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Archive for the ‘Adventure’ Category

Arthur Conan Doyle–“The Blue Carbuncle” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1892)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Christmas, Geese, Greed, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story on March 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: March 4, 2024] “The Man with the Twisted Lip”

After a couple of lesser stories, the seventh story in this collection returns Holmes to his glory.  For instance, he looks at a felt hat and determines

That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.

Outstanding.

The hat belongs to a man who was carrying a Christmas goose.  He was set upon by some thugs and dropped the goose.  But when he fought off the thugs, he smashed a window.  Peterson, a constable happened upon the scene, but everyone fled, leaving Peterson with a hat and a goose.  No one claimed the goose, so Peterson ate it and Holmes took the hat.

But Peterson comes back soon after saying that in the goose was a blue gem–the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle.

Holmes lays some simple traps and determines that at least two people are not suspects in the theft.  But this case, which seems so challenging actually get solved fairly easily.  The remainder of the story actually lays out how the jewel wound up in a goose.

I have read another version of this story (in comic book form) and I feel like the “how” part may have been placed in a different order, which made the story a bit more suspenseful.  But perhaps I am misremembering.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The four novels of the canon:

  1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
  2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
  3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
  4. The Valley of Fear (1915)

The 56 short stories are collected in five books:

  1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
  2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
  3. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
  4. His Last Bow (1917)
  5. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892

  1. “A Scandal in Bohemia” (June 1891)
  2. “The Red-Headed League” (August 1891)
  3. “A Case of Identity” (September 1891)
  4. “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891)
  5. “The Five Orange Pips” (November 1891)
  6. “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (December 1891)
  7. “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (January 1892)
  8. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (February 1892)
  9. “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (March 1892)
  10. “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (April 1892)
  11. “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (May 1892)
  12. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (June 1892)

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Arthur Conan Doyle–“The Red-Headed League” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Banks, Fraud, Mystery, Robbery, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story on February 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “The Red-Headed League”

The third story in this collection is one that I have heard of and that I know is significant in the canon.  But I didn’t know anything about it, which made reading it even more fun.

Like most stories, it starts with Watson coming over to Holmes’ place while he’s just meeting with a client.  He says he’s quite puzzled by this one.

Jabez Wilson is a man with red hair.  He owns a pawn shop and is not terribly busy these days.  He has a man working for him and the only way he can keep the man is because he accepts half pay.  The employee brought to Wilson’s attention an ad in the paper about the red-headed league.

The league has an endowment and they are looking for a new member to replace one who has left.  For 100 pounds a month, all you need to do is work for a few hours a week.  The line for interviews is very long, but Wilson has the perfect flame-red hair that gets him the gig.  His job is to copy the encyclopedia every day from 10-2.  He is not permitted to leave during those hours and he cannot miss a day or the gig is forfeited.

Pretty weird. (more…)

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Arthur Conan Doyle–“A Case of Identity” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story, Yuck! on February 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “A Case of Identity”

Many years ago I was on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I read the first two novels and then couldn’t get a copy of this collection, so I guess I forgot about the detective.  Since i have recently listened to a couple of Sherlock Holmesian books I decided to track down the next book to read.

And I was quite surprised to realize that while Arthur Conan Doyle did write a lot of Sherlock stories, most of them were short stories, not novels (See the list below).

So since these were short stories I decided to give a crack at them.

This second story in the book is remarkably… inconsequential?  Holmes has a habit of saying that big mysteries often disguise simple crimes–if it’s a huge deal, then the plotting must be simple.  He also likes that life is far ore bizarre than fiction (amusing in a short story).  But even by those standards, this is a pretty small story.  It also feels not very hard to figure out–I have also realized that much of Holmes’ success comes from not letting on some things that he has figured out (thereby not letting the readers in on it either).

So Mary Sutherland has come to see Holmes about a personal matter.  There is some excellent moments of Holmes reading the woman from outside and telling what her concern is just by the way she is standing.  I also realized that so many of the story really do depend on British mannerisms and behaviors–things that wouldn’t come across as well today.  Like cuffs being mended and ink stains on fingers.

At any rate, Holmes figures she has a story of woe about a romance.  And so she does. (more…)

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Arthur Conan Doyle–“A Scandal in Bohemia” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Drugs, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story on February 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Many years ago I was on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I read the first two novels and then couldn’t get a copy of this collection, so I guess I forgot about the detective.  Since i have recently listened to a couple of Sherlock Holmesisn books I decided to track down the next book to read.

And I was quite surprised to realize that while Arthur Conan Doyle did write a lot of Sherlock stories, most of them were short stories, not novels (See the list below).

So since these were short stories I decided to give a crack at them.

This first one “A Scandal in Bohemia” is quite well-known as it introduces HER–the woman–Irene Adler.  In this first story Adler befuddles the genius who is Sherlock Holmes.

The story is remarkably tame–even Watson says so as he writes of the case.

The King of Bohemia is meant to be married.  But Irene Adler has a photo of the two of them together that she is using to blackmail him.  She threatens to have the photo get out to the public ass soon as he announces his marriage.

The King is a mildly comical character because he is quite smitten with Miss Adler (who is from New Jersey!).  But she is not of his class so he cannot pursue anything with her.

He has tried several different ways of getting the photo back (legal and decided illegal), but has had no luck. (more…)

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John Scalzi–Starter Villain (2023)

Posted in Adventure, Cats, Death, Funny (ha ha), Huh?, Morality, Murder, Supernatural, Technology, Villains, Violence on February 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 3, 2024] Starter Villain

My wife and I have relatively different tastes in books, but we have a large section of overlap.  And since she is a much faster reader than I, she brings home all kinds of books that I think I’d like to check out.

And this was, obviously one of them.  I mean, blah blah, books by their covers, but come on, of course I’m going to at least look at this one.

She confirmed that it was good and I jumped in.

I must say right off the bat it’s not what I thought it was going to be.  The cats are not the villains, despite how obvious that seems. Rather, the cats are helpers to the villain.  But we’ll get to that.

Charlie is down on his luck.  He’s a substitute teacher.  He’s recently divorced–this hurts even more because his Uncle Jake sent him a pair of berry spoons as a wedding present with a note that said 18 months, which was exactly as long as his wedding lasted.  And the house he’s living in was his only inheritance.  But he has three half siblings who are all owed a part of the house.  But it’s the only place he has to go.  And he’s got this stray cat that he recently brought home…

His last hope for a semblance of success is to buy a local Irish pub that is for sale.  But it costs a few hundred thousand dollars more than he has–and the bank isn’t fooled by his lies.

When he gets back from the bank, there is a woman waiting on his porch.   She tells him that his Uncle Jake (the one with the spoons) has died and left him a substantial sum.  He just has to go to the funeral and say a few words on his behalf.

Charlie hasn’t seen his Uncle since he was like five years old and has no idea what to say about the man.  The man owned parking garages.  How could he have a substantial sum?  But whatever, he has not much else going on.

The funeral home is hilarious because all of the bouquets has curses and threats on them–beautiful flower arrangements with sashes that say things like “See You In Hell.”  And when the funeral actually starts one of the men takes out a knife to make sure that Jake is dead. (more…)

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Ben Hatke–Reynard’s Tale: A Story of Love and Mischief (2023)

Posted in Adventure, Ben Hatke, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, First Second :01, Foxes, Short Books, Trickster Tale on February 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

 SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: January 20, 2024] Reynard’s Tale

I’ve really enjoyed all of Ben Hatke’s books.  He tends to write children’s books.  And, given the size of this book, I thought it would be a children’s story as well.

But it isn’t.  It’s not fully adult or anything, but the word “bastard” does appear and it is clear from the (superb) drawings that sex has been had–nothing explicit, and maybe a child wouldn’t get it, but…

The book is roughly 80 pages with an illustration on every other page.  I love the way that Hatke draws Reynard, the fox, as pretty much all nose and hat–very expressive without actually seeing a face.

Reynard is the classic Trickster.  As the story opens, he is sitting in the woods thinking of his love.  His reveries are broken by Collar the Crow (who is a priest) who comes with a summons from the King and a blessing. (more…)

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Peng Shepard–The Cartographers (2022) [audiobook 2022]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks,  Brittany Pressley,  Jason Culp,  Karen Chilton,  Nancy Wu,  Neil Hellegers,  Ron Butler, Death, Emily Woo Zeller, Huh?, Magic, Maps, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Peng Shepard, Supernatural, Violence on January 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The Cartographers

This book came on a recommended list and WOW did it sound great.

In fact, after the first few chapters, I was telling my wife about the great premise.  But I was already warning her about the irritating characters.  And, as the story went on, the premise got even better, but the characters got even more and more annoying.

And the repetitions in the book were endless.  She kept repeating herself.  She was saying the same thing over and over again.  Perhaps in a slightly different way.  But then she would circle back and confirm the repetitions.  So by the end of a chapter you had read the same thing two or three times.  And then she might repeat it once more.

The book grew so annoying that I almost didn’t bother finishing it (as many people on Goodreads said).  But I hate not finishing things, so I did something that I never do.  I sped up my audio book.

I’m not sure if I found the characters especially dull because of their actions or because of Emily Woo Zeller the audiobook narrator.  But holy cow, this book dragged on.  By the end of the book I had moved the audio speed up to 1.8x and for Emily Woo Zeller, it did not make it hard to follow (some of the other narrators were too sped up at that speed).  

The other narrators were Ron Butler, Nancy Wu, Jason Culp, Brittany Pressley, Karen Chilton and Neil Hellegers.  It was a little hard to tell when a new narrator came in, because they mostly seemed to be telling the story from different points of view.  But sometimes the main narrator narrated their parts as well. 

So the premise of the story (and I hope this isn’t a spoiler) is that if a map is made with an error (intentional or not), whatever is on that map actually exists–but only if you have that map.  I mean, this is an amazing premise.  And it is based on a real event. (more…)

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Anthony Horowitz–The House of Silk : A Sherlock Holmes Novel (2011) [audiobook 2011]

Posted in Adventure, Anthony Horowitz, Arthur Conan Doyle, Audiobooks, Death, Derek Jacobi, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Pedophilia, Religion, Sherlock Holmes, Violence on January 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The House of Silk

I’ve been really enjoying some various Anthony Horowitz adult books.  I particularly enjoyed his Hawthorne and Horowitz books.

I had noticed that House of Silk seemed to be a really Big, Important book for hi, but I didn’t really know why.  When it went on sale at my audiobook supplier, I grabbed it.  That’s when I discovered it was a Sherlock Holmes story.

I went through a brief phase where I was reading as many Holmes stories as a I could.  But it has been a while since I read one.

In no way can I compare this story to an Arthur Conan Doyle story, nor do I think you are supposed to (even though this is an authorized part of the series).  I can’t quite imagine the pressure that one must feel in Horowitz’ situation.  There is no way he was going to please people by doing this.  I also don’t know anything about his fondness for Holmes.  I assume it must be great, but who knows.

The fun setup for this story is that Watson has written this book but has asked that it not be opened for 100 years because the information contained within is quite damaging to some important people in English society.

And so, although this story is set at some time during Holmes’ tenure as a detective, it’s not his “final” case or anything like that.

The story is fairly convoluted (it is a Holmes story, after all), but it actually has two mysteries intertwined.

It opens with Edmund Carstairs coming to Sherlock for help.  He is an art dealer and when a group of valuable paintings were shipped to America, they were robbed/destroyed  in a train robbery.  The culprits were actually after money on the train, but they still cost the art dealer a fortune.  He hired a man in America to round up the thieves who were known as the flat cap gang.  The Gang is headed by two Irishmen, the O’Donoghue twins.  During the investigation, one of the twins is killed.  Carstairs is convinced that the surviving twin, Keelon O’Donoghue has come to kill him. (more…)

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Lindsay Buroker–Sinister Magic [Death Before Dragons #1] (2020) [audiobook 2020]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dragons, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Lindsay Buroker, Magic, Morality, Murder, Supernatural, Tigers, Urban fantasy, Vampires, Violence, Vivienne Leheny, Werewolves on September 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 2022] Sinister Magic

I’m not sure what attracted me to this author.  I suppose she came up on my Chirp Audiobook suggestions and I was looking for something a little different.

I like fantasy, but sometimes it gets too much up its own world building of for me to get into the story.  I hadn’t really read much urban fantasy, but from the little I’ve read, I rather like it.  The stories feel contemporary and feature alternate-reality takes on things we already know.  And I rather like that.

Linday Buroker is a self-published author.  This typically raises a red-flag, but this book has almost 10,000 ratings on Goodreads, so it’s not like no one is reading her.  She is also absurdly prolific as you can see by the massive chart down below.

But what hooked me on this series was narrator Vivienne Leheny.  I don’t know much about her, but I absolutely loved her voices, her tone and her ability to really get sarcasm across (Buroker’s characters are very sarcastic).  And, amazingly, Leheny seems to read most if not all of Buroker’s books.

So, in summary, the main character is Val Thorvald.  As she says, “I’m an assassin.”  But she’s not that kind of assassin.  She only goes after “magical bad guys.”   When magical bad guys come to earth, she takes care of them. Permanently.

This doesn’t make her popular with the rest of the magical community.  But thanks to her half-elven blood, a powerful sword named Chopper, and a telepathic tiger with an attitude, she’s always been able to deal with any threats that come her way. (more…)

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Jodi Taylor–A Symphony of Echoes [The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #2] (2013) [audiobook 2014]

Posted in Adventure, Audiobooks, Death, Dinosaurs, Fears, Feminism, Fire, Funny (ha ha), History, Huh?, Jodi Taylor, Morality, Murder, Mystery, Supernatural, Thieves, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Zara Ramm on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: January 2023] A Symphony of Echoes

This is the second book in a something-teen long series.

I sometimes wonder if I enjoy a series more for the narrator of the audio books than the quality of the books themselves.

I didn’t think that at the time of reading this, because I was swept up in the comedy and adventure and (yes, I’m saying it, time travel).  However, while looking for a cover image, I read a scathing review of this book and felt that I did agree with many of the criticisms.  I guess I just didn’t care.  And I wonder if that’s because Zara Ramm gave great voice to the lead character Max and also did an amazing job with all of the different characters (male and female from all over the place).

Book 2 continues the time travelling saga of the historians of St. Mary’s.  Like the other stories there are several seemingly random adventures that the crew must go on.  The first, in this case, is with a soon-to-be-retiring historian named Kalinda Black.  She wishes to go to Jack the Ripper times and suss out what actually happened.

Things go horribly wrong when Jack the Ripper (in some form or another) hops a ride with them back to St. Mary’s.  It’s confusion and chaos trying to fight a near invisible enemy.  And that’s before anyone realizes that Captain Farrell is missing.

It is, of course, the dastardly duo of Izzie Barclay and Clive Ronan, set in a future St. Mary’s.  In a sign of things  to come, Max realizes that they cannot kill Ronan because of time paradoxes (I am not about to go into details of that) and that Izzie is much harder to kill than it seems when Max shoots her and dumps her in an elevator.

Because the future St. Mary’s has been decimated by Barclay and Ronan, Max stays on as interim head. (more…)

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