Episodes

Twitter Facebook Read for you by Rick Reiman. This is another classic from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” by Arthur Conan Doyle. Twitter Facebook

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 ...

Read by Rick Reiman. In this story, one of Doyle’s favorites, Sherlock Holmes must avert a European war by solving a mystery absolutely befuddling to all but this greatest “consulting detective” of all time. At once full of high tension and broad comedy, the autistic Holmes must navigate through the tangling murky politics of sexual relations, diplomacy and, yes, international politics itself. Holmes uncovers the mystery

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.

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 att...

Some reflections on July 4, its historical significance and its changing meaning yesterday and today in American culture. The Declaration of Independence, painted by John Trumbull

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) Ric...

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 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 matt...

“Juneteenth,” a Podcast Episode for North Square The Emancipation Proclamation, from The Library of Congress

READ FOR YOU BY RICK REIMAN. In this story by Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes must represent a client being blackmailed by the notorious criminal, Charles Augustus Milverton. Once again, Holmes uses the practices of the criminal himself, something he seems all too eager to employ in more than one of the stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Watson joins in the effort and the result is an action story piled upon a mystery tale. Holmes and Watson confront Charles Augustus Milverton, the notorious blac...

A commemoration for North Square.

Here I share some insights into what I have learned about the hidden Sherlock Holmes, from reading and narrating the Conan Doyle stories. To do this I use one of his most popular stories by way of illustration, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” You can listen to my narration of this classic short story elsewhere on AudiblySpeaking.com. Reference Links Narrations by Rick Reiman on Audibly Speaking of: The Five Orange Pips The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Once again, as in “A Study in Scarlett,” Arthur Conan Doyle reaches across the pond for material for a Sherlock Holmes story. In this case, it is a short story, about the long reach of the past and the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan in America. Three generations of Englishman face death from the grandfather’s involvement in the racist activities of the Klan. This is one of the few stories where, although Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery, he is late, much too late, in doing so.

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 s...

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

“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.” -Sherlock Holmes

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Richard A. Reiman, host of AudiblySpeaking and author of the article above, narrated this article, published in The Journal of Perpetrator Research, 2(2), 2019, 180-226, and available as a Create Commons document at https://jpr.winchesteruniversitypress.org/3/volume/2/issue/2/. Today’s recording is a reading of Part 1 of 3 of this article. Coming soon: Part 2.

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.” Rick Reiman -

Read by Rick Reiman Read by Rick Reiman

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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