The Mystery of the Secret Room
by Enid Blyton (Methuen, 1945); audiobook read by Ann Beach (Chivers, 2010)
The third book in the series but perhaps the best place to start if new to children’s detective fiction and/or the Five Found-Outers (and dog). Fatty and the others come into their own, outwitting Goon the policeman while solving another mystery.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1927); audiobook read by Derek Jacobi (Bolinda, 2015)
Derek Jacobi proves a narrator par excellence in bringing to life cases from late in the career of Sherlock Holmes; but then, that most enduringly beloved detective has always excelled as much from good delivery as from ingenuity or complexity of mystery.
Saturday Night Fry, Series 1
by Stephen Fry (BBC Radio 4, 1988)
This radio precursor to A Bit of Fry & Laurie saw Stephen Fry and guests forge ground in the comedic art of playing against expectations. It is fast, clever (if not always funny), and suavely innovative in its manipulation of the medium.
Galahad at Blandings
by P. G. Wodehouse (Simon & Schuster, 1964); audiobook read by Jeremy Sinden (Chivers, 1993; 2011)
In Galahad Threepwood surely we have the nascent (if more genteel) template for Dirk Gently, and in the comings and goings at Blandings Castle that of Douglas Adams’ much-vaunted fundamental interconnectedness of everything. This is Wodehouse at his fabulous, gab-gifted, exquisite best.
Asterix and the Class Act
by Goscinny & Uderzo; trans. Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Orion, 2003)
A tantalising collection of Asterix curios that — if nothing else — makes one appreciate how much work must go into creating a full album. In the shorter form Goscinny and Uderzo push both delightfully and delightedly at the boundaries of their famous creations.
Tintin and Alph-Art
by Hergé; trans. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Egmont, 1990) [original published by Casterman, 1986]
Hergé’s final Tintin adventure exists only as a collection of unfinished black-and-white sketches. Published alongside transcripts of the text (in progress), Alph-Art serves as much to sadden as to tantalise. Energetic; nostalgic (nay, playfully self-referential): there could have been one last hurrah!
The Inimitable Jeeves
by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1923); audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (BBC, 1990/2009)
This fix-up novel brings together eleven Jeeves & Wooster short stories, the linking thread of which is Bertie’s friend Bingo Little, whose compulsive falling in love brings endless trouble to his old school chum. Jonathan Cecil’s reading lends zest to the mishaps.
The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D.
by Nicholas Meyer (E. P. Dutton, 1976)
Unlike so many of the wannabe Sherlock Holmes writers now unleashed upon the world, Meyer captured much of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tone and style, his pastiche cheapened only by an unseemly predilection for shoehorning Holmes and Watson into meeting famous historical personages.
Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead
by Peter Grimwade; dir. Peter Moffatt (BBC, 1983)
Doctor Who’s take on the Flying Dutchman offers up what should have been a staggering moral quandary, played subtly by Peter Davison but undercut by the plot’s bumbling Brigadier resolution. Turlough is a welcome addition, the exuberant synthesiser music perhaps less so.
Carry On, Jeeves
by P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins, 1925); audiobook read by Jonathan Cecil (1991)
This collection of short stories forms the perfect introduction to one of literature’s great characters: the valet Jeeves, who carries himself with a reserved brand of Holmesian all-knowingness, manipulates social situations and takes on a near omnipotence in saving Bertie Wooster’s bacon.