A highly dubious Chase opens the narrative with a no-nonsense, obviously American-style question: “Does anyone really believe what happened at the Reichenbach Falls? A great many accounts have been written but it seems me that all of them have left something to be desired — which is to say, the truth.”

Chase is convinced that Dr. Watson got it all wrong when he described the death of his friend. True, Holmes was being relentlessly attacked by Moriarty and his gang, barely escaping with his life more than once. But, Chase asks, “…what makes (Holmes) think he will be safer on the Continent than he will be closer to home?”

After a good deal of traveling and trickery, the two adversaries, Holmes and Moriarty, face each other at the edge of the cliff and engage in a life-and-death struggle, according to Holmes’s account, recorded by Watson in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” which takes place three years after the alleged death scenario.

As Chase asks, however, “…is there not something a little unsatisfactory about this encounter? You have to ask yourself why Moriarty allows himself to be challenged in this way. Old-School heroics are all very well (although I’ve never yet met a criminal who went in for them) but what possible purpose can it have served to endanger himself? To put it bluntly, why didn’t he simply take out a revolver and shoot his opponent at close range?”

As befits a novel by this vastly talented author, there are numerous surprises throughout, and plenty of large and small adventures along the way. It is not the equal of The House of Silk, partly because of the absence of Holmes, partly because the style more closely resembles the work of an American writer (although Horowitz is English), but that does not mean it is less than excellent. It’s just that the previous book was so distinguished that almost anything else would have to fall short by comparison.

Otto Penzler is the founder of the MYSTERIOUS PRESS (1975), a distinguished publisher of literary crime fiction whose imprint is now associated with Grove/Atlantic, MYSTERIOUS PRESS.COM (2011), an electronic-book publishing company associated with OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA, and New York City’s MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP (1979). He has won two Edgars, for the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MYSTERY AND DETECTION (1977) and THE LINEUP (2010). He has edited more than 50 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

A Sherlock Holmes Novel Without Sherlock

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