Moriarty (Horowitz) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Thrilling and compelling, with a stunning twist, this is written as if Conan Doyle were at Horowitz’s shoulder, and is—in my view—the finest crime novel of the year.
Daily Mail (UK)


In this skilfully executed follow on, Horowitz takes up the Conan Doyle baton and creates a suitably stylish and twisty detective story.
Sunday Mirror (UK)


Is there nothing Anthony Horowitz touches that doesn’t turn to gold? ...He captures Conan Doyle’s narrative technique to perfection. Gory murders, honest thieves, brilliant disguises, breathless chases and red herrings abound.
Daily Express (UK)


Though Horowitz dishes up the gore and violence with relish, he also offers all the tropes one might expect from a Holmes yarn, including baffling coded messages, impossible murders and clever red herrings... its plotting just as brilliantly gnarly but its tone more self-aware and laced with in-jokes.
Financial Times


A page-turning novel for all ages that continues the story of Sherlock Holmes’s greatest enemy…crammed with references to some of [Doyle’s] best-loved stories.
Independent (UK)


In this disappointing follow-up to Horowitz’s brilliant first Holmes pastiche, The House of Silk (2011), Sherlock Holmes appears only in passing, in a prologue in which narrator Frederick Chase, a Pinkerton operative, details the plot holes in Watson’s account of the fatal encounter between the great detective and the Napoleon of crime.... [A] pale shadow of Holmes and Watson.
Publishers Weekly


Horowitz's mystery bona fides are impeccable.... Here he reimagines what happened after the presumably lethal scuffle between Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A stunning riff on the Holmes-Moriarty clash. It’s full of allusions to the Holmes cannon that Sherlockians will congratulate themselves for spotting, then wince moments later when Horowitz gently reveals the prank.... Horowitz spins his tale in pitch-perfect Watsonian prose…setting readers up for a finale that is truly jaw-dropping.
Booklist


(Starred review.) A Sherlockian pastiche without Holmes and Watson? Yes indeed, and it's a tour de force quite unlike any other fruit from these densely plowed fields.... Readers who aren't put off by the Hollywood pacing, with action set pieces less like Conan Doyle than the Robert Downey Jr. movies, are in for a rare treat, a mystery as original as it is enthralling.
Kirkus Reviews