Yes, it certainly made an impact. Re the parallels, I think part of my problem may have been that we don't know Moran yet, though we can surmise that if he turns up he will still be an ex-soldier who had a close connection to Moriarty. The last misdirection story I read involved two established characters, so I got to the end thinking "Gosh, how clever, that really would work for both of them!" But because Moran is still a bit of an unknown quantity, I didn't have quite the same sense of everything falling into place; it was more "Yes, that will probably work, though maybe giving him an alcoholic sister is overplaying the hand slightly." That was what prompted me to start wondering whether Moriarty had gone out of his way to recruit a doppelganger.