There absolutely no wonder why this 72-hour production won Audible’s 2017 Members’ Choice Award. With introductions written by the incomparable Stephen Fry, Audible Studio’s extraordinary and complete collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories includes every one of the 4 novels and 56 short stories.
Holmes is possibly more popular today than he was at the time Doyle was writing. The super sleuth, with his trusty companion Dr Watson, solved cases through deductive reasoning which reinvented the detective genre. They were often joined by the incompetent Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, their beloved landlady Mrs Hudson, brother Mycroft Holmes or, for one fateful story, Holmes’ nemesis, Jim Moriarty.
The collection is broken into six parts for faster download and separated into chronological release dates. The four full-length novels by Doyle were A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902), and The Valley of Fear (1914–1915). They are separated by the short stories written in between those dates and they, in turn, are grouped by their known collections: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1981-1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1982-1893), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903-1904), His Last Bow (1908-1917), and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1921-1927).
In 2017, British entertainer Stephen Fry was my audiobook narrator of choice. His charm, interpretations and clarity of voice are boosted by his extraordinary range of accents and voices. Those prized qualities enhance this audio collection enormously, creating a full-cast feel to the stories. The single narrator also provides consistency across the entire collection when it comes to the characterisation of the main and reoccurring characters. Fry is faultless in his reading, and his voice is elastic enough that it never gets tiring listing to him.
The introductions to each section are personal accounts written by Fry himself, discussing his own introduction to and love of Sherlock Holmes, the history of Doyle and his most famous character, the way of life around the turn of the century, and many other fascinating insights into the influences, writings and fandom that ensure Doyle’s literary legacy continues to thrive today across multiple mediums.
While Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection provided ideal company for me over a round trip between Adelaide and Melbourne, the accompanying PDF breakdown of the chapters and stories allows a listener to jump in and out of the recording to listen to individual stories. Only the final collection, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, is inexplicably missing from the PDF table of contents.
Whether you’re a stalwart fan of Sherlock Holmes, or you have only recently been introduced to him through one of the modern television series from the UK or USA, this collection is a must-have for all lovers of detective fiction and, in particular, the greatest sleuth of them all. This audiobook, under the masterful control of Stephen Fry, brings each tale and every character to life, surpassing even the joy of the printed novels.
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection is available as a digital download from audible.com.au. Owning it is elementary.
Reviewed by Rod Lewis
Twitter: @StrtegicRetweet
Rating out of 10: 10
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