History Literature / ProfessorMoriartySeries

* DeadPersonImpersonation: The original Professor Moriarty is no criminal: just a particularly nasty BigBrotherBully turned respected academic. The Moriarty who becomes Sherlock Holmes's ArchEnemy is the professor's youngest brother, who framed the professor for all sorts of wrongdoings to destory his career, then killed him and stole his identity.
* DeathByAdaptation: Moriarty poisons an imprisoned Colonel Moran for mismanaging his empire, even though canon stories establish that Moran is still alive but incarcerated years after his arrest.

* TheFamilyThatSlaysTogether: A whole family of career forgers (parents, six children, three grandparents, fifteen aunts and uncles, and twelve cousins) work for Moriarty's competitors in the first book. They are well-knonw in the underworld Moriarty's goons pay the family a visit in the middle of the night, wreck their tools, and break the hands of the three best forgers in the clan.

[[SequelGap The first two books were published in 1974 and 1975, a year apart, but ''Moriarty'' came out in 2008, thirty-three years after the previous books.]] It was posthumously published a year after John Gardner's death.

* SequelGap: The first two books are published a year apart, but ''Moriarty came out thirty-three years after the previous books, and was posthmously published a year after John Gardner's death.

* ThrownFromTheZeppelin Moriarty outsmarts and humiliates kingpins from Germany, Italy, and France to cow them into helping him form TheSyndicate, then confronts TheDon of Spain, has the others tell him about how they now see that spurning Moriarty was foolish and they want to join him. The Spanish boss still refuses to submit to Moriarty and bids the others a good day. A few minutes later, he dies in a carriage "accident" while departing from the meeting. Interestingly, all of those same crime lords had voluntarily joined Moriarty's organization in the previous book, but they betrayed and abandoned Moriarty during the TimeSkip between books after a police investigation forced Moriarty to flee the continent and made him look weak.

''The Professor Moriarty Series'' is a group of three books (''The Return of Moriarty'', ''The Revenge of Moriarty'', and ''Moriarty'' by Creator/JohnGardner, better known for being the first long-running Franchise/JamesBond continuator. In the books, Professor Moriarty turns out to be alive, having faked his death at the hands of Sherlock Holmes. He returns to London to rebuild his empire and ruin his rivals.

* AsianSpeekeeEngrish: Lee Chow, one of Moriarty's CoDragons, has troble pronouncing many English words and prefers to speak shorter sentences in a stereotypical fashion.

* FlorenceNightingaleEffect: After being captured and tortured by rival gangster's, Moriarty's henchman Bert Spear falls in love with Bridget, the prostitute who his captors have tend to his wounds between torture sessions.

* MasterForger: A whole family of career forgers (parents, six children, three grandparents, fifteen aunts and uncles, and twelve cousins) working for Moriarty's competitors in the first book. Moriarty's goons pay the family a visit in the middle of the night, wreck their tools, and break the hands of the three best forgers in the clan.

** In the climax of the first book, [[spoiler:Moriarty's NumberTwo Pip Paget and his wife Fanny flee London after Moriarty's growing ruthlessness disgusts Pip and Moriarty unintentionally gets Fanny implicated in a double murder.]]

* ShoutOut: At the beginning of the first book, criminals, people who feel wronged by criminals, and relatives of criminals all visit Moriarty to congratualte him on his return and ask favors of him, with the scene homaging Vito Corleone being asked favors at the beginning of ''Film/TheGodfather.''

* ThrownFromTheZeppelin Moriarty outsmarts and humiliates kingpin's from Germany, Italy, and France to cow them into helping him form TheSyndicate, then confronts TheDon of Spain, has the others tell him about how they now see that spurning Moriarty was foolish and they want to join him. The Spanish boss still refuses to submit to Moriarty and bids the others a good day. A few minutes later, he dies in a carriage "accident" while departing from the meeting. Interestingly, all of those same crime lords had voluntarily joined Moriarty's organization in the previous book, but they betrayed and abandoned Moriarty during the TimeSkip between books after a police investigation forced Moriarty to flee the continent and made him look weak.

* VillainProtagonist: Moriarty is an intelligent and charismatic man who has some standards (he hates child killers, stalkers, and sex-traffickers) and generally faces people worse than he is. However, he is also a satanist who tortures or murders many of his enemies (sometimes without giving them the chance to switch sides), tries to destory the lives of {{Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist}}s, sometimes gets perfectly innocent people killed during his operations, and once executes a loyal (albiet stupid) employee just because the man's wife was a traitor.