Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (Professor… (edition 2011)

Great fun. More than enough twists on a familiar theme to keep me interested. ( )

Great fun. More than enough twists on a familiar theme to keep me interested. ( )

Newman was doing the pastiche/reboot before Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, etc., and he’s good at it. Basher Moran, a racist, sexist thug, is Moriarty’s right-hand man, and this is his account of some of their more interesting adventures. I liked the War of the Worlds parody best, but I suspect many Sherlock Holmes fans would enjoy the reversals of Watson’s recorded adventures, which of course include references to other unreported cases and internal inconsistencies in the same was that the original Holmes stories do. ( )

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, by Kim Newman, is essentially a series of seven novellas, narrated by Colonel Sebastian "Basher" Moran, a violent man in Victorian England who becomes the right-hand man of uber-criminal Professor Moriarty. The stories are all related to the Sherlock Holmes canon in one way or another, albeit told from the other side of the law, and each one is full of wit and violence. Basher himself is a disgraceful character, thoroughly racist and sexist and interested primarily in killing - whether he's killing tigers or people, he doesn't much mind which - while the Professor enjoys planning, in meticulous detail, the most horrific crimes to be visited upon his enemies - or just passing strangers, for that matter. Definitely one needs a strong stomach to read these twisted tales, but they are tremendously entertaining in all their over-the-top glory. It's nice, too, that Newman includes footnotes in which he appears to suggest that various fictional stories, in particular those of Arthur Conan Doyle, were actually real events in the real world. And well, maybe in Newman's world that's true. A lovely tour de force for which one doesn't need to be completely conversant with the Holmes repertoire, although that adds to one's enjoyment; recommended! ( )

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles by Kim Newman was originally recommended to me by my friend Mark. His book tastes tend to run similarly to Mr. Click's so when he mentioned a book featuring Sherlock Holmes' rival, Professor Moriarty, I had a funny feeling that we would be onto a winner.

It's a series of short stories, written in a similar style to the original Sherlock Holmes stories. The twist being that they follow the dastardly plans of Moriarty and are recorded by his version of Watson, Moran. There's a heavy bit of name-dropping, mentioning characters from other book series (such as our good friend Raffles) as well as people who feature in the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

I thought it was very well done. It was clever how it linked to other classic stories which were set around the same time period. There was a collection of notes at the end which added to this and made it feel a little like it was discussing real people, rather than a group of fictional characters.

The stories all have titles based upon Conan Doyle's stories, personally the first three were my favourites; A Volume in Vermilion, A Shambles in Belgravia and The Red Planet League. As a narrator, Moran is clearly not a nice person, he's got no scruples and spends most of his time bragging about his hunting prowess or lusting after women.

All the same, he's pretty funny. The book is full of little asides and thoughts from Moran which are kind of hilarious. Mr. Click drove me crazy reading this, he'd sit there sniggering to himself but hardly ever telling me what it was that he found so funny. It was good to finally get my hands on the book and find out for myself!

Mr. Click finished reading it on my birthday during my birthday picnic, so I started it that evening and finished it in around a week. The book is comprised of a collection of short stories but some are slightly longer than others, divided into chapters. One thing I do like about this format is that it means you can just pick it up and put it down, reading in little bitesize chunks. It's ideal for reading in my breaks at work and during breakfast.

I've noticed that Kim Newman has also written a book called Anno Dracula which I'm thinking I'll need to pick up at some point. Mr. Click's not so sure himself, though if it's in a similar style I'm sure he'll enjoy it. ( )