Thus, Andrews’s Moriarty’s loss of temper during an interrogation is out of character for the Canonical figure; Pogue has his Professor state that “sometimes, rage overwhelms me.” Having Moriarty also be a user of cocaine could have been a nice touch if the plot emphasized the ways in which he mirrors Holmes, but in the absence of such emphasis, it’s just a throwaway detail, as is the Professor’s use of disguise. The ending is as reliant on contrivances as the opening, with the Professor conveniently failing to post guards at his headquarters, an unintended parallel to the unwise police manpower allocation at the gallows.
(DVD-viewing is not this movie’s friend, as the ability to freeze an image reveals that a newspaper report of Holmes’s death is buried in the middle of an article on Venezuela!)
It is always good to end on an upbeat note, and fortunately, one is provided by the Granada TV series adaptation of “The Final Problem.” The script adheres closely to the Canon, and benefits from an addition to the previous aired episode, “The Red-Headed League.” That story ends with the revelation that Moriarty was behind John Clay’s scheme, providing a nice set-up for what was then considered the series’ finale. And the insertion of the Professor into other Canonical stories has a solid basis in the originals. One of the all-time best scholarly essays on the Canon, Robert Pattrick’s Moriarty Was There (fortunately reprinted in 2011’s The Grand Game Volume I), ingeniously picks up on the curious incident of a missing letter s to deduce Moriarty’s hand behind “The Red-Headed League,” and “The Five Orange Pips,” among others.
The John Hawkesworth script also utilizes the idea first advanced by Edward F. Clark, Jr. in 1963’s “Study of an Untold Tale,” that Moriarty’s attempt to steal the Mona Lisa constituted one of the areas where Holmes foiled Moriarty.
And that script was well-served by the standout cast, including the most-faithful-to-the-Canon Professor in the person of Eric Porter, who mastered the reptilian oscillation Holmes chillingly described to Watson. Visually, Porter is the closest fit yet to Sidney Paget’s rendition of the character. And his Baker Street battle of words with Holmes sets a standard that will be hard for future adaptations to match. None of the other five Napoleons of Crime covered here come close to Porter’s ability to convincingly portray a criminal mastermind whose wedding of sophisticated organization to villainy made him the adversary for the Great Detective.
The Ritchie films follow the Granada series in one respect: having Moriarty as a shadowy, behind-the-scenes figure in the first film, before putting him front-and-center in Game of Shadows, adds menace and significance to the character. The way the Professor is portrayed there will renew the debate about where this series adheres to and departs from the spirit, and the details, of the original.
_____________
Lenny Picker, who also reviews and writes for Publishers Weekly, founded the Queens scion society, the Napoleons of Crime. Of his work for that society, it can be accurately said that he did little himself. He still hopes to someday read the great Holmes-Moriarty novel that fleshes out their pre-Final Problem duel. He can be reached via his wife’s email, <[email protected]>.
1 Squaring Watson’s reaction to Holmes’ account of Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” with his familiarity with the criminal in The Valley of Fear, has challenged Sherlockians for almost a century.
2 And in a more restrained manner than the movie ads—“The Struggle of Super-Minds in the Crime of the Century!”
3 Along the same lines, the script has Moriarty deduce from the presence of a spider’s web on a watering can that his servant has lied to him.
4 I don’t remember discouraging Lenny from writing such a column, but I have a poor memory. At any rate, I will certainly welcome such a column, should Lenny decide to write it for us.—MK
INTERVIEW WiTH C. E. LAWRENCE
The Darker Half of Carole Buggé
Conducted by (Mrs) Martha Hudson
I regret that for the past two issues, I have been unavailable to write my customary contributions to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, but thanks to the wonders of modern communications, I have managed to interview another of this magazine’s frequent contributors, Miss Carole Buggé. (Forgive me for eschewing the use of ‘Ms,” which strikes me as an unharmonious neologism.)
Dr Watson, I may say, is quite taken with Carole. After reading her shorter fiction, as well as what I understand are called her three “cosy” Berkley Books mystery novels, Who Killed Blanche Dubois?, Who Killed Dorian Gray?, and Who Killed Mona Lisa?, the good doctor permitted her access to his notebooks; as a result she has given us two new Sherlock Holmes novels, The Star of India and The Haunting of Torre Abbey, as well as quite a few shorter Holmesian adventures.
It is rather an open secret, however, that for the past several years, she has taken to writing much darker mysteries, the “Silent” series y clept, under the pen name of C E Lawrence: Silent Screams, Silent Victim, and the most recent, Silent Kills. All of them feature a deeply troubled New York City forensic profiler named Lee Campbell, and in each he must track down truly frightening serial killers.
Below is a transcript of our conversation about her new persona. For convenience, my questions are prefaced by H for Hudson, whereas Carole’s replies are designated CE.
* * * *
H: What does the C. E. stand for, may I ask?
CE: Carole Elizabeth. Lawrence is a family name.
H: What prompted you to begin a series of books about serial killers?
CE: I’ve always been interested in hidden behavior, in people’s dark sides, perhaps in part because in my family no one was supposed to have a dark side; these things were never talked about, so that made me even more curious about it. Also, I think most writers have a natural interest in psychology, in human behavior, and what can be more intriguing to a writer than extreme behavior? And it seems to me that serial killers are about as extreme as it gets.
H: Is that why you write chapters from the killer’s perspective?
CE: Yes. I think it would be very challenging but almost impossible to write a book in which the killer is the protagonist. It was done in American Psycho, of course, but not entirely successfully, I think. So I knew the killer couldn’t be the hero, but I wanted to explore his mind in some way, so I came up with idea of having very short chapters from his point of view. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I wanted to try to get inside the murderer, in Chesterton’s famous phrase.
H: Why create a protagonist who suffers from depression? Weren’t you afraid that might turn some readers away?
CE: I was actually given advice early on that I should stay away from having a damaged hero, that readers would want a kind of super-hero detective, but in reality I believe that damaged heroes are the only interesting kind (a lot of so-called super-heroes are damaged, after all: Superman is an orphan and an alien on a strange planet, and Batman is a weirdo with a bat fetish). Also, we’re all