Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear (Radio)

4 months ago
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 4 novels about Sherlock Holmes.
(1 - A Study in Scarlet,
2 - The Sign of The Four,
3 - The Hound of the Baskervilles,
4 - The Valley of Fear.
(2) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, (12 short stories) followed the novels.
(3) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, (11 stories) followed by
(4) The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 13 stories.
(5) His Last Bow, 8 stories followed by
(6) The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, 12 stories and finally
(7) The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 10 stories by the BBC. All other Holmes stories would fall under this banner.

The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller.
Plot
Sherlock Holmes receives a cipher message from Fred Porlock, a pseudonymous agent of Professor Moriarty. Holmes deciphers the message as a warning of a nefarious plot against one Douglas, a country gentleman residing at Birlstone House. Some minutes later, Inspector MacDonald arrives at 221B Baker Street with news that Douglas was murdered the night before. The three men travel to Birlstone House to investigate.
After interviewing Cecil Barker, a frequent guest at Birlstone House and the man who discovered the body, they agree that suicide is out of the question, and that someone from outside the house committed the murder. Barker explains that Douglas married after arriving in England five years earlier. Barker believes a secret society of men pursued Douglas, and that he retreated to rural England out of fear for his life. Mrs. Douglas said her husband mentioned something called "The Valley of Fear". Holmes learns that the housekeeper heard a sound, as if of a door slamming, half an hour before the alarm; Holmes believes that this sound was the fatal shot.

Publication history
The Valley of Fear was first serialised in The Strand Magazine from September 1914 to May 1915.[3] In the Strand, it was published with thirty-one illustrations by Frank Wiles. It was first published in book form by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, before the serialisation had finished in the Strand. The first British book edition was published by Smith, Elder & Co. on 3 June 1915. Like the first Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear has two parts. The first part is titled "The Tragedy of Birlstone", and the second is titled "The Scowrers".
Structure and themes
Doyle crafted The Valley of Fear as "two parts and a coda". The novel has a few major themes, including "problems of ethical ambiguity", and attempts to comment seriously on terrorist activity as profiled by American union struggles. Critics have shown how the American union struggles deal with similar issues in the contemporary political situation in Ireland.

A 1997 BBC adaptation by Bert Coules as part of the 1989–1998 radio series, starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson, and featuring Iain Glen as John Douglas/McMurdo, and Ronald Pickup as the narrator.

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