By Arthur Conan-Doyle

A Study in Scarlet:

Dr Arthur Conan-Doyle’s medical practice was going down the drain and he sat down to write a money spinner, the result was A Study in Scarlet and with it the introduction of the most famous detective in literature – Sherlock Holmes.

This is the beginning of one of the most successful series of stories ever written. The rather bemused voice of Dr Watson takes us through his meeting with the great detective and then onwards through his experiences of being swept up into Holmes’ glitteringly eccentric and sometimes terrifying journey of detection. We are carried along from Baker Street, via the body in the house on the Brixton Road, to the Great Alkali Plain in North America.

Richard E Grant’s reading of this torrent of a story for silksoundbooks embodies Holmes with an edgy wildness and a totally believable whiff of genius. You’re left at the end with that slightly breathless grin of triumph for which Holmes became so famed and which was to earn Conan-Doyle his thoroughly deserved fortune!