Moriarty! He was, according to Sherlock Holmes, "the Napoleon of crime," - a matematical genius gone mad who was the thinker and organiser behind nearly every great crime that came Holmes's way. Why then was the professor, whose evil pervaded the city like a bleak November fog, so seldom mentioned in Dr. Watson's previous accounts of the Great Detective's exploits at the time?

Now Watson finally tells all in this newly discovered manuscript. We return to the autumn and winter of 1888; a time, Watson writes, when the high-stakes duel between Holmes and Moriarty for 'the very heart and moral soul of London' was at its height. Watson admits that Holmes was, at times, completely overcome by the machinations of the evil professor, who was by far the most menacing foe he ever faced. And, for the first time, he even admits to a shameful role he unknowingly played in one of Moriarty's most nefarious schemes ... as the would-be assassin of Sherlock Holmes!