Voicing Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota: A collaboration between author Larry Millett and actor Steve Hendrickson
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If you listen to audiobooks, you know just how engrossing they can be: You’re not just being read a story, but you’re listening to a one-person performance.
Narrating an audiobook with multiple, distinct characters is a particular skill. It’s also a booming business that’s drawing more listeners than ever, increasing the reach of books. HarperCollins recently announced that audiobook sales surpassed e-books last quarter for the first time ever.
St. Paul author Larry Millett says the audience for his Minnesota Mystery series has increased since veteran Twin Cities actor Steve Hendrickson began voicing his books.
In Millet's mystery series, after Sherlock Holmes went tumbling over Reichenbach Falls and disappeared from the London scene for a while, he visited Minnesota. Here, he consulted on many mysteries that derive from state history, such as the Hinckley Fire of 1894 or the much-debated Runestone of Alexandria.
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At age 77, Millett has published nine Minnesota Mysteries so far. Hendrickson has voiced all but one — we'll get to that in a moment.
To record an audiobook, Hendrickson reads the book through at least twice, making a list of characters and noting their written descriptions and speaking cadences. He says often the voices just come to him.
“When I'm starting and I come to a character the first time and read a line of dialogue from that character, I'll save it as a little MP3 file, and I have a little folder that I keep on my computer desktop.”
He refers to those audio samples as he records, which helps him keep character voices consistent. As to voicing characters of a different gender, “it’s really not about the voice. It's about getting in the mind of the character. If you make a strong choice that’s distinctive and not a caricature, the reader will follow.”
Hendrickson has turned his walk-in closet into a professional recording studio, from which he can record and edit. He says he tends to work on an audiobook about three hours a day, in which time he can produce about an hour of audio.
An actor in the Twin Cities for the past 35 years, he began recording audiobooks in the last 10 years as a way of expanding his opportunities. Now nearing age 70, as he “steams into [his] emeritus years,” Hendrickson says, audiobooks “felt like a good pivot.”
Not that he’s done with the stage: Having played Sherlock Holmes four times in various production, he will do so again in October in Holmes/Poirot, which he co-wrote and will co-star with Jeffrey Hatcher. The show runs Oct. 9 through Nov. 3 at Park Square Theatre in St Paul.
Hendrickson and Millett met in 2015 when Hendrickson starred in a play adaptation of Millet’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders.” No audiobook versions existed yet, so a partnership was formed.
Millett says it's been a delight to hear his writing in this format.
“When you're writing a book, you create these characters, and you hear them in your head. So when you hear those voices actually voiced by someone else, it's really interesting. And I think Steve does a great Sherlock Holmes and a great Watson. When you listen to all the voices for the other characters, sometimes you'll say, ‘Oh yeah, I think that's the voice I had mind.’ Other times, you’ll think, ‘I don't know,’ but Steve's the the expert at it.”
As Millett has continued to write more books in the series, he admits that Hendrickson’s voice has influenced how the characters sound in his head, particularly the local detective character he created, Irish barkeep Shadwell Rafferty, whom Hendrickson voices with an appropriate brogue.
As for the Minnesota Mystery Hendrickson hasn’t voiced, that book requires a special approach. It's called “Strongwood: A Crime Dossier,” and it follows a fictional crime-of-the-century-style case in which the lovely Addie Strongwood is on trial for her life. The book is told entirely through trial transcripts, newspaper clippings, telegrams and journal entries.
“It reads like a stage play,” said Hendrickson, who felt that having one person voice lengthy dialogues between witness and attorney would get tiring to the ear. Instead, they plan to treat the trials as creative dramatic scenes. The goal is to involve more than 20 voices, some reading multiple characters. They’re doing a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the project this month, with hopes of starting recording in December.
In the meantime, Millett’s “Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul” — featuring three Rafferty cases —comes out Oct. 1 in both book and audio form, and the author has plans for more. As long as Millett keeps writing mysteries, Hendrickson says, he’ll keep voicing them.
