The Adventure of the Resident Patient
“Having secured him, it is evident to me that a consultation of some sort was held. Probably it was something in the nature of a judicial proceeding."
From The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, “The Adventure of the Resident Patient” tells the tale of a young doctor and his paranoid resident patient - an elderly man with a dark past. After investigating a break-in, Holmes and Watson find themselves caught in a case of disguise, duped doctors, and deadly retribution.
Today, we tackle Watson the true crime chronicler, Holmes's questionable sense of humor, a convenient shipwreck, and John le Carré. Listen to our discussion episode:
Find a transcript - Further reading for this episode
You can also read John le Carré’s excellent introduction to The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes here.
Please note that there's some variation in editions of this story. In some editions, it begins with the "mind reading" scene from "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," something Doyle added to this tale after deciding CARD wouldn't be published in this collection of short stories. This narration includes that scene, which is absent in many other editions of the story.
Listen to our narration:
This story was narrated by Nathan Comstock. Nathan is a writer, voice actor, and audio producer based in Boston. He is a co-creator of the Science Fiction Audio Sitcom Solutions to Problems, where he also plays the role of the alien radio host known as Loaf. His voice can also be heard in Superstition and Wizard Seeking Wizard, and he hopes to debut a new urban fantasy audio drama, Electromancy, in 2021.
Music credit: The songs “Denmark (Live)” by the Portland Cello Project and Sonata for Violin and Continuo in G Minor - IV. Presto by Henry Eccles are featured with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Further reading:
Call for the Dead by John le Carré
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré.
The Sherlock Holmes Companion: An Elementary Guide by Daniel Smith
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by Leslie S. Klinger with an introduction by John le Carré. Read the introduction here.
Other cases mentioned in this discussion: CARD, GLOR, STUD, SPEC,