Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Intrigue

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 3 hours

Read by: Edward Hardwicke

Published: approx 1893 (this version 2006)

Genre: detective, mystery

This audiobook included the stories "The Crooked Man," "The Greek Interpreter," and "The Naval Treaty." I had read all three previously, but didn't remember the details.

"The Crooked Man" had Teddy the mongoose, the missing key to the locked room where Barclay died, and the freaked out wife who seems to be the murderer. This one has its roots in India and is an example of serious karma.

"The Greek Interpreter" starts out with Watson learning of Sherlock's brother Mycroft, described as even more observant than Sherlock. They go to the Diogenes Club and discuss nature vs. nurture (but not in those words). The audio on this one was so low in places I couldn't hear what they were saying. Sophie's brother is starved to death, but they are able to rescue the interpreter.

"The Naval Treaty" has a lot of red herrings. Percy "Tadpole" Phelps was two years older than Watson at school. He is now in danger of losing his reputation and his job due to a treaty that has gone missing from his office. He is sick with worry ("brain fever") for nine weeks until he is able to ask Watson to please come to help, and bring Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Avarice

 By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 3 hours

read by Edward Hardwicke

Published: 2006 (this version)

Genre: Detective Mystery

This audio contained "The Adventure of the Priory School," "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League," and "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."I had read the latter two stories before. Hardwicke does an excellent job vocalizing these stories.

 

The Priory School story was weird. A baron's son has been kidnapped from his boarding school. The school master is super upset but dad wants to keep everything low key. Bicycle clues, a dead teacher, and the spoiled illegitimate son make this an unpleasant story.

"Red Headed League" was fun. I vaguely remembered the story but forgot about the bank robbery attempt. It would be maddening to try to work with Holmes when he has intel / insights that he doesn't share!

I didn't remember the "Blue Carbuncle" from the title, but I immediately recognized it from the goose! I like Holmes' deductions from the hat and the trail he traced to find where the goose had been. (Yes, I thought about "wild goose chases.") 

 

How does a precious stone get called a "carbuncle" - that sounds like a barnacle! I like that Holmes refers to it as a "forty grain weight of crystallized charcoal." He refers to its "sinister history" and recounts the crimes and deaths connected to it. (Top dictionary.com result for "carbuncle" is "A group of pus-filled bumps forming a connected area of infection under the skin.")

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 10 hours

Read by Alexander Spencer

Published: 1985 (this version)

Genre: Detective Mystery

This collection of short stories opened with Silver Blaze! Since I had just listened to that one in a different collection, I skipped ahead to the next story.

The Yellow Face - little girl with a mask. Kind of sad, really. Definitely more a product of the age it was written (1893).

The Stockbroker's Clerk - interesting. Didn't really seem like a typical Holmes story.

The Gloria Scott - dude ruins former shipmates' lives . . . 

The Musgrave Ritual - The trigonometry was great, but would the trees cast the same shadows after a few hundred years? I don't think so. The gruesome end was creepy.Butler, Charles I crown, familiar

The Reigate Puzzle - father / son - murder of coachman

The Crooked Man - long, boring, drawn out, mongoose named Teddy

The Resident Patient - nerves, hanging, weird

The Greek Interpreter - so sad! Some people will do any unscrupulous thing for money. Mycroft / Diogenes Club

The Naval Treaty - stolen document, brother of fiancee, Sherlock doing battle

The Final Problem - Professor Moriarty and Sherlock's end . . . reminded me of the play I saw with Ann that reinterpreted this story. 

I published this blog a week ago before I'd finished writing about these last three stories! Oops. Four people read this entry before I could complete it. I'm getting too careless.

Sherlock Holmes: Three Tales of Betrayal

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 3 hours

read by Edward Hardwicke

Published: 2017 (this version)

Genre: Detective Mystery

This audio contained "A Scandal in Bohemia," which I've read before. I love how Holmes actually comes to admire Irene Adler. The photograph. The elaborate attempt to figure out where she hid it. Disguises.

"Silver Blaze" was a new one to me. I kind of liked who the killer of the trainer turned out to be . . . but I was super startled when one line of the story leaped out at me: "the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime." That made me want to re-read Haddon's book by that name. I don't recall if he credits Doyle with his title. The lame sheep . . . did not tip me off to what was happening. I'm no Holmes!

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" was somewhat familiar to me, but I didn't remember most of the story line. In the introductory part with the young housekeeper being interviewed, my blood almost curdled when the dad spoke admiringly of his son smacking cockroaches with a slipper. There was definitely something off. And asking her to wear a certain dress, cut off her hair, and sit in a  certain spot. Just creepy. Even before we get to the starved attack dog.

The vocal work was great.

The Valley of Fear

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 6 hours

read by David Timson

Published: 1914 (this version in 2007)

Genre: mystery, detective, historical

Interesting. I've now (finally) read all four Sherlock Holmes novels. This was his fourth and final novel (most Holmes stories were written as short stories). The blurb says, "Holmes and his faithful Dr. Watson are summoned to a country house by a coded message. They arrive too late to save a life and then pursue the trail which leads to the unmasking of the murderer."

I didn't really enjoy it that much. It reminded me a lot of "A Study in Scarlet" - both have a storyline taking place in America. It reminded me of "The Sign of the Four" in the whole secret society aspect. . . 

It seemed weird that Holmes was referred to as "an amateur." I had to look again at the chronology of the books.

A Study in Scarlet - Holmes and Watson first meet and work together; the dead man and "RACHE" on the wall; the Mormons and what happened in the American West . . . 

The Sign of the Four - the treasure, Watson meets his wife Mary, India, 

The Hound of the Baskervilles - the one I'm most familiar with . . .

The Valley of Fear - home with moat, man with face blown off, "The Masons" in America, Pinkertons . . . 

I loved the Scottish guy McDonald! (Detective . . . but not the local yokel)

Body Master McGinty was a piece of work! Fighting against capitalist evil is one thing, but terrorizing and murdering people is another. This got me thinking about unions, doing what is right, greed, etc. In getting ready to blog this book, I looked it up on Wikipedia and learned about the "Molly Maguires" - part of Doyle's inspiration for this story. Very interesting!

The Molly Maguires were an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts, twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. This history remains part of local Pennsylvania lore and the actual facts much debated among historians.

A Study in Scarlet

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 5 hours

read by David Timson

Published: 1887 (this version 2005)

Genre: murder mystery

Well! I thought for sure I had read this before! I knew it as the "origin" story for Sherlock Holmes and one of only four full-length novels about the detective. (Most Holmes stories are short stories.) But as I listened, I got super confused and realized I had not read this book!

The opening of the story is fun to see how Watson and Holmes end up sharing the residence at 221B Baker Street. It also presents as a fairly traditional murder mystery, with a body in a vacant house, plenty of clues and some great sleuth work. But then we're suddenly in the American West with a man and child dying in the desert before they're rescued by Mormons. What?!?! I had to look it up online (later when not driving) and see that yes indeed, this was the storyline. The flashback is to explain how the murderer came to commit the London murders twenty years later. It all wraps up very well. I would definitely re-read this one. Listening to the story means I invariably miss some of the details. 

Timson's vocal work is wonderful. Oh, and "RACHE" is German for revenge . . .

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 by Arthur Conan Doyle

Libby audiobook 9 hours

read by Ralph Cosham

Published: 1892 (originally)

Genre: mystery short stories

From the app: Since Doyle created the immortal Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson, no other mystery writer has come close to eclipsing him as the standard bearer in crime fiction. A brilliant London-based "consulting detective," Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning, and inference to solve difficult cases. This collection includes twelve of Holmes' most famous cases:

1. A Scandal in Bohemia
2. The Red-Headed League
3. A Case of Identity
4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
5. The Five Orange Pips
6. The Man with the Twisted Lip
7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band
9. The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

 

I enjoyed listening to these stories, but there were some that were more interesting and others that were irritating. (The beryl coronet - seriously?! You bring it HOME and TELL people about it?!?! No wonder it got stolen!) Cosham does the vocal work excellently. Love listening to him read these stories.

Hound of the Baskervilles

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Hennepin County Library audiobook 5 CDs
read by Michael Page
genre: mystery, detective fiction

Although I've read this before, I've most recently seen a fun stage version (with only four actors and women in the roles of Holmes and Watson!) and a film version (a newer one than the old Basil Rathbone one that I've also seen before). It was fun to experience the full text again. I like old-style detective stories. There were some little details that I didn't recall, even though I remembered the characters and plot well.

One detail that jumped out to me was the mention of the "Anderson murders in North Carolina" when Sherlock Holmes was talking with Watson about tricky cases. So of course, I had to Google it. I'm not sure why Doyle used those words in his story, but they brought up a fellow named Tom Dula. Another site helped me figure out how the murder of a woman named Laura Foster was connected to my search: Stanford. Yep, I'm a nerd.

 

<Above posted 9.14.18. Below added 5.28.22>

 

I got the audiobook to listen to while I drive (Libby). It was read by Patrick Tull and was about 7 hours long. I enjoyed listening to it, and now I have only the fourth full-length Holmes novel that Doyle wrote left to read. Fun!

The Sign of the Four

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle GoogleBooks, 283 pages genre: mystery, detective Okay, not my favorite Sherlock Holmes story . . . but it's good to try new stories. Holmes is an arrogant drug user. Watson is his typical self-effacing, bumbling sidekick. The mystery is odd and the solution is disappointing. The eighth grade book club discussion should be interesting, if any of the kids read it. I had to translate three phrases (one French and two German) and look up a bunch of words I didn't know!

 

(Above posted 4/4/11. Below added 2022.04.23)

 

Libby audiobook  5 hours

read by David Timson

Published: 1888 (this version in 2005)

Interesting that I can find the title as both "The Sign of Four" and "The Sign of the Four." Little details like that extra "the" stick in my brain . . . but I don't care so deeply that I'm going to spend time and energy figuring it out!

One thing that I like about this story is Watson meeting and falling in love with Mary. (Happened fast!) I also wonder about the jewels . . . I had planned on skipping the Hound of the Baskervilles since I've read the print version, seen the movie, etc., but I think I'll just keep on with my Holmes roll.