(4.5 / 5)

I think this has been my favorite collection of short stories in this series so far. I almost didn't read it, thinking to skip this and His Last Bow and just reading The Hound of the Baskervilles to finish up my foray into Sherlock Holmes. But then I found an audiobook version that intrigued me, and I really can't say that it wasn't the reason it was my favorite. But even outside of liking the narration (more on that later), I was more engaged throughout this book. Most of the mysteries were intriguing (except for the one where the woman literally just tells everything to Holmes; there's nothing for him to solve at all—I did like the very end of that one though), and I particularly liked the villain Baron Gruner. I'm surprised we don't hear of him at least as much as Moriarty; he's in only one less story than Moriarty (who is only in two), but he has more "screen time" and is also clearly quite clever. I am not sure how I would have felt about the stories narrated by Holmes instead of Watson if I weren't listening to them read by Kevin Theis, but overall, I enjoyed my time listening to this book.

Regarding the audiobook, this version was narrated by Ben Werling, who also voiced Watson, and Kevin Theis, who voiced Sherlock. They both also performed various other male characters, and Sara Nichols voiced any female or child roles. I wasn't impressed by Ben Werling who was a little odd with some of his dialog tags. He commonly put full emphasis on both words in the tag, "said Holmes." with more of an exclamation point than a period after them. It was strange. But Kevin Theis, who I have gotten used to as the voice of Bertie Wooster, was great as Holmes. I would go back and listen to every single Holmes book, even the ones I didn't care for much, if he was narrating them. Sara Nichols I don't really have anything to say about, but I didn't have any issues with her. ( )