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You're damn right I started with Volume 4.
And maybe for the best because from what I know about the first volume it and the rest of the series might be socialist class-warfare propaganda. But the forth volume was pretty cool. I won't say to much for the characters only because except for watching "Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes" every week as a kid, and having one Sherlock Holmes book that I have not yet read, I don't know much about the world of Sherlock Holmes. I just know that in this manga, James Moriarty is the good guy. And for some reason Watson is on the cover of volume 4, even though three of the four chapters are about Sebastian Moran.
Basically India and the British Empire are at war with Afghanistan and Russia for the third or so-th time, and Moriarty gets a Russian rifle shipped to him from an agent in India who dies in a seeming freak accident. Weirdly this gun looks exactly like a Mosinka, but while the Third Anglo-Afghan war (1919) is the only one the happened during the m91/30's existance, I'm pretty sure Moriarty takes place in the 1800s... Anyway, Moriarty has Moran, a veteran whose whole unit was wiped out in Afghanistan after someone on their side let the enemy sneak in through the front line, and some gal called Moniepeny take the gun to Von Herder (he insists on being called Que). He's blind as a bat apparently but inspects the gun and figures out that even though it's meant for the Afghans to use, it's only an imitation of a Russian gun, as it was made in England, with British wood and British manufacturing standards and imperial measurements. So they conclude that someone with money in England is helping the Russians in prolonging the war. So they blow up an arms plant and assassinate the Governor-General of India. And even though I usually oversimplify things like that when I think they're stupid, it's actually kind of glorious.
