Colonel Warburton's Madness & Other Mysteries: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Anthony Boucher, Denis Green
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anthony Boucher, Denis GreenReader: Basil Rathbone
Reader: Nigel Bruce
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Published: 2004-09-13
ISBN: 0743538560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Book Reviews of Colonel Warburton's Madness & Other Mysteries: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Book Review: "Books are like birds and bonfires -- nice to have around"
Summary: 3 Stars
"Colonel Warburton's Madness" is the second of the four available CD collections of Sherlock Holmes radio episodes from 1945/46 starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Unlike its predecessor, "The Unfortunate Tobacconist", this collection contains two adaptations of actual Conan Doyle stories.
"The Case of the Out of Date Murder" is a fun if predictable story which gets the collection off to a good start. "The Waltz of Death", set in Vienna, is another good story, although somewhat depressing due to the number of victims. At the story's climax Holmes arguably goes much too far in using a young American woman as bait to trap the killer.
"Colonel Warburton's Madness" is based on one of the "unrecorded adventures" mentioned by Watson in the Conan Doyle stories. It starts out well but ultimately becomes rather silly, with Holmes having to bribe a little girl into letting him borrow her dog -- a scene which demonstrates how much more innocent than ours was the time in which these programs were made. "The Iron Box" makes clever use of a calendrical conundrum also exploited by W.S. Gilbert in the plot of "The Pirates of Penzance".
"A Scandal in Bohemia" is an adaptation of Conan Doyle's first short story concerning Holmes, the story which also features **the** woman, Irene Adler. Rathbone's interpretation of Holmes' attitude toward Adler is interesting: rather than sounding infatuated with her or irritated that she outwits him, Rathbone's Holmes seems to become far more cheerful and jolly than usual at the thought that a woman like Irene exists. "The Second Generation", which aired the week after "A Scandal in Bohemia", is an excellent sequel to that story set twenty years later and featuring Irene Adler's daughter.
"In Flanders Fields", set during World War I, caters to the somewhat warped attitudes of wartime audiences. It is rather disturbing to hear Holmes refer to Germany as "a nation of barbarians". "The Eyes of Mr. Leyton" begins with a sequence cribbed directly from the opening of Conan Doyle's "The Man With the Twisted Lip", and can scarcely be regarded as co-existing with that story in the same fictional continuity. It does, however, boast a highly suspenseful sequence in which Holmes seemingly vanishes in London's East End and Watson is unable to find him.
A story featuring Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Lestrade and a former member of the Moriarty gang, and in which Mrs. Hudson plays a far more proactive role than usual, might be expected to be an exercise in pandering to the desires of the Holmesian fan audience. In fact "The Tell Tale Pigeon Feathers" is one of the most ingenious and satisfying Holmes pastiches I have encountered. As with some other episodes, the second half is less strong than the first half, but this is still an excellent story. "The Indiscretion of Mr. Edwards" is a bizarre tale that plays much more strongly than usual on Watson's reputation as a ladies' man, even though it reminds us that Watson is married -- at a point in time when he is possibly not married in the Canon! Holmes' blind faith in Mr. Edwards' innocence, although ultimately justified, seems somewhat out of character, and Watson's willingness to take a fall for "Edwards" to avoid scandal is rather repellent to modern sensibilities.
"The Problem of Thor Bridge" is an excellent adaptation of one of Conan Doyle's best stories. Some of the changes from the original are quite interesting: the 1940's American radio audience was apparently felt to have a stronger sense of sexual morality than the 1920's readership of "The Strand", and thus the passage in which Conan Doyle makes clear, in restrained, tasteful language, that Gibson asked his children's governess to become his mistress is replaced with the statement that he asked her to marry him while knowing his wife would not grant him a divorce. The denouement also demonstrates a greater concern with gun safety on the part of the writers than Conan Doyle apparently had. "The Double Zero" is a forgettable, predictable story set in the boringly cliched setting of a gambling casino.
As with the other installments in this series, the sound is far better than might be expected given the age of the recordings. "Colonel Warburton's Madness" is not artistically perfect Holmes, but it is fun listening.
More Colonel Warburton's Madness & Other Mysteries: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes reviews:
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Summary of Colonel Warburton's Madness & Other Mysteries: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Welcome to the Golden Age of Radio and the best in classic mystery.
From 1939-1946 Americans gathered around their radio to listen to The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- featuring Basil Rathbone as the high strung crime solver and Nigel Bruce as his phlegmatic assistant, Dr. Watson.
Witty, fast-paced and always surprising, these great radio plays -- written by the prolific writing team of Anthony Boucher and Denis Green -- are as fresh today as they were then.
The latest audio technology was employed to bring the best audio quality and fidelity to the original performances, which feature nostalgic war-time announcements, original commercials and radio narrations.
This special CD edition includes 12 of the series' best episodes:
. The Unfortunate Tobacconist and The Paradol Chamber
. The Viennese Strangler and The Notorious Canary Trainer
. The April Fool's Day Adventure and The Strange Adventure of the Uneasy Easy Chair
. The Strange Case of the Demon Barber and The Mystery of the Headless Monk
. The Amateur Mendicant Society and The Case of the Vanishing White Elephant
. The Case of the Limping Ghost and The Girl with the Gazelle
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