The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventure of the Dancing Men

by Arthur Conan Doyle, Simon Prebble (Narrator)

A deadly curse in the form of a legendary ferocious beast continues to claim its victims from the Baskerville family until Holmes and Watson intervene. Often called the best detective story ever written.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Classics

Audiobook

Published November 23, 2009

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[Nick Dutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The tales were both great, but the Hound of the Baskervilles contains a brief moment of unsolicited old time racism that would be better off left out. If they abridged a few paragraphs, this would have been a fantastic story.

[Bryan Murdock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun mysteries. Interesting that Sherlock isn't actually involved in the story for a large part of the Hound of the Baskervilles. If you are interested, he also doesn't shoot up any cocaine and there aren't any overtly racist parts like in other Sherlock stories. Maybe that's why this is the one they often make school kids read...

Aside from that stuff, this is a fun Scooby Doo type mystery where there could be a supernatural element, but maybe you'll find out in the end it was all special effects and the work of an innocent looking but very conniving individual. You'll just have to read and find out :-)

The Dancing Men tacked on at the end of this audio book wasn't too bad, but not as engaging as the full-novel length Baskervilles. I think it might have been better if I could see the pictures of the dancing men that I assume are in the print version. It also seemed unlikely that Sherlock couldn't have sent a telegraph or something to prevent the shooting. He wired a friend from America in the same amount of time.

[Jan C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read both of these stories multiple times. So nice to sit back and let someone else do the reading for once.

Hound is a perennial favorite. And Dancing Men's fascination has to do with the resolution of a code.

[JayeL · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this version of the Hound of the Baskervilles and finally have a clear idea in my mind of the perpetrator of the crime. The Adventure of the Dancing Men was a sad, but interesting story.