With only partial success, Riccardi builds on Doyle's references to Sherlock Holmes's travels in Europe and Asia during the Great Hiatus, the three-year gap between Holmes's supposed death and his dramatic return to life. The nine original short stories in this collection focus on the master detective's efforts to apply his talents to a variety of mysteries in such exotic settings as Sumatra and Tibet. Given the uncertain grip of the British Empire over its colonies, the murders and other mayhem Holmes confronts often have potentially grave political repercussions. Since he wasn't present for these adventures, Dr. Watson is unable to serve as a sounding-board for Holmes's theories or as an effective stand-in for the reader struggling to make sense of baffling clues or seemingly motiveless crimes. Like many recent Holmes pastichers, the author transforms the original thinking machine into an Indiana Jones-like character facing century-old deathtraps and charged with recovering legendary jewels. Holmes does little detection, in one instance even violating his basic rule by theorizing in the absence of data. Nonetheless, these well-written tales, with their convincing local color, do entertain, and should Riccardi return Holmes and Watson to their customary roles in future volumes, Sherlockians would have reason to anticipate them with pleasure. (Sept. 9) FYI: Riccardi is the co-author with Todd T. Lewis of a scholarly monograph, The Himalayas: A Syllabus of the Region's History, Anthropology, and Religion (1995/96). Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Narrated by Simon Prebble
Ted RiccardiUnabridged — 13 hours, 17 minutes
The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Narrated by Simon Prebble
Ted RiccardiUnabridged — 13 hours, 17 minutes
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Overview
Sherlock Holmes is dead-or so most of the world thinks. His fatal plunge over the Reichenbach Falls as he struggled with his archenemy, Moriarty, has been widely reported. But Holmes has escaped and is alive. In his immediate circle, only Holmes's brother, the lethargic genius Mycroft, knows of his survival. Even Dr. Watson thinks that the great detective is dead. Among his enemies, Sebastian Moran, Moriarty's chief henchman, knows of Holmes's probable escape and waits for their inevitable meeting.
From 1891 to 1894, Holmes wanders through Asia. He is alone, without Watson, without Scotland Yard, armed only with his physical strength and endurance and his revered cold logic and rationality. The adventures recounted in The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes range from Lhasa to Katmandu, from the East Indies to the deserts of Rajasthan. In Tibet and throughout the Orient, Holmes is caught up in the diplomatic machinations of British imperialism that Rudyard Kipling dubbed "the Great Game." He confronts the tsarist agent Dorjiloff, the great art thief Anton Furer, and the mysterious Captain Fant¿¿me. And here, written in Holmes's own words, is the account of "The Giant Rat of Sumatra," for which until now he so famously thought the world unprepared.
For Holmes's fans throughout the world, the stories in The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes fill in an enigmatic gap, the cause of so much speculation in the great detective's career.
Editorial Reviews
The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes is filled with fascinating detail about the Orient, and provides an answer as to what Holmes was up to during those missing years. And of course he had to be reunited with his most trustworthy of friends, Dr. John Watson! Who else could possibly relay to us the adventures of the world’s greatest detective?
I’ve had a wonderfully entertaining time following Sherlock
Holmes’ astonishing adventures in the Orient. Ted Riccardi has captured the precise cadence and style of Dr. Watson’s accounts of his famous friend’s cases.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173565259 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2011 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
THE CASE OF THE VICEROY’S ASSISTANT
F or several weeks after his return to london, my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes had once again begun to evince those symptoms of melancholic lethargy which had led me on occasions past to increased apprehension about his mental health. He rarely ventured out from our quarters on Baker Street, consumed almost nothing despite Mrs. Hudson’s stern admonitions, and spent most of the day staring idly into space. Occasionally, he would pick up his violin, tune it slowly, and attempt some mournful piece by Mendelssohn, but at the slightest rebellion from the instrument, he would fling it down and throw himself onto the couch, sometimes falling into a deep sleep. His only moments of enthusiasm came when the morning paper arrived. He scoured it quickly, his eyes hungrily searching for something that could satisfy his restless brain. Alas, however, most of the crime was of the most ordinary variety, and the absence of intelligent design behind any of it was apparent to him at once.
“I have destroyed my enemies, Watson,” he said one morning over breakfast, “and in so doing I have perhaps destroyed myself. Look at this: a bank robbery in Charing Cross, a woman has murdered her adulterous husband in Oxford, and several drums of fertiliser have disappeared from a factory in Whitechapel. What is to be done?”
“Holmes,” I said, “perhaps we should take an extended trip to the Continent. The grey weather in London is causing a melancholic state in you that—”
But he already seemed lost in his usual silence and vacant stare, and I knew by now not to irritate him when such a mood overtookhim. I looked with dread also at his return to the use of cocaine, which as far as I was able to judge, he had avoided until then.
Unexpectedly, he said, “You are right, Watson. A change would be most welcome, but I haven’t the energy for the Continent. Let us begin with a walk and then perhaps a concert. Sarasate is playing this afternoon, and if he is in form, it will be worth our while.”
The stroll through St. James’s seemed to do him some good, and after the concert we again walked, this time through Hyde Park. It was just before dinner when we returned. As we entered, I noticed that Holmes had inadvertently left a window open, and that a pile of papers had blown off his desk. I reached down to pick them up, and in so doing my eye was caught by a note written in a large and vigorous hand. It read:
My dear Holmes,
My gratitude for your help in the sad Maxwell affair. You have served your country well and have in no small way helped to preserve peace in the Empire. I wish you every success upon your return to England.
(signed) Curzon
The note filled me with the greatest surprise and interest. At dinner, I said: “My dear Holmes, you have never told me of your journey to India.”
He looked up vaguely, but I could see a slight gleam appear in his eye.
“Ah, you saw the note from Lord Curzon.”
I nodded. “Indeed, I did,” said I with some annoyance, “and I must say that I am confounded. You have never given me even the slightest intimation of an adventure in which you helped to preserve the peace of the Empire.”
“It was a most disturbing affair, Watson. Even now only Lord Curzon and I know the details, and if I may say so, in all probability I know more than he. If I tell you the story, Watson, you will be the third to know. I think it should be a long time before you bring it to public attention, however. The tensions between nations remain, and several parties still living bear the wounds of what was a most grisly affair.”
He had begun to warm to his subject, and I could see that he was eager to relate to me what for him had been a most absorbing case. The vague faraway look in his eyes had vanished completely, and he appeared once again engaged with a worthy opponent, if only in memory.
“Of course,” I said, “I shall bring nothing of this to public notice until you deem it appropriate.”
“Very well, my dear Watson, listen then. It will probably do me some good as well, for lacking a new problem, I could do worse than retrace the steps of some of my most difficult cases of the past. In this way, I shall at least keep my brain alive until something worthy of interest appears here in London.”
We moved from the table to our comfortable armchairs in the sitting room. Holmes lit his pipe after removing it from his slipper and began, his eyes bright now, his voice composed.
“I suppose, Watson, that I had better go back and review my travels after the death of Moriarty. You will recall that I mentioned on a previous occasion that I had journeyed to Tibet, where I spent two years with the head lama.”
“Yes, indeed,” said I. “You travelled as a Norwegian by the name of Sigerson. You then went on to Persia, visited Mecca, and then went to Khartoum, I believe.”
“Precisely. You have a good memory, Watson. There was of course far more to my stay in that part of the world than I have related to you. That I visited Persia and Arabia is true, but I travelled by a most circuitous route. Upon leaving Lhasa, I gave up the disguise of Sigerson. As you know, Watson, I have a certain facility with languages. I had picked up a good deal of Tibetan in the monasteries and even studied the ancient Tibetan practice of concentrating bodily heat. It is a most useful and extraordinary technique, which I can still perform on occasion. Indeed, it saved me from two serious misadventures in the mountains from which I might have frozen to death. In any case, I donned a lama’s robes and travelled with a merchant’s caravan on the old trade route south, arriving after a few weeks in the valley of Nepal, where I rested in that most pleasant place at a Buddhist shrine atop a hill overlooking the city of Katmandu. Were it not for its xenophobic rulers, Watson, I have often thought of retiring to that idyllic spot, for I know of no better place to spend one’s declining years. To do so now of course one would have to remain forever as a lama or in some other appropriate disguise, for the present ruler, the Rana, does not tolerate easily the presence of Europeans.
“Although keeping a disguise at all times, I did identify myself at one point to the British Resident, Mr. Richardson, and was able to help him out of strange difficulties. That was the episode that might one day be entitled the case of Hodgson’s ghost. Another case concerned the bizarre troubles of a French savant recently arrived from Paris to study ancient inscriptions in the Sanscrit tongue.”
Holmes stopped to puff on his pipe. He eventually left Katmandu, he continued, and headed south toward India. Once across the border, he journeyed to Banaras, where he deepened his studies of Oriental body techniques.
“I found that after a few months of concentration I could control my breathing and heart rate to such an extent that even you, Watson, might declare me dead on your usual diagnosis.”
“Extraordinary,” I exclaimed.
“Yes, dear Doctor, extraordinary indeed. I have studied these and other techniques with great success, for in my line of endeavour, one can never foretell when such knowledge may be of use.”
“And how did you acquire these techniques?” I asked.
“Diligence, of course, and a bit of luck in finding the right teacher. My interests are in the main practical, Watson, as you know. Whatever the metaphysical foundations of Indian science are, I am of course uninterested. Give me a technique, however, that will contribute to the success of my work, and I become a tireless pupil. Thus, yoga, Watson, the practical aspect of Indian science, became valuable to me: first, in the aforementioned power to feign death; second, in the ability to improve the science of disguise, to the point where the bodily illusions created could be assumed with little makeup or physical accoutrements of any kind. My purpose was of course a simple one: to keep alive in India, and in England once I returned, for unless I increased my arsenal of tricks, sooner or later one of my dedicated enemies would doubtless do me in.”
Holmes’s rather long introduction to the tale fascinated me, showing aspects of my friend’s interests long hidden from me. After a few months of the most diligent concentration, he had acquired what he needed, and he felt he might be refreshed by social intercourse with some of his own countrymen. Knowing that he must still be on guard lest his enemies learn of his whereabouts, he determined to go to Calcutta, where he thought he would spend a few moments in the more gracious mansions of British India. And so, still in disguise, this time as a Hindu merchant, he took a rickshaw to Moghul Sarai, where he was to board the Tuphan Express, which would take him overnight to the capital of our Indian Empire.
“As my rickshaw pulled into the station, however, I felt the gaze of someone in the crowd staring at me. I soon saw that it emanated from the face of a fakir, someone unfamiliar at first, except for his eyes, which had a look of deep malevolence that I thought to have encountered somewhere before. Naked except for a loincloth, the holy man was powdered with white ash from head to toe. His hands and feet were bound with rope, and a chain from a neck collar attached his hands to his feet in a tight bunch. He appeared as if maimed and deformed, incapable therefore of motion of any kind except for the shuffling of his feet and the grasping movement of his fingers. Or so it seemed, Watson, for suddenly this repulsive creature, by sheer force of will, propelled himself high into the air, landing in front of me in the rickshaw. He stared at me hard for a moment, his contorted face almost touching mine, then jumped out with a resounding laugh and, with several incredible leaps, disappeared into the crowd. Most disagreeable it was, Watson, and even more so since I was certain that I had seen that face at the Ganges, and possibly before. As I boarded the train, I began the search in my memory for this man, for his look told me that I was no longer alone in India.”
I was by now thoroughly engrossed in Holmes’s adventure. I had myself served in our military forces in Afghanistan many years before and had always hoped to visit the eastern ramparts under our jurisdiction.
“I won’t bore you with details of the city of Calcutta, Watson. Suffice it to say that, once one overcomes one’s initial revulsion at the native squalor and becomes accustomed to the humid pungency of the Bengal climate, Calcutta appears a large, teeming metropolis, with most unusual possibilities for crime and evil.”
Once arrived, Holmes threw off his disguise and became an Englishman for the first time in many months, creating for himself a new personality and occupation. He became Roger Lytton-Smith, recently arrived from London as a representative of a firm of chemists, Redfern and Russell, Kingsway, Finsbury, London. He took a room in one of the modest hotels off the Chowringee, and decided to enjoy the delights of this large city.
“I knew of no one there, save Reginald Maxwell—”
“The Reginald Maxwell?” I interrupted.
“I see,” said Holmes, “that the case did have a certain notoriety even here in London.”
“It is still a mystery to most of us. His death occurred so prematurely—”
“Yes, Watson, and I shall relate to you how and under what bizarre circumstances.”
Sir Reginald and he, said Holmes, were schoolmates, and later attended the university together. After the university, they grew apart, but corresponded occasionally. Reginald wrote at one point that he had entered His Majesty’s Foreign Office, that he had married, and that he probably would be serving for a number of years in distant parts of the Empire, most probably Africa and India. He was, if not one of our most intelligent diplomats, at least a man of charm and industry, and his qualities became rapidly known to Lord Curzon, who shortly after his appointment as Viceroy, requested that Maxwell serve as his personal assistant.
“You may well imagine, Watson, what a step forward this was in the man’s career: to serve so closely to such a strong and important individual as Curzon, the representative of the King-Emperor in the Indian Subcontinent.”
Holmes stopped for a moment to empty his pipe. The name he had chosen, Roger Lytton-Smith, was of course no accident, he said. It was the name of a third schoolmate with whom Maxwell and he had been fairly close. They had spent many hours together at snooker. It was under this name that he thought he would write a short note, knowing that Maxwell would be equally happy to see Roger, who if Holmes’s information was still correct, was living happily outside London, working for Redfern and Russell, blissfully unaware that he was about to visit Lord Curzon’s assistant.
“I therefore sent a note to Reginald, explaining to him that I was passing through Calcutta on my way to the Levant on business and that I hoped we might meet, if only briefly. He would of course recognise me instantly, but my true identity would be preserved until we were face-to-face. The following morning I received a reply to my note:
“Dear Roger,
“So happy you are here. Come to my office at four tomorrow. I shall send a cab. It will be so good to see you.
“(signed) Reggie”
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