The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

By: Will Murray

Narrated by: Charles Featherstone

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Ten traditional tales of Victorian London's greatest consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, as he investigates some of his most baffling mysteries.

• Is a blue-skinned dinosaur tearing up the Essex countryside? "The Wild Adventure of the Indigo Impossibility" provides the astonishing answer.
• Holmes and Watson plunge into the darkest dens of Limehouse in search of "The Mystery of the Elusive Li Shen." Is he man, myth, or monster?
• What is the secret of the uncatchable Thames footpad chronicled in "The Adventure of Old Black Duffel?"
• A famous American soldier of fortune asks Sherlock Holmes to locate a Russian adventuress long believed dead in "The Adventure of the Nebulous Nihilist."
• Did fairies lure a young Manchester boy to his doom? "The Misadventure of the Bonny Boy" tells the chilling tale.
• A wealthy art collector challenges Sherlock Holmes with an unsolvable riddle. Or is it a riddle? What is "The Enigma of Neptune's Quandary?"
• Is a dead man haunting his office—or might an even stranger explanation exist for why his frightened face is imprinted on a windowpane? "The Adventure of the Glassy Ghost" reveals all.
• A fiendish murderer strikes down victim after victim in "The Problem of the Bruised Tongues." The only clue: the discolored tips of their tongues.
• "The Adventure of the Throne of Gilt." What could it be, and why should Dr. John Watson fear it so?
• A revengeful enemy plots a gruesome end for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in "The Unsettling Matter of the Graveyard Ghoul."

©2020 Will Murray (P)2023 MX Publishing

Great stories!

I always loved Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters! Will Murry did a very admirable job keeping to the author’s original style!! Thanks Will

Some very clever plots

So first the excellent. The stories were clever, there were a number of subtle details that made them feel more authentic, and the author clearly loves Holmes and Watson.

But the narrator just ruins it for me. I hate the way he gives voice to Watson, making him sound like mumbling through a mouth full of crackers. But that is only part of the reason I ranked the performance so low.

The second part is his frequent and repeated mispronunciation of words. For example, the word “skein” rhymes with “stain,” not with “clean.” This author is partial to that word, and I cringed every time I heard it.

Still and all, the stories make the reader ALMOST worth putting up with. Choose for yourself.

Great set of stories!

An enjoyable romp through Victorian London with everyone's favourite consulting detective. A good edition to the cannon with plenty of meat for everyone.

More mediocrity

The story's we're bad, nothing great. The reading was well done except that while narrating Watson has a perfectly normal voice " speaking Watson" has a nearly indecipherable marble mouth harrumph voice which is terrible. It was distracting and annoying.

Narrator is bizarre, and off putting: Donald Duck does a British accent for the voice of Watson.

The narrator of this story made a ghastly choice in the voice he chose for Watson. It’s slurring, absurdly fusty, like a cartoon version of an aristocratic voice. In short, he gave Watson a huge speech impediment, with dramatic over use of “SH” sounds in almost every word - to the point that much of Watson’s dialogue is unintelligible. “Marbles in the mouth” in an understatement: think “Donald Duck does the voice of Nigel Bruce” - and you get the general idea…

In the stories, Watson originally hailed from Scotland. It would have been vastly preferable if he had faked some kind of mild Scottish accent.

I truly don’t know how this narrative got past the basic recording and sound editing process. One spoken paragraph in this odd, clownish voice should have elicited a firm, “Oh no! That will never do!”

The quality of the stories didn’t matter, as everything was just the struggle to get past Donald Duck.

Ironically, the narrator appears credible in regular dialogue. The pathetic fakery was entirely unnecessary.

Pass on this until it’s re-recorded.

Return of the Great Detective

Author Will Murray resurrects the singular detective in several short stories. The author does a good job of mimicking Arthur Conan Doyle. The narrator, on the other hand, I found to be rather annoying. His John Watson comes across as mush-mouthed, for lack of a better term, making the character hard to follow. The stories were, authentic, in that one would have expected to see them, as presented here, in a vintage copy of Strand Magazine. Were these "Wild Adventures" as the book title promised? Personally, I would say no. On my opinion, these were relatively hum drum cases in the career of the Great Sherlock Holmes. My expectations led me to expect something truly unique for a Holmes story. Looking ahead, I see two additional volumes that seem to fit my expectations a tad more closely.