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The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  By  cover art

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

By: John Joseph Adams - editor
Narrated by: Simon Vance,Anne Flosnik
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Publisher's summary

A modern short-story collection featuring the great detective. Stories included:

"A Sherlockiana Primer", © 2009 by Christopher Roden
"The Horror of the Many Faces", © 2003 by Tim Lebbon
"The Case of the Bloodless Sock", © 2001 by Anne Perry
"The Adventure of the Other Detective", © 2003 by Bradley H. Sinor
"A Scandal in Montreal", © 2008 by Edward D. Hoch
"The Adventure of the Field Theorems"; © 1995 Vonda N. McIntyre
"The Adventure of the Death-Fetch", © 1994 by Darrell Schweitzer
"The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland", © 2005 by Mary Robinette Kowal
"The Adventure of the Mummy's Curse", © 2006 by H. Paul Jeffers
"The Things That Shall Come Upon Them", © 2008 by Barbara Roden
"Murder to Music", © 1989 by Anthony Burgess
"The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor", © 1997 Stephen Baxter
"Mrs. Hudson's Case", © 1997 Laurie R. King
"The Singular Habits of Wasps", © 1994 by Geoffrey A. Landis
"The Affair of the 46th Birthday"; © 2009 by Amy Myers
"The Specter of Tullyfane Abbey", © 2001 by Peter Tremayne
"The Vale of the White Horse"; © 2003 by Sharyn McCrumb
"The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger", © 1993 by Michael Moorcock
"The Adventure of the Lost World", © 2004 by Dominic Green
"The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece"; © 2003 by Barbara Hambly
"Dynamics of a Hanging", © 2005 by Tony Pi
"Merridew of Abominable Memory" © 2008 by Monkeybrain, Inc.
"Commonplaces" © 2008-2009 by Naomi Novik
"The Adventure of the Pirates of Devil's Cape", © 2009 by Rob Rogers
"The Adventure of the Green Skull", © 2008 by Mark Valentine
"The Human Mystery", © 1999 by Tanith Lee
"A Study in Emerald", © 2003 by Neil Gaiman
"You See But You Do Not Observe", © 1995 by Robert J. Sawyer.

©2010 John Joseph Adams (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"For the most part, this volume of short Sherlock Holmes pastiches - a mix of straightforward imitations and parodies - delivers on its goal of presenting the best of such work from the last 30 years....Barbara Roden's "The Things That Shall Come Upon Them" riffs cleverly on M.R. James's "Casting the Runes". Perhaps the highlight is Peter Tremayne's "The Specter of Tullyfane Abbey", which offers a plausible explanation for a classic untold tale in which a man disappears from the face of the earth after returning home to fetch an umbrella." ( Publishers Weekly)

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What listeners say about The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Improbable and Incredible.

If you're precious about Doyle's works, I probably wouldn't recommend this. It does tend to lean more towards the speculative than the detective side. Then again it's a little strange in my opinion to be a staunch defender of the Holmesian canon when the author himself said to another writer "You may marry [Holmes], or murder or do what you like with him."

And these authors do. If you allow yourself more than your usual helping of willing suspension of disbelieve you will encounter terror, hilarity, shock, excitement and suspense. You will also discover (and this is an official spoiler alert) dinosaurs, pirates, Siamese twins, mummy's curses, Jack the Ripper, alien abductions, Lovecraftian horrors (a lot of these actually), alternate dimensions, ghost, ghouls, strange contraptions and some brilliant interpretations of the world's greatest consulting detective. We also get a slew of cameos from Doyle's work as well as the appearance of actual historical figures (including Doyle himself. Twice.)

I tended to dislike Anne Flosnik narrations but that could be because they pale in comparison to Simon Vance's renditions. His are genius.

The quality varies from author to author as you would expect, but there has to be at least one tale here that tickles your fancy. For all the ones I hated there were two I adored. I highly recommend this collection.

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50 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Very Enjoyable

First, I must point out that I am not a die-hard Sherlock Holmes aficionado. I’ve read some of the stories, but not all, watched the TV series with Jeremy Brett, seen some other adaptations. I fall into that category of Holmes’s fans who can enjoy departures from the canon. (I even enjoyed the recent movie featuring Holmes.)

About the book, Simon Vance is (as I anticipated) brilliant. The other narrator was fine, but the reader who introduces the stories has an annoying voice; fortunately the introductions are short. The stories themselves are very respectful of Doyle’s characters. Frankly, given the number SF and fantasy writers, I expected to find Holmes in some very unusual territory. This was not the case. While there were a few stories I just couldn’t make it through, they were few and far between. (The notable stand-out for truly horrible story which did not respect the Holmes canon was the one by Sharyn McCrumb, who made her story about her characters and her themes with little respect for Holmes; I did not finish that one.)
Overall, I found that the number of stories I really enjoyed far outweighed the ones I just couldn’t endure. As a final thought, most of the “chapter” breaks are between stories, so it is easy to find the beginning of a new story.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A mixed bag: with agonising introductions!

I have to say, first off, that I found John Joseph Adams' introductions excruciating. Amiable fellow he may be, but I really don't enjoy being told what I'm about to think of something, or how many obscure SF awards a particular writer has received, and convenient chapters allowing the introductions to each piece to be easily skipped would have been a real plus from my perspective.

Simon Vance, on the other hand, is a consistently outstanding Watson, and where he is the narrator his efforts really help to lift the material; in some cases this is certainly required, as some stories fall well short of the original mark.

The tales are indeed a mixed bag, with many showing Science Fiction and Fantasy leanings, and some even outright Horror. Most manage to capture the 'Sherlockian' tone well enough, but some manage to combine 'dull' with 'faithful'.

However, there's more good than bad, and the collection as a whole constitutes agreeable entertainment.

While I prefer more straightforward detective narratives with the typical rationalist flavour of the original, I found Neil Gaiman's effort the most appealing, despite its reliance on the whole gamut of SF, Fantasy, and even Horror. I don't know that my namesake would have approved, but I'm sure that Gaiman has placed his two characters exactly where he would have wanted them to be in this nightmarish alternate past.

My recommendation? If you're a Holmes fan, and have enjoyed respectful pastiches such as Bert Coules' 'Further Adventures...' radio plays for the BBC, AND you have a credit to spare, I reckon you'll be happy enough!

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Good when good, bad when bad

In a sentence this book is waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy too long. It really could have used a tougher editor. Some of these stories are as good as short stories get. Yet, sadly, others reek of ham handed Fan Fiction. It's as if they simply included every story they received without review.
But you can't argue with value. At 30+ hours it's well worth the one credit. Just keep the skip button handy.
Oh, and where is the Stephen King story? I could not find it either.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Save your money

They tried. They failed. Save your Audible credits for the real thing by Arthur Conan Doyle

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Terrific Entertainment

To dispose of the obvious, I am not a Sherlockian. I also don't have a homoerotic sidekick, ingest heroin on weekends, or have an IQ that exceeds the combined IQ of the FOX nightly news broadcasters (squared). Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The stories were mixed but overall entertaining, and the reading by Simon Vance was, to put a fine point on it, spectacular--he is Dr.Watson. The handful of stories read by Flosnik were also generally passable (hint faint praise). I enjoyed the book and you will too, unless you have based your Assistant Professorship on a critical analysis of Sherlockian pastiche.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Not impressed by these improbable stories

I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, and find many of these stories to be surreal, disturbing and even silly. If you're a die-hard fan looking for well-planned, believable, enjoyable stories to add to your library, pass on this one.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

The Case of the Missing Author

"Stephen King does a solid job of giving Dr. Watson a chance to show his own detective skills in "The Good Doctor" - Critics Comment

I couldn't find this story in the TOC or on this "unabridged" recording. Otherwise, I enjoyed the narrator and some of the stories.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

You'll not forget these stories!

I'm coming back to write this review several months after finishing this book. The narration is superb in almost all places, and the stories by some of today's top writers are just stunning. I can truly say that now, many months after finishing the book, I find myself driving along in my car and suddenly unable to think about anything except one or another of these highly original and inventive tales. Even a knowledgeable Holmes fan will find fresh insights and weird alarums and diversions that you never could have imagined. Outstanding merger of a classic foundation and brilliant new imaginations.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

EDITING where is it?

This book is tooooo long and mixes genres from sheer fantasy to mystery. About half the stories are hack stories with little or no point to them. There are some great stories in this book though. Although, the description of the actual book claims to include a story from Stephen King. It is not included in this story - so it can't be called "unabridged".

Naration is 4.5 stars. 5 Stars for Simon and 4 for Ms. Flosnik. Simon plays an excellent Dr. Watson. Anne had some trouble in her first couple of stories. Her accents were a little off, but she did an overall good job. Her last story was well done.

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