Sherlock Holmes – Audibly Speaking: A Site of History and Memory

Twitter Facebook I have had the pleasure of recording nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories for this podcast, but one stands out among all the others, both as a recording effort and as a story by the great Conan Doyle.   That is THIS story, a BRAND NEW RE-READING of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.”  I first recorded this in the summer of 2022, in the early stages of my recovery from my first bout with COVID-19.  You can still listen to that version, if you go back through my episodes to that one recorded in mid-2022.  My raspy voice is unmistakable, but I soldiered on and did what I always do when I record these short stories: act the parts with all the fervor and ability that I can possibly muster. And why not make the effort even as I gasped for breath?  Conan Doyle was the master mystery structuralist, and a writer without peer in melding mystery with wit.  Never has the Holmes character seemed so keen or brilliantly drawn by the author.  The clues are parceled out just well enough that the reader feels he is on the path to a solution right alongside Holmes, although of course it is all a conceit that Doyle’s character Holmes (if he was just a character) shows is impossibly pretentious. In this NEW READING AND RECORDING, I have tried to create as sonically and theatrically perfect a rendering of the story as possible, befitting its pride of place as first in the Sherlock Homes canon. It represents my learning as an audio narrator of the past six years. If you listen to no other of my recordings, LISTEN to this one.  And, if you do, I dare you to stop listening then.  Congratulations for chancing upon this rare opportunity to listen to the nearly-perfect recording of a nearly-perfect tale. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook Late in his authorial career, in the 1920s to be precise, Arthur Conan Doyle, who was then deeply immersed in beliefs of mysticism and seances, had occasion to pair his rational detective, Sherlock Holmes, with a case about vampires. Did Doyle change the hyper-rational Holmes to suit the author’s new beliefs? Listen and find out! Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook In this epic short story, Arthur Conan Doyle exceeds himself.  “The Naval Treaty” is the longest of all of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories.  It contains allusions to his other stories and many humorous asides as well as quite larger-than-life characters, some almost Dickensian in their strangeness.  Holmes has to sift his clues and there are almost too many for him to select the relevant from the superfluous. “Almost,” but not too many–not for Sherlock Holmes. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook You may have seen and heard the classic story of “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” here on History Revisited and Audibly Speaking before, but this is a new version, now with annotations included from the observations in Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume II (New York: Norton’s, 2005).  Listen to the story and the annotated digressions to journey through the dual labyrinths of the plot-line and the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle, in this, one of my all-time-favorites in the Sherlock Holmes canon! Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook In the run up to Halloween, there no more terrifying, thrilling and horrifying story in the Sherlock Holmes canon than this, “The Cardboard Box.”  Publishers were frightened to publish it and its author, John Watson, was persuaded to do so only on his deathbed.  Listeners are strongly encouraged to listen only at noon, in the bright sunshine, when demons are at a distance and vampires asleep in their coffins. If you must listen to this of an evening, have someone with you to hold onto.  Listen…if you dare. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook A Russian Count and his mysterious son make an appointment with a doctor to examine the Count for catalepsy.  Catalepsy being the doctor’s speciality, it makes sense.  But the resident patient who lives at the doctor’s office may have a lively, or is it deadly, interest in the Russian visitors, unbeknownst to the doctor. What could possibly go wrong?  Everything, unless Sherlock Holmes can penetrate the fog of crime in this short story by the inimitable Conan Doyle. Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook Your audio narrator, Rick Reiman, takes you from London to the English Midlands, as we journey with Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and “the stockbroker’s clerk,” in quest of the solution to a mystery and a hideous crime.  Sherlock Holmes solves it only at the very end, and only with the aid of one of the criminals involved. See, or rather hear, if you can beat him to it. Twitter Facebook