Moriarty's Defence of Sherlock Holmes: Being a Correction Certain Grave Errors Contained in the Posthumous Manuscript Dr. John H. Watson

A deliberately alternative-canon Sherlock Holmes novel.After Dr. John Watson's death, his final manuscript shocks the world with an unthinkable accusation: Sherlock Holmes was Jack the Ripper.The evidence is intimate, horrifying, and apparently conclusive. But Professor James Moriarty refuses to let the verdict stand. Writing from the shadows, he offers the only defence Holmes can no longer make: a confession.The Whitechapel murders were Moriarty's. The Ripper letters, the clues, the room opposite Baker Street, and the terrible sight Watson believed he witnessed at Miller's Court were all parts of a design intended to turn Holmes's closest friend into the instrument of his ruin.Set in a deliberately altered version of the Holmes world, Moriarty's Defence of Sherlock Holmes is not a continuation of the original canon, but a dark Victorian counter-narrative of false testimony, friendship poisoned by appearances, and reputational murder. At its centre lies the final question Moriarty cannot ignore: what becomes of truth when the most honest witness is wrong?