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  1. Gardner to Pen New Moriarty Novel

    By johncox on 2005-03-22

    John Gardner, author of 14 original James Bond novels and 2 Bond novelizations, has announced via his official website that he has signed a contract to pen a third book in his series of novels chronicling the nefarious activities of Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, “The Godfather of the gaslight era.”

    Gardner wrote his first two Moriarty novels, The Return of Moriarty (1974) and The Revenge of Moriarty (1975) before he took on duties as Bond novelist in 1981.

    “I have been waiting to write (this book) for twenty-five years,” says the author.

    Gardner just published Troubled Midnight, the 4th book of his Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford series. For more information about John Gardner’s past and present work visit his official website.

    The Holmes-Bond Connections

    The Gardner-Moriarty books are hardly the only James Bond-Sherlock Holmes connection. It may come as a surprise to Bond fans that England’s greatest detective and England’s greatest spy have actually met! In 1964 Donald Stanley published a short story pastiche in “The San Francisco Examiner” called Holmes Meets 007 in which Bond and M meet Holmes and Watson with surprising results. The privately published version from 1967 is a now rare collectible sought after by both 007 and Holmes collectors.

    Roger Moore IS Sherlock Holmes

    Roger Moore IS Sherlock Holmes…in New York

    While Roger Moore was playing James Bond in cinemas, he took a turn at portraying Holmes on TV in Sherlock Holmes in New York. Patrick Macnee, who would later play 007’s companion Tibbett in A View To A Kill, played Dr. Watson in this 1976 film. Macnee — who played Holmes himself in 1993s The Hound of London — also played Dr. Watson to Christopher Lee’s Sherlock in two films; Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls
    (1991) and Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992). Lee, the man with the golden gun himself (and Ian Fleming’s cousin), first played Holmes in the German film, Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962). Lee also played Holmes’ brother Mycroft in the superb 1970 film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder.

    Nicholas Meyer, who had an un-credited hand in the development of the screenplay for Tomorrow Never Dies, wrote the all-time best selling Holmes pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1974, and directed the film version in 1976. Meyer also wrote two additional Holmes novels, The West End Horror (1976) and The Canary Trainer (1993).

    But maybe the most intriguing Holmes-Bond connection came in the 1988 book, James Bond: Did He Really Live Twice? by John Bryan, in which the author puts forth the theory that James Bond is actually the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes!