Page 177 "...one more episode would have pushed him over the Reichenbach Falls"

Clockwise from top left: Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty battle at the top of the Falls;
The Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland; Sherlock Holmes climbing the Falls;
another view of the Falls.

From page 177 of the book: "...But because Owen had gone a little over the bend, the stories of his life which had been told in cold blood, had reached a point where if he didn't get sick from the telling, one more episode would have pushed him over the “Reichenbach Falls.” One more thing was going to drive him completely insane. Like Sherlock Holmes, it was going to be the final problem. And like Holmes, whose instinct was to survive and whose death over the Reichenbach Falls was a mere fiction, our instinct nevertheless was to survive. Owen's elemental impulse was to survive."