Inspector Lastrade of Scotland Yard informs Holmes that someone is robbing people’s houses of their busts of Napoleon and smashing them to bits in situ or a little distance away. What can be the meaning of this? Lastrade only really becomes interested when the affair is entangled in murder–the burglar knifed an Italian on his way out of a burgled house, and the dead man had a photo of the likely murdered in his pocket. Holmes continues to center his attention on the busts, not the dead man, a fact that Lastrade considers mad. As usual, Holmes is proven right in the denouement, a fact which can only be made clear by Holmes’s dazzlingly ingenious methods, as is revealed at the conclusion of the story.
Peter Carey, an English Sea Captain, with the reputation of being tyrannical and hard-hearted, is given the name “Black Peter” before he is killed by an unknown visitor to his home. Sherlock Holmes must help the novice detective, Stanley Hopkins, unravel the mystery of Peter Carey’s strange ending. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sprinkles clues to enable the reader the understand that Hopkins is too quick to close a case that only Sherlock Holmes can solve.
“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” was the last short story published in Conan Doyle’s first book-length collection of short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). It does not follow the usual pattern of opening with a brief Sherlock Holmes deduction that shows his brilliance, but focuses on Holmes’s tendency toward morose depression. Holmes complains to Watson that his clients are so dull that he is left to advice people on how to find lost lead pencils and ladies on how to secure such positions as governess. He shows Watson that he has really reached “Zero” with the case of Violet Hunter, who seeks advice on whether to become governess to Jephro Rucastle. The case turns out to be more diabolical and potentially deadly than even Holmes can imagine. Violet also turns out to be cut from the Sherlockian cloth as her own deductions and limitless curiosity plunges her into pathbreaking pages of discovery and drama. Watson even suspects that Holmes may fall in love with her. But the autistic detective remains a bachelor, and turns away from her in disinterest once she is no longer “at the center” of one of his cases. As for Holmes and Watson, they open the story criticizing each other like a tired married couple, and only grow united in purpose once Violet Hunter delivers them a mystery that brings the dynamic duo once together once more in pursuit of a game once again “afoot.”
Here is my “take” on one of the most famous novels of all time, “A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens. Why is it so great? What the dickens was Dickens up to when he wrote it? And what should be our takeaway today. Tune in here, and listen, learn and, most importantly, enjoy!
In this, our second episode of “Puzzle Pieces,” in which we examine a separate mystery in American history, we look at the weaknesses of the Warren Commission’s efforts in 1964. This first investigation of the JFK assassination suffered from mistakes of its own making and errors over which it had little if no control whatsoever. Weaknesses could sometimes later become strengths, as their obvious highlighting could be–and were–addressed in subsequent investigations. Here we have a photograph of the Commissioners themselves–who did very little of the leg work for the Commission. The unsung staff did most of the work, and may be credited with many of the Commission’s monumental, if unsung and forgotten, successes. Next time on “Puzzle Pieces,” we go over those successes–here on AudiblySpeaking.
The Warren Commission delivers its Report, September 1964
Your host, Rick Reiman, narrates “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is rather one of the more graphic of the Sherlock Holmes tales, not for the faint of heart. But it contains several of Holmes’s most ingenious deductions along the way. My narrations of the Holmes stories must be nearing an end, since there are few of them that I have not yet read and released on Audibly Speaking thus far. I hope that you enjoy it.
This is your host on “Audibly Speaking,” Rick Reiman. Today, March 31, 2023, is the 60th anniversary of the taking of the famous backyard photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald, holding the rifle he would later use to kill President Kennedy and the pistol he would use to murder Officer J.D. Tippit forty-five minutes after that awful act in American history. This is a classic case of how historians untangle facts from allegations, and how the facts in the JFK assassination are imagined away and replaced by the will-of-the-wisp of “What-Ifs.” Let this year, the 60th anniversary of that dark day be the year we start listening to most historians, rather then the inhabitants of “Dallas in Wonderland,” with their absurd conspiracy theories. Thanks for listening–and please share this with others if you like it!
Oswald in the back of his house on Neely Street in Oak Cliff, March 31, 1963. Picture taken by his wife, Marina Oswald.
Your host on this podcast, “Audibly Speaking,” Rick Reiman, narrates this classic by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That master of all detectives in literature, Sherlock Holmes, has once again to deal with the imbecility of the Scotland Yard detective, Lastrade, and the amateur cluelessness of the otherwise-devoted John Watson. Holmes once again defends an accused suspect whose guilt everyone else assumes is obvious. Not so, as it turns out. The unraveling of this tangled web is accomplished by tea time, by the man who shows how “elementary” it all actually is.
In this unabridged audio narration, I read my article for The Journal of Perpetrator Research (2019) Vol: 2 Issue: 2. There were only three actual “shots” in Dealey Plaza on that dark day, of course. They were the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. But photographs are also metaphoric “shots,” and three were captured in the same seconds that the rifle blasts rang out, by the Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder with his 35-millimeter Bell and Howell Zoomatic camera. Three frames from this 26-second film represented the key photographs in this case, and they were to reverberate throughout American culture for decades to come. They were at once reflections, projections and evidence, as this article reveals.
This is my audio narration of my book review of Paul R. Gregory’s The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, a newly published account of Gregory’s brush with Lee and Marina Oswald in 1962, a year before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Listeners can read the full review, of which this is an unabridged recording, at http://www.washingtondecoded.com.
Here is my audio narration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” This is Doyle’s Dickensian Christmas time story, one of many in which Holmes at first believes no crime has occurred, and later introduces a note of Christian charity in his resolution of the case. It involves a Christmas goose and a mystery unlocked in the frosty air of snowy London, circa the 1880s. Musical enhancements add to the holiday effect of this favorite in the Sherlock Holmes canon.
Join Holmes and Watson, and a sound show of horses hooves, Watson typing, and a crackling fire on a stormy night in Baker Street, as Holmes and Watson embark on one of their creepiest mysteries of the Sherlock Holmes canon!
In 2006, Prof. Aleida Assmann, the premier authority in the field of Cultural Memory, explained how memory works at different levels and in different formats. Here is a summary of her 2006 article, “Reframing Memory,” which dissects the different kinds of memory and how it is a special view to argue, as some academics have, that there is, and can be, no such thing as collective memory. This is my summary of her argument. Any errors in “translation” are mine alone. –Richard Reiman
This new version of a recording only published last week features audio enhancements and sound effects that put you in the time and place of the story, more dramatically than ever.
One of the most popular, and certainly most socially-conscious, of the Sherlock Holmes stories is “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. A man disappears, a beggar enters the picture, and Holmes and Watson are caught between the devil and the deep, brown opium den called “The Bar of Gold.” Of course Holmes solves the mystery, but first he has to determine what the mystery is in the first place. Come along with Holmes and Watson on this dangerous journey–if you dare.
Conan Doyle’s choice for second favorite short story in his collection of 56 Sherlock Holmes tale was “The Red-Headed League.” In this brief introduction and commentary on this story, I point out its distinction as one of the most light-hearted and merry entries into the Holmes canon, a perfect “gift” for the present holiday season. Elsewhere on this podcast site, you may listen to my reading of this delightful story, whether you are red-headed or not!
The January 6th report by the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the US Capitol was published December 22nd, 2022. The document consists of eight chapters of more than 800 pages, documenting President Donald Trump’s attempt to thwart the will of the people by overturning the election of 2020 with lies plots, frivolous legal claims, and even the orchestration of mob violence. Never before had a president stood in the way of the legal certification of an election in blatant disregard for the commands of the Constitution. When lies did not work and spurious legal fiction failed, Trump tried to shut down the transition to a dually elected new administration by brute force, waging war against an independent branch of the federal government.
To say that he disregarded his oath of office to make sure that the laws were faithfully executed is to state the obvious.
The January 6th report is a fast moving document and a devastating indictment. Still, it is a dense document and a PDF that will not be read by millions of Americans more than will have the time and technology to read it. Many Americans cannot read it for various reasons, including disability.
This audio recording is a narration of Chapter One only “The Big Lie,” For those who cannot read the free pdf at House.gov or who prefer to listen rather than read. This narration does not include a reading of the footnotes.Please refer to the published document for these.
Every word of Chapter One is included. This document is in the public domain. My name is Richard Reiman. Depending on the number of clicks or downloads, I may record more chapters. Remember, there are eight chapters in all, and this is only the first of them. I heartily recommend that all who can do so read all eight chapters. Download the free report from House.gov and read the full report.
Lastly, a disclaimer: Because this Report includes quotations by some who participated in the Big Lie, it includes offensive language at times.
And so click on the link below to listen to Chapter One of the Report By the House Select committee on the Attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In this, one of the funniest of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes must unravel a preposterous tale of a charity for red-headed men, in order to foil a bank robbery of enormous proportions. Truly, this is one of the favorites in the Sherlock Holmes canon.
In this, the final chapter, Holmes explains to Dr. Watson how he cracked the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and how all the proverbial loose ends may be tied up–once and forever.
Holmes and Watson prepare a trap for the evil one who hails from Merripit House, in this pivotal chapter of the book, now nearing its fateful conclusion.
