Professor Moriarty Omnibus

Michael Kurland Professor Moriarty Omnibus

The two books in this volume, The Infernal Device and Death by Gaslight, are set in, let us call it, the "world" of Sherlock Holmes. The third book in the series, The Great Game, is due out in hardcover from St. Martin's Press momentarily. A fourth book, tentatively titled The Empress of India, should follow in the coming year.

These books have Professor James Moriarty as a protagonist and Sherlock Holmes himself as a major character. They are set in the world Conan Doyle established for his brilliant detective, which centers on the London at the end of the nineteenth century; a world of hansom cabs and gas lamps, coal scuttles and gasogenes, clever disguises, secret societies, and a pea-soup fog that surrounds, envelops, and turns every passing footstep into a mystery and the sound of each passing four-wheeler into a romance. Conan Doyle's creation remains with all of us, as Vincent Starrett has said, "in a romantic chamber of the heart, a nostalgic corner of the mind, where it is always 1895."

And this is a fine place to be, and I am proud to set my novels there, and delighted that these first two books were as well received as they were by those who love this fantasy world as I do.

But although my stories are set in that world, and I try very hard to be faithful to its spirit, these are my stories and my agent is not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My books are neither parodies nor pastiches of the stories of Dr. Watson. I would not dream of trying to pastiche the Master; it would be a game I could not win. There would be shame in writing stories either better or worse than the Canon.

Besides, my point of view is different from that of Conan Doyle, my interests, and the interests of my audience, are other than those of Doyle or his readers, and during the eighty-five years that have passed since the last story of the Canon was penned, the world of Sherlock Holmes has changed from the world of Sir Arthur's youth, in the living memory of most of his readers, to a world of myth, of a better time when evil was nasty and bad, and good was pure and wonderful, and the two were never confused. And as the century passed the Canon has taken its place alongside the King James Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, the works of Dickens, as being part of the common heritage of all English-speaking people.

So, please, these books are not Apocrypha; they are, I insist, neither pastiche nor parody. They are historical novels based on new research.

Watson is Boswell, Holmes was lost without his Boswell — and I am, perhaps, Dumas, or Frazer, or Plutarch; at any rate a later source.

I hope you enjoy the books.

Michael Kurland February 2001

A Few Words of Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Bernard Geis and Judy Shafran, who had faith in the idea, and Keith Kahla, who has shown infinite patience and support. And, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the literary giant on whose shoulders I stand.