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.

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

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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.

Gilchrist confesses in “The Adventure of the Three Students”

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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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Read for you by Rick Reiman

Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’s Older Brother, who “is” the British Government in the case of the Bruce-Partington Plans

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“I think that we are both agreed, Inspector that the fragment of paper in the dead man’s hand, bearing, as it does, the very hour of his death written upon it, is of extreme importance.”

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In “The Gloria Scott,” Conan Doyle, through the agency of Sherlock Holmes, explains how Holmes stumbled upon his first case. It is an adventure of characters high and low, and  action turbulent and violent, with reason once again serving as ballast to restore order and sanity to a chaotic world.”

Rick Reiman

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Read for You by Rick Reiman

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A Trailer for Conan Doyle’s “The Yellow Face,” Coming the first Week in April

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Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman

In this classic short story in the Sherlock Holmes series, Holmes, with the help of Dr. Watson, matches wits with a woman, Irene Adler. Spoiler alert: The woman wins. It is one of the few Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes fails. And he never forgets it!

The players:

Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Rick Reiman

Dr. Watson: Dr. Rick Reiman

The King of Bohemia: Dr. Rick Reiman

Irene Adler: Dr. Rick Reiman 

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