Like many others of his colleagues John Gardner, best known for his funny thrillers about Boysie Oakes, has turned to Victorian England [in The Return of Moriarty], with Moriarty, back from the Reichenbach Falls, picking up the threads of his vast criminal empire in London. So far as convincingness goes, this Moriarty, at Gardner's chosen level of period melodrama, is perfectly adequate, and Gardner sensibly never lets the surely unmanageable Holmes appear in person. There are many felicities but the fantasy is overloaded, and never gets off the ground, just plods remorselessly, overcrowdedly, at last boringly on.

A review of "The Return of Moriarty," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3798, December 20, 1974, p. 1437.