Category Archives: Sherlock Holmes

New Reading of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, Chapter 10: “Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson”

Sherlock Holmes

We are rapidly nearing the end of our mystery. But Watson continues to collect new questions along with new clues. One is the mysterious identity of “L.L.,” a woman who somehow lured Sir Charles to the moor gate where he died his horrible death. The other is the identity of the mysterious man on the Tor. It turns out that Selden and Barrymore know about him, too. But who is he? Watson ponders…and speculates…

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“The Game is Afoot!” A NEW Narration of “The Adventure of the Abbey-Grange,” a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

Sherlock Holmes, Uncategorized

Arthur Conan Doyle intended this story to be his final official entry in the Holmes canon. He later added “The Adventure of the Second Stain” (also in this narrated collection) to serve that distinctive role. Holmes and Watson spar over the latter’s dramatic depiction of Holmes’s detective methods and Holmes uncharacteristically gets on Watson’s nerves. Holmes’s brilliance is nevertheless on full display in this entry. Watson should have remembered that Sherlock Holmes is a package deal; if you want the genius, you must accept the eccentricity. As the final entry in my series of narrations of the Holmes stories (for awhile) this one naturally is the most skillfully done. Since one learns to improve with each effort, how could it not be? On a personal note, as I now know, the first half of the recording was made on the eve of my first positive test for Covid-19. The second half of the recording was made while emerging from the ordeal. I could not allow Covid to stop me; after all, “the game was afoot,” in the words of Sherlock Holmes!

From The Adventure of the Abbey-Grange

From “The Adventure
of the Abbey-Grange”

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An Introduction to “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” notes written and read by the narrator, Rick Reiman

Sherlock Holmes

Every Doyle story contains slips and errors, whether of outrageous fortune or simply haste. In this four-minute introduction to the complete story, which I narrate next in this series on AudiblySpeaking, I bring the listener’s attention not only to some of these mistakes but also to some foregrounding of the backstory surrounding its writing and composition.

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NEW! “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes, Uncategorized

Read for you by Rick Reiman. This excellent addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon contains many of the aspects that delight his readers. It is set in a macabre and romantic setting, the moors of Cornwall; it has Holmes pitting himself against the common feeling that there must be something supernatural afoot. These traces of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” are not all that recommend it. People go from normal to mad in a matter of minutes. The villain of the story wastes Holmes’s time with an attempted diversion that the detective must dispose of through his amazing talent for ratiocination. The story is slyly autobiographical as well, because Doyle has Holmes attempt a possibly-fatal experiment that Doyle himself had practiced at the risk of his own life. In this story, Holmes and Watson come as close as they ever do to calling each other by their first names. This was a conceit that the Granada TV series (1984-1994) employed when it had Holmes cry out to Watson, “John!”

A character from "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot"

From “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” (1910)

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NEW! “The Greek Interpreter,” a Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

One of Doyle’s favorite Holmes stories is this one, about an interpreter who gets caught up in a strange “country house” mystery, replete with plaster of paris victims and giggling villains. We also are introduced to Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, and the hilarious Diogenes Club, the favorite of unsociable, “unclubbable,” men– such as Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft later reappears in “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” also available right here on Audibly Speaking, with audio narration by (me) Rick Reiman. I hope you enjoy it.

The Greek Interpreter, image by Sidney Paget

The Greek Interpreter, image by Sidney Paget

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NEW! “The Musgrave Ritual,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, a Sherlock Holmes Story

Sherlock Holmes

In this early entry in the Sherlock Holmes canon, Doyle has Sherlock Holmes doing most of the talking. That’s unusual in the canon, because it is typically John Watson who tells the story, not Holmes. This was on Doyle’s short list of favorite stories, and it is easy to see why. It has elements of both the familiar and the macabre, in terms of detective story structure. One character goes mad and another is buried… but, let’s not have any spoilers. Suffice to say that Holmes has little to go on in solving this mystery, but he makes a lot of what little he has with which to work. The Holmes in this story is a bit sheepish and shorn of pride, another unusual turn for the “greatest consulting detective in the world,” and for a man usually convinced of the truth of the label.

The Musgrave Ritual, Sidney Paget

Holmes gets to the bottom of the case of the Musgrave Ritual

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NEW! “The Adventure of the Three Students,” a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

In this rather offbeat addition to the Sherlock Holmes Canon, Holmes somehow finds himself on a college campus battling the timeless forces of student cheating. Three students are each suspected of taking an advance and fraudulent peek at test questions for an exam qualifying them for an important scholarship. Only one can be guilty. When the examiner knows that Holmes is on campus, he implores our hero to find the “rascal” and expose him. It seems Holmes cannot escape the world of crime no matter where he travels. Unlike in “The Regent Squires,” however, Holmes does not welcome this particular intrusion in his plans. He has to be converted to it by the interesting nature of the problem. In my audio narration, I adopt the style of Jeremy Brett, in my view the best Holmes ever to appear on film. Read for you, of course, by Rick Reiman.

The Adventure of the Three Students, Drawing by Sydney Paget in the Public Domain

Gilchrist confesses in “The Adventure of the Three Students”

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NEW! “The Final Problem,” A Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

Read by Rick Reiman, this was Doyle’s anticipated ending to the Sherlock Holmes story, the story that would “finish” Holmes off in the early 1890s, and leave Doyle free to write about other characters whom he was not so tired of. But it was not to be. Doyle’s readers, including Queen Victoria, insisted that Doyle resurrect Holmes. And so, by a rhetorical slight of hands, Doyle later saves Holmes from his suicidal embrace of, and fall with, the villain Moriarty, into the Reichenbach falls. That story is told in “The Empty House,” which you can all listen to, right here on AudiblySpeaking, the podcast.

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