Friday 24 March 2017

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Vol. II by Arthur Conan Doyle


The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. II by Arthur Conan Doyle
Stories first published in the UK in 1891 and 1892. Naxos audiobook edition narrated by David Timson published in March 1999.

Where to buy this book:
Buy the audiobook on CD from Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk
Buy the audiobook on CD from The Book Depository
Buy the CD or download direct from the publisher

How I got this book:
Downloaded as part of the 2014 AudioSYNC season

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this collection are four of the finest cases of Mr Sherlock Holmes, narrated by his faithful friend and admirer Dr Watson. What was the mystery of the engineer’s thumb? What was behind the disappearance of the race horse? Why did masked royalty walk up to see Holmes in Baker Street? These and other puzzles are solved by this bloodhound of a genius.

The second of the four Naxos volumes of Sherlock Holmes stories was one of the downloads in 2014's summer AudioSYNC programme and Volume II has the stories The Scandal in Bohemia, The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, The Five Orange Pips, and Silver Blaze.

As the stories are short and we are already meant to be acquainted with Holmes and Watson, there is very little in the way of description about them. Unfortunately, as I am not a particular fan, this made our heroes rather flat. Their clients and foes were also not fleshed out in any great detail.

However the plot lines which were main focus of each tale were generally cleverly thought through and it was fun to try to guess the conclusion ahead of Holmes. David Timson does a great job of the narration and his style complements the writing perfectly. I don't think I will search out the other three volumes though because I can see too many of such tales together quickly becoming overly formulaic and, dare I say, a tad dull.


Search Lit Flits for more:
Books by Arthur Conan Doyle / Crime fiction / Books from England

2 comments:

  1. Ah, a shame that the writing style lacking so much description and being more of a recount of events wasn't the one for you. I really like the late BBC show of Sherlock, so I want to read (or at least try) the original stories at some point.

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    1. I want to see the latest Sherlock series. Missed on TV because we were in Europe so will buy it when we get back :-)

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