kill himself after
signing a fake confession 'admitting' he framed
her father as a criminal out of jealousy and
that most of his cases were solved by others.
The detective provokes her by noting that
her father essentially committed suicide by
confronting Holmes in such an isolated spot
without any weapon, which results in her accidentally
shooting herself while struggling with Mary
Russell.
In the Italian comic book Martin Mystère
Moriarty wasn't killed at Reichenbach Falls.
Both he and Holmes survived and continued
with their previous works. At the beginning
of World War I, Moriarty stole a formula for
poison gas from the British government. When
he attempted to sell the formula to the Central
Powers, he was discovered by Holmes, who killed
Moriarty, but only after Moriarty managed
to fatally wound Doctor Watson.
In Anthony Horowitz' 2011 novel, The House
of Silk, the first "official" Holmes story
since Doyle's death, a chapter is dedicated
to Watson's meeting with a secretive criminal
mastermind. This character is not definitively
identified, however it is heavily implied
that he is James Moriarty. Watson later states
that he believes this to be the case, and
in an appendix Horowitz states the identity
of the character outright.
In various books in David Weber's "Honorverse"
series, the name Moriarty has been applied
to a defensive weapon system developed by
the Republic of Haven. The system is deployed
as a missile fire control system, for system
defense against naval assaults. The concept,
while easily countered by "Mistletoe" missiles,
is nonetheless the inspiration for the Manticoran
development of the "Mycroft" defensive weapon
system in A Rising Thunder.
In Artemis Fowl, the first book in the young
adult Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer,
LEPrecon officer Jullius Root remarks about
the criminal mastermind Fowl's criminal activities
and his abduction of officer Holly Short:
"Too much damned TV. Thinks he's Sherlock
Holmes". Foaly corrects him, saying "...That's
professor Moriarty ... Holmes, Moriarty, they
both look the same with the flesh scorched
off their skulls.'"
In Paco Ignacio Taibo II's "The Return of
the Tigers of Malaysia", Dr James Moriarty
appears as the mastermind behind the attacks
on Sandokan and his friend Yanez.
Video games
In the video game Portal 2, Wheatley mentions
Holmes and Moriarty, comparing Chell's pursuit
of Wheatley to the endless fight of Holmes
and Moriarty.
In The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty
is unmasked as the villain in the 16th and
last mystery, but while his scheme is foiled,
the Professor escapes when Holmes must focus
on disarming a bomb inside the Big Ben clock
tower.
In the computer adventure Sherlock Holmes:
The Awakened, Holmes encounters Moriarty locked
in a Switzerland mental hospital in 1895,
where the Professor has suffered severe brain
injuries from the Falls. Not recognizing Holmes
in disguise, Moriarty is tricked into thinking
his nemesis is in the hospital lobby, and
charges from his cell in a frenzy, giving
Holmes a diversion so he may investigate the
asylum's secrets further. By the opening of
the sequel, Sherlock Holmes versus Arsène
Lupin, or Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, there
has been no word of any mental recovery or
escape attempts by Moriarty. Holmes remarks
to Watson, "If there had, we would be on the
way to Switzerland already."
In The Testament of Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty
is the main antagonist who tries to frame
Holmes and create anarchy.
In Wizard101, the character Meowiarty is based
on Prof. Moriarty.
References
External links
The Final Problem
The Valley of Fear
Sherlock Holmes Public Library
