This is the year that Bell Cow Productions introduces The Moriarty Award! It is an annual prize recognizing the literary villain or antagonist who slinks off the page and into our psyches, challenging our morals, testing our loyalties and reminding us why tension—real, nail-biting tension—is the beating heart of storytelling.

Named after Sherlock Holmes perpetual antagonist, Professor James Moriarty, The Moriarty Award will be presented annually to the author who gives us a villain or antagonist so complex, so cunning, so unnervingly human, that readers will think about him/her/it long after the book is closed.