Professor James Moriarty

Professor James Moriarty
Sherlock Holmes character
Professor Moriarty, illustration by Sidney Paget which accompanied the original publication of "The Final Problem".
First appearance	"The Final Problem"
Created by	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Portrayed by	various
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Criminal mastermind

Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal mastermind whom Holmes describes as the "Napoleon of crime". Doyle lifted the phrase from a Scotland Yard inspector who was referring to Adam Worth, a real-life criminal mastermind and one of the individuals upon whom the character of Moriarty was based. The character was introduced primarily as a narrative device to enable Conan Doyle to kill Sherlock Holmes, and only featured in two of the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, in many adaptations, he has been given a greater prominence and treated as Holmes' archenemy.

Moriarty's first and only appearance occurred in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", in which Holmes, on the verge of delivering a fatal blow to Moriarty's criminal ring, is forced to flee to continental Europe to escape Moriarty's retribution. The criminal mastermind follows, and the pursuit ends on top of the Reichenbach Falls, an encounter that apparently ends with both Holmes and Moriarty falling to their deaths. In this story, Moriarty is introduced as a crime lord who protects nearly all of the criminals of England in exchange for their obedience and a share in their profits. Holmes, by his own account, was originally led to Moriarty by his perception that many of the crimes he investigated were not isolated incidents, but instead the machinations of a vast and subtle criminal ring.

Moriarty plays a direct role in only one other Holmes story, The Valley of Fear, set before "The Final Problem" but written afterwards. In The Valley of Fear, Holmes attempts to prevent Moriarty's agents from committing a murder. In an episode in which Moriarty is being interviewed by a policeman, a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze is described as hanging on the wall; Holmes remarks on another work by the same painter to show it could not have been purchased on a professor's salary. The work referred to is La jeune fille à l'agneau; some commentators have described this as a pun by Conan Doyle on the Thomas Agnew and Sons art gallery, which had a famous painting stolen by Adam Worth, but were unable to prove the claim.