Showing results by author "Orlando Pearson" in All Categories

Gottlieb von Cramm, a German tennis star of the 1930s, petitions Holmes for help. The sportsman is being blackmailed on a matter of the utmost delicacy, and when the blackmailer reveals all to the National Socialist authorities, it is Holmes who comes to the rescue by asking Reichsmarschall Herman Göring to intervene. But is the better than expected outcome to the case a result of Holmes's intervention, or is Cramm's glamourous mother keeping her own role to herself?

Holmes and Watson are just back at their quarters, having solved the case, when the wrongdoer they have just identified interrupts their breakfast. A fourth student, his main rival in the long jump, is behaving in a very peculiar manner and is carrying all before him in the field. The trail takes Holmes and Watson to a barber’s shop where they acquire a preparation that the barber markets as a performance enhancer, but this is by no means the end of a murky trail to discover how to win Olympic gold.

How can the insurance companies keep on producing record profits when the economic theories of Professor Alfred Marshall and his protégé John Maynard Keynes suggest that this should be impossible when their prices can be easily compared? The Chancellor of the Exchequer would like an answer and commissions Sherlock Holmes to find out.

How do you make a government change its mind? And how do you recover your financial equilibrium after a bereavement? And, come to that, how do you recover your financial equilibrium after you return from the apparent dead when you have asked for no mention of your return be made in the press and so no one knows that your detective agency is back in business?

After the close of The Noble Batchelor, Holmes lets his emotionless façade slip by the Baker Street fireside as he tells Watson of his very first case. Dating back to 1869, the case takes in the Thames, London Zoo, Highgate Cemetery, a poet, and a beautiful and tragic female figure.

Watson spends half his wound pension on the turf and his gambling addiction renders him unable even to pay his half share of the rent of the rooms at Baker Street. But when one of his rare bursts of prosperity enables him to buy two strikingly good pictures from a pawnbroker, Mycroft Holmes takes a remarkable interest. And what is the meaning of the little rhyme that runs round the canvas of the painting.

As young men go to the trenches in their millions, they take with them A. E. Housman’s collection of poetry, A Shropshire Lad. “Easy to read in the most difficult circumstances and full of happy memories of home,” opines Mycroft Holmes. But has Housman succumbed to German influence? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are sent to investigate and come up with a finding unexpected to them. Mycroft lets their finding pass, but Watson is then witness to some Machiavellian political machinations from Mycroft as he deals with Irish rebel Roger Casement.

Endlich wird er von seinem Groβneffen, Meisterdetektiv Sherlock Holmes, vorgestellt – Sherrinford Holmes, Fagottspieler, Linguist, Diplomat, und urspüngliche Inspirazion des Meisterspurhundes. Und Sherrinford Holmes ist nicht die einzige wichtige Person, die wir in dieser Geschichte, die Holmes Watson vor dem Kamin in Baker Street erzählt, kenenlernern.

Mit diesen Worten fängt Franz Kafkas Meisterwerk, Der Prozess an. Das Werk wurde in 1914/5 geschrieben und erst 1925, ein Jahr nach dem Tod des Autors, veröffentlicht. Und in den folgenden Jahrzehnten ist es niemandem gelungen zu enträtseln, was die Geschichte bedeutet. Aber es ist bis jetzt auch niemandem eingefallen, diesen Auftrag an Sherlock Holmes zu vergeben.

Another encounter with Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, hereditary king of Bohemia, and Holmes’ commissioner in Sherlock Holmes and a Scandal in Bohemia. The king is no longer with his first wife and has organized a ball at the Savoy Hotel in London to choose a new bride. But the lady who caught his eye fled as the clock of St. Martin in the Fields church struck midnight leaving only a dancing slipper behind. The trail takes Holmes and Watson to Venice and Holmes discloses a shocking truth to Watson that nearly ruptures their friendship.

The first thriller about accountancy. Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective, and Mary Harris Smith, the world's only female accountancy practitioner investigate the activities of Marylebone Cole Supplies Limited. Listeners may be reminded of a more recent accountancy which ended in the downfall of one of accountancy's famous names.

A dramatised version of Arthur Conan Doyle's Bruce-Partington Plans is followed by that story's chilling sequel, The Sleeper's Cache. Missing blueprints papers and then a missing spy. Who better than Sherlock Holmes to investigate?

Five sensational Sherlock Holmes stories by Orlando Pearson followed by three meditations hinting at the most radical theory yet about the Great Baker Street Detective. The stories include: "A Type of Infamy"; "The Fourth Student"; "A Question of Time"; and more.

It is March 1938. A print worker petitions Holmes about the disappearance of a fellow worker at the Daily Mail. Holmes investigates, and after interviews with the newspaper’s proprietor, Viscount Rothermere, and with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, it becomes clear the missing print worker has died fulfilling a commission for the German ambassador, although it is not clear what the commission is.

Mycroft gives Holmes an urgent commission to find documents hidden by Oberstein, although this commission arises out of a diplomatic deal over which Holmes has the gravest misgivings. In a coup de maitre, Holmes finds the documents at the very last point in the time given to him by Mycroft, but Mycroft is totally distracted when he delivers them. Holmes instigates investigations of his own and uncovers a shocking scandal. But will he be able to pursue his investigation to its natural conclusion, or will realpolitik intervene?

It is May 1940. The British army has been routed and is awaiting its evacuation. Winston Churchill asks Holmes to stand by to provide advice on what steps to take in the face of the anticipated aerial onslaught of the Luftwaffe on British airfields. As German attacks mount, Holmes offers unpalatable advice which Churchill accepts for want of an alternative. As German attacks switch from the airfields to production facilities, Holmes provides additional detective advice on a most unexpected matter.

It is 1909, and 20 years have passed since the great Devon adventure. Holmes is consulted by Sir Henry Baskerville’s son after a shepherd in the baronet’s clothes is found dead at the foot of a cliff. Watson is dispatched to Dartmoor to investigate and finds that the publication of his novel - controversial at the time because of the inadequacies it exposed in Holmes’s handling of the original case - has had some wholly unexpected consequences for the members of the dramatis personae of the original story.

How does a composer make sure his works make an impact? Composer Edward Elgar wants to know and petitions Holmes. Straight after this encounter, Elgar starts on the work that is to become his masterpiece. And to maximize public interest in it, the composer and Holmes indicate that there are mysteries about its content, inspiration, and origin. On one matter, Holmes withholds an insight of his from Elgar and -- deliberately or not -- the title Enigma Variations is the result.

Holmes is charged by the permanent special adviser to the prime minister, his brother Mycroft, to plot a new course for Great Britain following the country's vote in a plebiscite to secede from the Entente Cordiale. Holmes demonstrates that politics truly is an art and that all things are possible as he travels to Washington, Moscow, and Paris meeting statesmen who bear no resemblance at all to the present-day holders of the equivalent posts.

Orlando Pearson, Watson's successor as the assistant of Sherlock Holmes, was entrusted by the doctor with notes on cases too controversial to publish at the time. Amongst other things these cases covered government failure to regulate the banks, excessively close links between a minister and industry, and an official cover-up of a sexual scandal at the very highest level in society.