Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection One

Six New Stories of the World's Greatest Detective

By: Craig Stephen Copland

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

SHERLOCK HOLMES NEVER DIES. Six new stories of the world's greatest detective. Return to Baker Street, where the world's most famous detective encounters six new cases that require his expert touch. London's super sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, sets out with long-suffering Watson as the detectives of Scotland Yard are stumped yet again. Blood coats the street of Victorian England, but no evidence is clear, and no suspect cleared of guilt. As to be expected, evil genius-the Napoleon of Crime-Professor Moriarty soon reappears. The great detective must thwart his diabolical machinations, but even Holmes is practically brought to his knees by shocking new discoveries only he can understand. Despite Moriarty's conniving, Sherlock will use the science of deduction to unravel mysteries of theft, abduction, political intrigue, and murder. Female characters take much deserved centre stage in these updated stories, no longer willing to play the part of hapless victim or jealous wife. Meanwhile, Holmes and Watson traipse the globe in search of justice. No guilty party is safe, no matter the distance, from the all-knowing eye of the world's best detective and his daring sidekick. The Collection includes: The Sign of the Tooth; The Hudson Valley Mystery; A Case of Identity Theft; The Bald-Headed Trust; Studying Scarlet; and The Mystery of the Five Oranges. ENJOY MORE SHERLOCK

Amusing at times but very different Holmes

This book was included in my Audible subscription, and I found the stories entertaining enough to listen to almost 20 hours of audio. I’m not sure I would choose to purchase them.

If you are looking for clever Holmes caliber puzzles that will leave you guessing, these are not the stories for you. In fact, many of these are more along the lines of adventures rather than mysteries.

What I most enjoyed—
-The author’s John Watson, unlike the original, has a wonderful sense of humor. He can laugh at himself and also enjoys a shared joke with Mrs. Hudson at Holmes expense. He is also not a complete fool.
-The author’s positive portrayal of intelligent, strong women
-His portrayal of strong, happy, spicy marriages and the interplay between husbands and wives

What could be improved:
The digital audio voice has an annoying vibration and it’s just weird for a female to be reading Watson’s writing.

Copland’s Holmes is way more connected to his emotions than the original. He is often found wiping a tear from his eye. This is something the original Holmes would never do. He always channeled his compassion into fulfilling his role as an avenging angel visiting justice on the guilty.

Multiple factual and contextual errors. Here are some examples:
-The Mystery of the Five Oranges involves a white man who incites the rage of the KKK by marrying a black woman in Florida in 1901. Sad to say, it was illegal for whites and blacks to marry across most of the USA until 1967.
-A young woman tells an audience the tragedy of her recent rape in accurate biological terms. Really?! This was just after the end of the Victorian era and before World War I. First of all, she would have been arrested for indecency. Secondly, no matter how innocent a woman was in a rape situation, she was still considered to be “ruined.” This meant she lost her place in society, others her age could no longer associate with her for fear of being likewise sullied, and no decent man would marry her. Most of the time, gossip also placed some responsibility for the rape at her door (as still happens far too often). In a time when every proper young woman was chaperoned within an inch of her life, a drama club member walking alone on a beach at dusk must definitely be immoral.
-In Studying Scarlet, Starlet’s horse bumps her while she is saddling it. She is portrayed as an exceptional rider and quickly disciplines the mare by kicking her hard in the belly. Don’t get me started on this one!!! As a rider and woman who loves horses, let me just say that no one should ever mistreat a horse like this. Horses are like naughty children at times—they will test you to see if you mean what you say. But this is NOT the way to show them who’s in charge. And a plantation owner like Starlet, who has been around horses all her life would know this!

Studying Scarlet itself. This first novelette inserts the characters from the novel Gone with the Wind into a Holmes mystery. I am not a fan of bodice ripper romance mysteries, but if you like them, then you will probably like this story. The original Holmes was not immune to beautiful women (as evidenced by Irene Adler), but he was more focused on their brains than their bosoms. To give Copland credit, his bosom bursting women are intelligent, good with a gun and don’t wait around for a man to rescue them!

I also found Copland’s use of historical (when accurate) and literary figures interesting and somewhat endearing in the case of Anne Shirley.

Sherlock Revisited

I'm really digging this author's take and reworking of the Holmes canon. Copland takes the premise of a story, adds a bit of history from the time, a bit of flavor from today's zeitgeist and mixes it all up into interesting stories. I have read a later volume first, and the virtual voice was pretty good on that book, but this female voice was off. She wasn't the worst, though and is tolerable for 20 hours.

Sign of the Tooth

Many Thanks to the author, and the Sherlock Society of Toronto, for an even better version of the Sign of Four. I just watched the Jeremy Brett version, and this one was canon level.

Very well done, except…

The virtual voice was good, but should have been masculine. Having Dr. Watson, a make, narrating the story in a very feminine voice was very disconcerting.