* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
I’m an artist who is planning to counterfeit fifty pound notes. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
—Baffled in Blackpool
Dear Baffled,
When you draw Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, make sure she isn’t winking, or in her knickers.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
My husband is having an affair with my best friend. I plan on poisoning the both of them. What kind of poison would you recommend I use?
—Beth in Bath
Dear Beth,
I’m very sorry, madam, but I simply cannot condone a crime that is committed for any reason other than profit.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Why are you called the Napoleon of crime? Since the English defeated Napoleon, why aren’t you called the Wellington of crime?
—Concerned in Kensington
Dear Concerned,
You sir, are an idiot.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
Is it true that you control all the crime in London?
—Wondering in the West End
Dear Wondering,
Yes, it’s true. If a school boy steals a loaf of bread from a bakery, I get half.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is the best way to rob a bank and not get caught?
—Befuddled in Brighton
Dear Befuddled,
Subcontract.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
What is your opinion of Sherlock Holmes?
—Curious in Cardiff
Dear Curious,
I think he’s a fat, bloated, pompous, know it all. No, wait, that’s his brother, Mycroft. Sherlock is all right, though he does tend to go off on those silly tangents of his about cigar ashes, different kinds of mud, boot marks , and the like. Oh, let’s face it, the man is a crashing bore.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How is it that you did not die when you fell into the Reichenbach Falls with Sherlock Holmes?
—Pondering in Picadilly
Dear Pondering,
That’s simple. It wasn’t me who fought Holmes that day, it was a look-a-like actor that I hired to play me. And, in an odd twist of fate, apparently Holmes had done the same. Sadly, both actors drowned. While they were locked in mortal battle, Holmes and I were having cocktails in Davos. Afterwards, we went to our banks in Zurich, and visited our money.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How have you managed to elude capture for all these years?
—Reluctant in Regent Park
Dear Reluctant.
I own a very, very well oiled bicycle.
* * * *
Dear Professor Moriarty,
How can I get my boyfriend of five years to propose to me?
—Betty in Billingsgate
Dear Betty,
You must have me confused with Miss Katherine, the agony columnist, for the Daily Mail.
SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker
The Adventures of the Six Napoleons…of Crime
Whatever else Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows does, it deserves credit for enabling a return to movie prominence of one of the all-time great villains and, arguably, the third most interesting Canonical character, who makes a strong impression all out of proportion to his very limited time on-screen. Watson, our trusted eyes and ears, only sees him twice, but his impact on the Good Doctor’s life could hardly have been greater. I refer, of course, to Professor James Moriarty, the ne plus ultra of arch-enemies, a genius who is “the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected” in the London of 1891. But as intriguing a character as Moriarty is, filmmakers using him as the main bad guy have almost always had to depart from one of the most remarkable aspects of his criminality.
It’s always best to return to fundamentals, so let’s revisit Holmes’s (apparently)1 first description of his intellectual equal in “The Final Problem.”
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed—the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organized and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught—never so much as suspected.
That passage tells us why it is if not actually impossible, it’s highly improbable for the writers of TV or movie pastiches to stay faithful to one of his most unique qualities. Remember: “He sits motionless,” “He does little himself. He only plans.” Taken at face value, Moriarty is not, as he’s popularly labeled, Holmes’s evil twin. His armchair malevolence is really the mirror-image of the Canon’s great sedentary collection of grey cells, and the inspiration for Nero Wolfe, Mycroft Holmes. But it would take an extremely gifted writer to make an armchair vs. armchair battle of wits gripping, and even such an author would find translating such words on the page (or e-reader screen) to dialogue and moving images daunting.
Similarly, Moriarty’s immobile inhabiting of the center of his web is also nearly-impossible for a pastiche. The Canonical Moriarty has multiple layers insulating him from culpability—a concept brilliantly realized in Bert Coules’s flawless adaptation of “The Final Problem” for radio—where Holmes compares the Moriarty organization to a pyramid, with the Professor at the apex, who has dealings only with the nine members of his High Table. But having the main bad guy only seen issuing orders to his minions isn’t a recipe for dramatic conflict. All of which is to say that it would be a tough sell for studios and audiences alike to have a Moriarty who just sits and thinks at the center of his gang.
If the frenetic previews of Game of Shadows, which contain action sequences similar to those in the first film, are a reliable barometer, they suggest that Jared Harris’s Professor will be mixing it up physically with Downey’s energetic detective.
But if the latest Moriarty ends up striking viewers as less-than-Canonical (hopefully a judgment that takes into account all of his scenes, not just the presumed fight ones), there is ample precedent for a movie Napoleon of Crime who is active in the field, which, I contend, is a necessary departure from the Canon. In the interests of presenting depth rather than breadth, (and justifying this column’s intended-to-be-clever title), I will look at only six predecessors to Harris in essaying the role. Limiting coverage to film and TV portrayals excludes two of the most memorable ones—Orson Welles, in the Gielgud/Richardson radio series