Nit: It sure was nice of Moriarty to lure Watson out of the way before he went for Holmes' throat. Especially since Moriarty also had a sidekick with him at Reichenbach, a sidekick who happened to be the best shot and tiger-hunter in England.

Anti-nit: The hotel commissaire told Watson that a tall Englishman must have sent the message, a fellow who dropped in just after Watson and Holmes departed. Now we all know of a tall Englishman who was staying at the hotel at that time, a tall Englishman who had a very good interest in getting Dr. Watson out of the way before any violence occured... and his name wasn't Moriarty! I say Holmes himself stopped a few hundred meters from the Hotel, told his companion that he had left his watch on the table or some other plausible excuse, doubled back, and planted that note with a local kid. Holmes knew Moriarty was close behind them, and he could guess that some ambush would be attempted on the long and lonely mountain road between them and the next village; he wanted to give Moriarty the opportunity to do his worst without endangering Holmes' best friend.

This fits in very well with the theory expressed in Baring-Gould, the theory that Holmes engineered the whole Continental jaunt as a way of luring the legally untouchable Moriarty out of the reach of English law to a place where Holmes could settle with him man to man.

I like it the ACD left it just about possible that Holmes had survived.

Not intentionally! Conan Doyle was more than happy to see Holmes go...that is, until loyal fans started wearing black armbands and yelling "MURDERER!" at him in the street.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that someone (don't remember who) pointed out to Conan Doyle that he must have unconciously wanted to bring Holmes back, otherwise he would have had Holmes' body found.

Someone once wrote an interesting pastiche wherein both Holmes AND Moriarty survived. The whole thing had been set up by the government (possibly Mycroft) so that Holmes and Moriarty could work together on a secret mission. Throughout the story, both the reader and Holmes are wondering if Moriarty will keep the truce.

I've read that ACD found keeping the quality of writing needed for a Holmes adventure too much (he used to start at the end & work backwards).

Edgar Rice Burroughs found himself in the same quandry with his Tarzan novels . . . the public kept wanting more and more even though he was tired of writing them. He even tried to kill of Jane in "Tarzan the Untamed", although public outcry demanded that he resurrect her (although he effectively wrote her out of the series after that). In the latter Tarzan novels, Burroughs cynically wrote to a strict formula, repeating not only plots but entire passages, seeing if editors would still buy the stories. They did.