The lost adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by Ken Greenwald

Book Overview

The Sherlock Holmes radio plays of the 1940s were eagerly received by fans of the Great Detective everywhere. Starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, these taut, well-written broadcasts often dealt... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566195403
• ISBN13: 9781566195409
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

THIS WORK IS AN ABSOLUTE TREASURE TROVE FOR THE HOLMES LOVER

For those of you who are enthusiastic fans of the irreplaceable Sherlock Holmes, this collection of short stories could be categorized and a must read. For those of you who grew up listening to the old radio shows (yes folks, there was a time when there was no T.V. and wonderful shows were presented in a pure audio format. I know this is difficult to believe, but they were actually fun to listen to and many of them had as larger a following as any modern television series), this too is a must read also. These old radio shows first started running in the 1940s. The first of the shows were based on the original stories by Conan Doyle, but later shows were based on the writings of two wonderful writers, Denis Green and Anthony Boucher. As far as I am concerned, these two writer's skill equaled that of Doyle in many ways. This particular collection includes the stories: The Adventure of the Second Generation The April fool's Adventure. The Case of the Amateur Mendicants The Adventure of the Out-of-Date Murder. The Case of the Demon Barber. Murder Beyond the Mountains. The Case of the Uneasy Easy Chair. The Case of the Baconian Cipher The Adventure of the Headless Monk. The Case of the Camberwell Poisoners The Adventure of the Iron Box. The Case of the Girl with the Gazelle. and The Adventure of the Notorious Canary Trainer. The entire collection is introduced by Dr. John H. Watson, July 25, 1888. Each of these stories captures perfectly the essence of Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson, and in doing so, captures, in the minds eye not only those to fictional characters, but those of Basil Rathbone and Nigle Bruce. The authors have also answered many small questions that were left unanswered in the original Doyle stories such as how and when did Sherlock Holmes meet Professor Moriarty and why did Sherlock Holmes buy his Sussex bee farm? Many, many little loose ends are nicely tied together here. I must admit that I found a certain child like glee in finding the answers to these questions. Everything you will find in the pages of this work goes perfectly with the original work...i.e. it is all in its proper place, it is all logical and makes perfect sense. Ken Greenwald, the author of this book, has done a wonderful job of transforming the original lost radio scripts into narrative form and the stories have lost nothing in his interpretation. As has been suggested already by other reviewers, I too strongly suggest that you place Rathbone and Nigle in your mind as you read these stories. This is easy to do if you know the characters and adds so much to their reading. All of these stories stay completely true to the Doyle tradition and I was grateful and pleased that none of the writers involved here attempted to muck about and try to improve on what is very near perfection already. Finally, do you want to know why Sherlock Holmes cannot and will not ever die? The last story in the book addresses this. The reason is......... Don Blankens

Fun Stories For Fans of Old Radio and Holmes

There never has been anything quite like old-time radio in America. It was pure magic. It was adventure and drama, mystery and suspense, drifting through the night air into homes lit only by the orange glow of tubes warming up. Families gathered around the radio, carried away by their imaginations. Author Ken Greenwald was one of those listeners, and one of his favorite shows growing up was Sherlock Holmes. For most of us, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce will always be Holmes and Watson. The films and radio shows are still watched on late night TV and listened to by old-time radio buffs like myself. When radio archivist Ken Greenwald and a small group of friends discovered a long list of missing radio shows from 1945, written by great radio writers Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher, the idea of turning their original radio scripts into short stories was born. Greenwald has done a marvelous job of blending the two distinct mediums together. You can easily picture Rathbone and Bruce in these fun adventures as Greenwald has kept the fast pace of the radio plays while fleshing them out a bit and adding the transitions necessary for the short story form. Greenwald gives us a baker's dozen here. My personal favorites are "The Adventures of the Headless Monk" and "The Adventure of the Iron Box." The former is filled with the atmosphere of the foggy moors and a dash of the supernatural, making this one a lot of fun. In the latter, Holmes hatches a clever scheme to solve a mystery shortly after the Christmas rush that will include, of all people, Sir Walter Scott! How did Sherlock Holmes first meet Moriarity? Why in the world did Holmes buy that Sussex bee farm? Telling you which stories you'll find the answers to these questions would only ruin the fun. Enjoy!

A Baker's (Street) Dozen

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are top contenders for the best Holmes and Watson duo in film and television history; less well known is the fact that they did quite a number of quite a number of radio broadcasts as the famous duo. Some of these, as was often the case in early broadcast history, were lost until a chance discovery hit upon a baker's dozen of these radio plays. Each one of these thirteen is based on one of the canonical stories - both plays and novels have been adapted here. However, the writing team of Denis Green and Anthony Boucher did something remarkable here - instead of simply adapting the story of 'A Scandal in Bohemia' or 'Silver Blaze' for radio teleplay, they picked up on selected details in the stories and developed those more fully. Hence, 'A Scandal in Bohemia', in which Holmes meets Irene Adler, _the_ woman, becomes here 'The Second Generation', developing further from the canonical story. In the foreword, Ken Greenwald writes about his life-long love of Sherlock Holmes, growing out an early broadcast experience of his own. He ponders the task of making the writing of Green and Boucher better, and decides that he cannot (just as they decided they could not really improve upon Conan Doyle, but rather could serve to flesh out the lesser bits). Greenwald does the same here, adapting rather than re-writing the plays, casting them in short-story format. Greenwald is clear that he is not only writing with Holmes and Watson in mind, but also that Rathbone and Bruce would be the embodiment of them. One can almost see or hear the stories while reading them, in the persons of Rathbone and Bruce, reading or playing out the scenes. The writing is crisp and faithful to the canonical originals; Greenwald even adds a brief introduction under the pen of Dr. John Watson, explaining why these 'lost adventures' are finally being set down. This is a must have for any fan of Holmes and Watson.

Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Find This Book

If you enjoyed the classic Sherlock Holmes film series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as the original dynamic duo, you will enjoy this great collection of short stories adapted from the original radio plays produced in the 1940's. Well-illustrated with drawings based on Rathbone and Bruce, the author delves into the so-called "lost adventures" of the great detective covering his exploits in the late 19th Century. While this book's Watson is distinctly different from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original character, the book is nevertheless an enjoyable addition to any Holmes fan's library. Plus, if you enjoy this book, try to find the audio CD called "The Unfortunate Tobacconist," which features this same collection of stories as the original radio plays performed by Rathbone and Bruce.

"It shall always be Sherlock Holmes and Victorian England"

This is a very enjoyable collection of stories based on scripts from the original radio plays.Basil Rathbone was a "softer" version of Holmes. The original Sherlock could be hard and unfeeling - a machine as Watson often describes him.That probably didn't play to audiences so, by comparison, Rathbone is just mildly eccentric. He's far more tolerant of the inability of Watson and others to keep up with him than is the original Sherlock.It's a little as if someone had found the dichotomy betwen Hamlet's magnificent spirit and his fatal flaw disconcerting and had rewritten Shakespeare's classic to make Hamlet just a typical troubled young adult struggling with newfound freedom and responsibilties.And Nigel Bruce's bumbling Watson is largely comic relief and equally unlike the original Conan Doyle version.But at least the original radio playwrights kept the two heroes in late 19th century/early 20th century England. I think that most of the movies that Rathbone and Bruce made were set during World War II. I mean, no one could be a worthier contender against the Nazis than Sherlock Holmes, but still...The story of how Holmes and Watson first meet Moriarty is unconvincing, as is the portrayal of Moriarty, and equally unconvincing is how, in "The April Fool's Adventure", Holmes finds all of the clues that the pranksters leave for him to find but doesn't see how they were intended to point to himself as the culprit. His inability to recognize himself is bewildering, and he must have forgotten to use his magnifying glass to look at the calendar.But so what? When a classic is changed for mass market effect, the result is often disastrous, but not so here.The bottom line is that all of the stories are very enjoyable. For all of the merit of the original Conan Doyle classics, they were written as a disagreeable chore to satisfy the public's demand for a character that Conan Doyle himself had quickly grown tired of.These stories were crafted with a lot of love and care, and that might be why the two main characters themselves draw more affection than do the original versions.Our debt to Conan Doyle for bringing us Sherlock Holmes is incalculable, but equally incalculable is our debt to his contemporaries for forcing the author to resurrect the great detective from (what we were led to believe was) the bottom of Reichenbach Falls. Perhaps the public also deserves credit for rescuing Holmes's humanity as well as his life from the clutches of his original creator, and perhaps this kinder, gentler Holmes is an example of this second rescue effort.And speaking of Holmes's life, the last story in this collection provides a plausible explanation (entirely consistent with the Conan Doyle concordance) of why Sherlock Holmes cannot die. Literally. That's worth the price of admission, in and of itself.