Fantômas took the idea of the criminal mastermind in a new and disturbing direction. A master of disguise with no fixed identity, he turned uncertainty itself into a weapon — reflecting growing fears of hidden enemies and a world in which appearances could no longer be trusted.

Imagine creating one of literature's greatest villains for your crime series yet allowing him to appear in only one story. That is exactly what Arthur Conan Doyle did in 1893 when he introduced Professor James Moriarty in The Final Problem. Despite his surprisingly brief appearance in the Sherlock Holmes canon, Moriarty became the template for the modern criminal mastermind: the hidden intelligence orchestrating crime from behind the scenes. Before him, fictional villains tended to commit crimes

Why do hidden masterminds fascinate us? From Professor Moriarty to QAnon, discover how crime fiction shaped our fascination with secret conspiracies.