Seven more truly ingenious criminal cases, only some of whose arch villains are the intellectual match of the legendary violin-playing, opium-smoking Baker Street sleuth, as he modestly observes to his long-suffering sidekick Dr Watson. Here’s one Baron Adelbert Gruner, “cool as ice, silky voiced, poisonous as a cobra with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea, and all the cruelty of the grave behind it”. If Holmes’s insufferable conceitedness didn’t get under your skin (and David Timson portrays him brilliantly), you probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much.

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
With this package David Timson and Naxos complete their 10-year project to record the entire Holmes writings by Conan Doyle. Sherlockians regard The Casebook with mixed feelings, being the last and probably the least of Conan Doyle’s Holmes efforts. David Timson, however, excels in these respectful readings and more than compensates for the lesser material. He goes beyond voicing words clearly; he savors the language and gives attention to every phrase. The subtle use of music to mark setting changes is also effective. The collection concludes with a bonus story written and read by Timson (‘The Wonderful Toy’) on Holmes’s encounter with the new gramophone and, by implication, the birth of the audiobook era.