Valley of Fear - Arthur Conan Doyle Audiobook

Written by Arthur Conan Doyle
Read by Michael Healy
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Sherlock Holmes Series, Book 7
Hard Case Crime, book 63
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Release date: November 1, 2013
Duration: 06:06:36

Back cover of the Hard Case edition reads—
“A sawed-off shotgun blast to the face leaves one man dead – and reveals a secret that has pursued another across an ocean and set the world’s most ruthless criminal on his trail. The man needs the help of a great detective…but could even Sherlock Holmes save him now?”

When a strange coded message arrives at 221B Baker Street, sent by a member of Professor Moriarty’s criminal organization, Sherlock Holmes soon deciphers it and finds a warning: someone is about to be murdered. A visit from a Scotland Yard inspector confirms that one John Douglas has been mysteriously killed in Sussex. Even Sherlock Holmes, well accustomed to the bizarre, finds the elements of this case unusual. John Douglas lived at Birlstone Manor House, built on the ruins of a castle surrounded by a moat. Every night he drew up the bridge as a precaution against potential villains. Nevertheless, Douglas was found dead, shot in the face at close range with a sawed-off shotgun. And the bereaved are strangely dry-eyed.

The mystery spans the Atlantic, from Sussex and the foggy streets of London to a coal-mining region in Pennsylvania, and the ultimate twist can only be untangled by the incomparable skill of the legendary Holmes.

A critics review — Clearly it’s a classic, and you don’t get more superficially un-Hard Case than Arthur Conan Doyle — in some ways, he seems to represent everything that the sort of writers we normally publish were rebelling against. But when you get past the opening sequence with its charming Victoriana and ciphers and manor houses and such, THE VALLEY OF FEAR actually turns out to be an honest-to-god hardboiled crime novel, and quite a dark and violent one at that.

There is a lurid Hard Case cover for Valley of Fear by A. C. Doyle.