The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

Alan Cummings does a masterful job of portraying the legendary detective on this seasonably themed adventure.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

A middle of the road short story from Doyle. The story starts with the theft of A "Blue Carbuncle". A former felon is soon arrested. An acquaintance of Holmes discovers the carbuncle in the throat of a Christmas goose. Holmes traces the owner of the goose. He then works out that he was not the thief by offering him a replacement goose. The detective continues his search. This takes him first to an inn and then a dealer in Covent Garden. The dealer refuses to provide Holmes with information about the source of the goose. Holmes then observes another man trying to find the same information, and confronts him. The man, the head attendant at the hotel, confesses to his crime. Holmes allows him to remain free. His argument is that prison could make him a hardened criminal later.

Holmes turns up his powers of deduction to 11 in this story. For example, he describes a man in detail only by studying the his hat. Phrenology, or some such pseudo-science is how he manages it. He also draws conclusions based on a few ropey pieces of “evidence”. So this tale, while entertaining, has several errors of logic. Not the greatest Holmes and Watson caper ever but after a surprising end, it gets an extra star.

This is a short story not a full book, but Audible.com gave it away as a Christmas present to members this year. Not a bad Sherlock Holmes short story. Has a little Christmas redemption in it. But it is a good example while I am not a fan of Sherlock Holmes. He uses cultural concepts to solve mysteries (which he has to do) that are often dated and wrong. And there is no humility in the writing. So Holmes finds a man using a lost hat and solves a crime. But one of the way he find the man is to look for an intelligent man (because his hat size is large).

A slightly longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-adventure-of-the-blue-carbuncle-by-arthur-conan-doyle/

Quick review for a short story. I listened to this audio book on my drive into work. In the past I've listened to BBC Radio dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes stories. I believe this is the first actual reading of one that I've listened to.

This is not one of Doyle's best Sherlock stories. The start of the story has Sherlock rambling on about a hat trying to discover all he can about it's owner, and I find myself wonder why the great Sherlock Holmes is wasting his intellect on simply trying to return a man's hat.

Eventually the story does pick up as their seems to be a jewel heist involved. This was a free book from Audible, and only about 45 minutes, so well worth my time for the price.

About the Audio book: This edition was read by the actor Alan Cummings. He's an excellent reader in the sense of his pronunciation/inflection. He did a bit of dialect and you could distinguish between someone educated such as Sherlock or Watson from a working man. I was unable to tell the difference between Sherlock and Watson however. He does a good, but not great job reading it.