Read for you by Rick Reiman. This is another classic from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Category Archives: Sherlock Holmes
“The Game is Afoot!” A NEW Narration of “The Adventure of the Abbey-Grange,” a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
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”
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An Introduction to “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” notes written and read by the narrator, Rick Reiman
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
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!”
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
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
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NEW! “The Musgrave Ritual,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, a Sherlock Holmes Story
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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NEW! “The Adventure of the Three Students,” a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle
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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NEW! “The Final Problem,” A Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle
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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NEW! “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” a Sherlock Holmes Story by Arthur Conan Doyle
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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NEW! “The Reigate Squires,” A Sherlock Holmes mystery, read by Rick Reiman
“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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NEW! “The Dancing Men,” A Sherlock Holmes Story, read for you by Rick Reiman
NEW! The “Gloria Scott,” A Sherlock Holmes Short Story by Arthur Conan Doyle
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.”
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NEW! Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
Read by Rick Reiman
Read by Rick Reiman
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NEW! The ANNOTATED “Adventures of Silver Blaze,” A Sherlock Holmes Story
In this episode, I both read and annotate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventures of Silver Blaze.” Elsewhere on this site, I have a narration with no paused for annotations. In this new version on this page, I interrupt the narration from time to time to explain the significance of each passage that we encounter. Let me know if you enjoy this presentation, please!
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NEW! “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” A Sherlock Holmes Story
New! “The Yellow Face,” a Sherlock Holmes Story
A Trailer for Conan Doyle’s “The Yellow Face,” on AudiblySpeaking: Coming Soon!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Specked Band,” A Sherlock Holmes Story
NEW! “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet,” by Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrating Sherlock Holmes
Narrating Sherlock Holmes
How are the Sherlock Holmes stories ideal for the audio narration format–and how are they ideal for the narrator who wants to learn the art of audio narration?
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