James Moriarty, Consulting Criminal

Sherlock Holmes is the world’s only consulting detective; this collection asks what his nemesis does for a living. In three original tales, Professor James Moriarty applies the same ruthless intelligence to the other side of the law, taking on problems that London’s criminal class cannot solve themselves.

Narrated from the villain’s perspective, the stories invert the familiar Holmes formula — deduction in service of crime rather than its prevention — while moving through a recognizably Victorian underworld of rivals, schemes, and the looming threat of the detective who would one day be his undoing.

A short, playful departure from Weir’s science fiction, it treats the public-domain characters as a sandbox for inverted detective puzzles.