Sherlock Holmes - The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes

Nicholas Briggs and Richard Earl, now a firmly established team, play Holmes and Watson in The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes by Jonathan Barnes, a boxed set of four CDs, each containing a full-length play, with the usual bonus of a look behind the scenes. The first play, The Guttering Candle, tells of events in the lives of Holmes and Watson, before the two men meet. The cocksure young Holmes raises the hackles of a sceptical Lestrade by insisting that an apparent murder is actually suicide. Watson’s experience is more curious: kidnapped from his unit in Afghanistan, he’s taken to tend a dying Englishman. Both occurrences will profoundly affect events in the future. Holmes is well established as a detective when The Adventure of the Gamekeeper’s Folly takes him and Watson to rural Norfolk, where the curious behaviour of a young woman evokes sinister and puzzling memories for both men. The Adventure of the Bermondsey Cutthroats opens with a truly horrifying scene whose significance doesn’t become apparent for some time. A vicious killer is taunting Holmes for reasons he can’t fathom. The discovery of the truth is part of the reason for his retirement. At this stage you’d do well to listen to the earlier drama, The Adventure of the Perfidious Mariner. It’s not essential, but it will enhance your appreciation of the final play, The Sowers of Despair. The conclusion is both fantastic and inevitable. Messrs Briggs, Earl and Barnes, director Ken Bentley, and the rest of the fine cast are to be congratulated.

Just to make this clear, as some sites don't, this is not a box set of any of the other Big Finish stories previously released on their own. This set comprises four entirly new but interlinking stories placed from before Holmes and Watson met to the last being after The Last Bow. They work very well and fit into the cannon very well and one can wonder if Doyle had wanted to carry on would he have toyed with ideas like these. Well worth the effort to get hold of and exciting to hear.

SOME SPOILERS:This set, ordered directly from the Big Finish site, was one of my favorite Christmas presents this year, and well worth the wait. I had some problems with the later stories, as explained below, but overall it was very enjoyable.This series of four interconnected dramas starts out strong, but the author, Jonathan Barnes, falls into the trap of thinking that he is the only author to have written pastiches about Holmes since Doyle stopped producing the originals in the 1920's. (This condition, known as the "Anthony Horowitz Syndrome", is treatable through heavy doses of exposure ALL of the Holmes stories out there, and not just the original 60 tales. These 60 are just the merest fraction of Holmes's life story, the ones that were brokered by Watson's first - but not his only - literary agent.Barnes's overall story, following the threads of one story through four separate cases occurring at different points in Holmes's career, is an intriguing concept. It has been done numerous times now with various mini-series Star Trek novels. But Barnes needed to remember what used to be the rule when writing Star Trek books, back when new television shows or movies might invalidate or change previously established Canon: Play with the characters all you want, but put them back essentially as you found them when you're done. That includes Lestrade.The Big Finish people would be well advised to realize that the little pocket-universe of Holmes stories that they're trying to create would be much better served if it tried to fit into the bigger picture, rather than trying to define the Canon in terms of their own stories. For instance, one would think that Holmes abandoned his practice in 1903, and then was a damaged recluse for the rest of his life, simply because of one case related in this collection. Holmes was made of stronger stuff than that. No doubt this case helped contribute to Holmes's decision to retire, but more likely it took place at that time due to the death of Irene Adler, as established in other pastiches that are probably not known to the Big Finish team.All in all, this was a great effort, and some of these jarring problems can simply be ignored as incorrect, or as attempts by the editor to try to put his own spin on Watson's notes. I encourage Big Finish to continue producing these stories - I'll keep buying and enjoying them! - but remember that there is a bigger Holmes picture out there, and they should try to fit into it instead of simply dismissing it.