Showing results by author "Orlando Pearson" in All Categories

Orlando Pearson, master narrator of history and Holmestry, has done it again.

Orlando Pearson mixes the Great Baker Street detective with history both familiar and unfamiliar to deliver his customary heady brew of Holmesiana.

Sir Joseph Porter was first lord of the Admiralty in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore which was a thinly veiled parody of WH Smith, British politician extraordinaire who first held that role and then ascended to the post of first lord of the Treasury. And an astounding revelation about Sherlock Holmes as we make a discovery this is both entirely unfamiliar and entirely familiar.

Why is Ignatius Foley, member of parliament for Perth, so anxious to retrieve some administrative documents that have fallen out of his pocket at his fiancée’s house? His betrothed, Jean Leckie, wants to find out. And what has happened in Bulgaria that makes Mycroft so anxious to dispatch his brother there with promises of major honors for successful prosecution of the investigation? A case set in 1907 and with no parallels whatsoever to more recent events.

Two kings, a model, a traitor, two wombats, two poets, an accountant, more lobbyists than you can count, three titans of business, two artists, a pawnbroker…and Sherlock Holmes.

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?

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.

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.

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.

It has taken over 80 years, but at long last, the British government’s embargo on reporting this slice of diplomatic history has been lifted. It was in November 1940 that a senior minister at the British foreign office in blacked-out London commissioned Holmes and Watson to go to Berlin to negotiate a prisoner of war swap with the German high command. And the price demanded by Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Göbbels, for any prisoner's release? That the two work with the Berlin police to capture a serial killer who is stalking the city’s railway network.

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.

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’ intervention, or is Cramm’s glamourous mother keeping her own role to herself? And why does Frau von Cramm’s seem so familiar to Holmes?

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?

The harrowing sequel to A Case of Identity as Sherlock Holmes uncovers a tale as dark as anything seen on the Ancient Greek stage.

The King of Nova Alba approaches Sherlock Holmes. The current king’s predecessor on the Nova Alban throne, King Duncan, came to a violent end, and Holmes' petitioner is the prime suspect. He wants Sherlock Holmes to find the true killer. There is many a twist in a familiar tale, before Holmes reveals the utterly unexpected truth. Two years after Delos' publication of the story version of "A Scandal in Nova Alba", here it is at last as a stage-play.

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.

Holmes is consulted by Mr Devine on an unusual matter. Mr Devine has apprehended two malefactors in a well-watered garden in the Middle East and is unsure what is an appropriate form of retribution to impose. Holmes, Watson, and Mr Devine discuss the problem at length before arriving at a solution which satisfies all of them. Orlando Pearson himself then pens an essay setting out a radical theory about Sherlock Holmes and this theory is given further substance in an extraordinary fragment of Dr Watson’s writing found in the Public Record Office long after Watson’s death.