The Valley of Fear

A ciphered warning reaches Baker Street moments before the news it tried to outrun: a man has been found dead at Birlstone Manor, his face destroyed by a shotgun blast, a sinister brand on his forearm and a moat around the whole puzzle. Holmes's investigation of this very English country-house murder keeps snagging on details that don't fit (a missing dumb-bell, a bicycle hidden in the shrubbery) until the solution swings the story across the Atlantic. The novel's second half plunges into the Vermissa Valley, an American coal country ruled by a murderous secret society, and follows the man who dared to cross them.

The last of the four Holmes novels borrows its two-part structure from A Study in Scarlet, but the American half here is Conan Doyle at his most hard-boiled, practically a gangster thriller decades early, with an ending that doubles back to sting. And behind it all, glimpsed in the shadows, is Professor Moriarty. A treat for listeners who want Holmes at full length rather than in short bursts.

At roughly 58,200 words, The Valley of Fear runs about 6½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

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