The Valley of Fear

By: Arthur Conan Doyle

Narrated by: Stephen Scalon

"The Valley of Fear" is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the real-life exploits of the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the "Strand Magazine" between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915,In this tale drawn from the note books of Dr Watson, the deadly hand of Professor Moriarty once more reaches out to commit a vile and ingenious crime. However, a mole in Moriarty's frightening criminal organization alerts Sherlock Holmes of the evil deed by means of a cipher.

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The Structure is Tedious

Sherlock Holmes is quite possibly the greatest fictional detective of all time. He has been a part of many classic stories. However, I have noticed a recurring problem with the full length novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. All of his novels involving Sherlock Holmes, with the exception of The Hounds of Baskerville, take a turn in the latter half of the book in order to give us an overly long and boring backstory for the criminal. It is tiresome and incredibly frustrating to read. It doesn’t matter how compelling the mystery is, or how well Sherlock and Watson are written — this structure by Conan Doyle is awful. It holds these novels back from being truly great detective fiction.

Poorly paced, voice performance had issues

This is definitely my least favorite of the 4 full length Sherlock Holmes novels. Arthur Conan Doyle took forever to get to his point at several parts of the story. I think he was trying to build suspense, but was more frustrating than anything else. Even the voice actor sounded bored by the plodding pace and word padding. And it seems that the editor of the audiobook was so bored as well that 2 or 3 bloopers/repeats of sentences were unintentionally left in the track.