Which Study in Scarlet recording should you buy?
The first Holmes novel is out of copyright, so Audible UK is crowded with readings of it, far more than this table holds. Among the ones we opened: complete readings running 3 hrs 43 mins to 5 hrs 17 mins, Stephen Fry's complete-canon collection, an AI voice, a retelling, and an edition that calls itself adapted while Audible marks it unabridged.
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Arthur Conan Doyle · 12 Audible UK recordings compared
Short answer
David Timson: complete, solo, and the same reader as our pick for The Hound of the Baskervilles, so the novels can stay in one voice. Derek Jacobi and Richard E. Grant are complete too, and here the famous names do read the whole book. The complete readings in the table run 3 hrs 43 mins to 5 hrs 17 mins. If you want all of Holmes, Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection has this novel in it with the rest of the canon and his own introductions, in a single listing. The things to step around are quieter than usual: Mehmet Mahmut's edition is subtitled "Adapted for Modern Readers" although Audible's listing data marks it unabridged; Thomas Judd's is a retelling, with Alex Woolf credited beside Conan Doyle; and the AI Voice Arthur Lane edition says what it is in the first sentence of its description.
The recordings, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Timson Our pick | 4 hrs 45 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo, from Naxos. Timson is also our pick for The Hound of the Baskervilles. |
| Derek Jacobi | 4 hrs 41 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. Jacobi also reads The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles. |
| Richard E. Grant | 4 hrs 28 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Simon Prebble | 5 hrs 17 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. Subtitled "A Sherlock Holmes Novel". |
| Stephen Thorne | 4 hrs 27 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Jonathan Keeble | 4 hrs 13 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Simon Vance | 4 hrs 5 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. Listed as "A Study in Scarlet (AmazonClassics Edition)". |
| Flo Gibson | 3 hrs 43 mins | Unabridged | Solo, and marked unabridged in Audible's listing data; the description is a plot summary and says nothing more about the edition. |
| Stephen Fry | 71 hrs 57 mins | Unabridged, complete-canon collection | Not this book alone: "Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection", which its description says is the complete works — four novels and five collections of short stories — with an introduction by Fry to each. A Study in Scarlet opens it. |
| AI Voice Arthur Lane | 4 hrs 21 mins | AI narration (Virtual Voice) | The text read by a synthetic voice. The description opens "This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice." |
| Mehmet Mahmut | 3 hrs 34 mins | Unabridged, but described as adapted | By its own subtitle, "Adapted for Modern Readers", this is not Conan Doyle's text as written, although Audible's listing data marks it unabridged. |
| Thomas Judd | 45 mins | Retelling (Alex Woolf) | A retelling, not a reading of the novel: Alex Woolf is credited beside Conan Doyle, and it runs 20% of the shortest complete reading here. Listed as "Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet", and marked unabridged in Audible's listing data. |