A Study in Scarlet

'Dr Watson, Mr Sherlock Holmes,' said Stamford, introducing us." (pg. 8)

A great little page-turner, there is a certain thrill in reading A Study in Scarlet knowing that this was where it all started. The line I've quoted above must have seemed rather innocuous in 1887 but, like so many other similar instances in this short novel, it now carries the weight of literary history.

The book, like a lot of the Sherlock Holmes originals, has its fair share of silly moments and coincidences in the criminal cases, which can be jarring to an incredulous modern reader. However, one benefit of reading these stories nowadays is that we can compare them to the excellent television adaptation Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (particularly this show more book, which served as inspiration for the first episode). Whilst I enjoy Conan Doyle's books on their own terms, it is this new angle which – for all my bookworm tendencies – interests me the most. Even without this there is still a lot to recommend in A Study in Scarlet, which retains in modern times a readability, a joy and a relevance quite unlike a lot of 'classics' of Victorian literature." show less

I devoured the Complete Sherlock Holmes one summer while in junior high school and, for some reason, haven’t reread the stories. But I watched Basil Rathbone, Ronald Howard, Jeremy Brett, and Benedict Cumberbatch bring them to screen. But now I decided to start again from the beginning, with Study in Scarlet.
It was interesting to see how the characters are first introduced. Given the rivalry with Scotland Yard, I was surprised that Holmes invented his self-designation “consulting detective” precisely because Gregson and Lestrade (“the best of a bad lot”) came to him whenever they were stuck. He’s usually able to unravel the tangle without leaving his sitting room.
There wouldn’t be a lot of fun reading about him doing that, show more so it’s just as well that a murder just off Brixton Road is mysterious enough to rouse him from his chair and take Watson, the convalescent military doctor with whom he shares the rent of the flat at 221B Baker Street, in tow.
Doyle has Holmes later relativize the word “mysterious,” drawing a distinction between that and “strange.”
Strange describes Holmes as well, and this fascinates Watson. He records Holmes’s unusual conception of brain capacity, consciously refusing to admit any knowledge that might not be useful for his investigations, as Watson learns when discovering that Holmes knew nothing of the Copernican system. Oddly, Holmes shares this conviction with Homer Simpson (“Every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old; remember that time I took a home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?”).
I loved the description of Holmes crawling on the floor of the crime scene: “he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope.”
Holmes is proud of his skill and disdainful of the professional detectives (who no doubt sense this). He knows they will get the credit for each solved crime; he’s ambitious and would like to be famous. Let’s see how he likes it in subsequent tales when he becomes as renowned as he yearns to be.
Something else I’ll be on the watch for: In this story, neither the victims nor the murderer are English. This allows Doyle to bring outlandish (literally, too) elements into his plots. In this case, the Mormons and their infamous Danite Band. Perhaps I’ll keep count of how many subsequent evil-doers and their victims are non-British.
Doyle also presents us with a crime for which the murderer had very good reason, perhaps even justifiable. Although he is captured and jailed, he doesn’t come to trial, and in that sense “escapes” by dying happily. Is that also a recurrent feature of a Doyle plot?
Two interesting technical features (since I’m not only curious about Holmes and the who-dun-it, but also Doyle, the writer, and how he did it): One is that the background of the crime receives its own lengthy treatment, a story within the story. The other is that we are only told, not shown, how Holmes solves the crime and apprehends the perpetrator. Much of the unraveling comes in the form of a lengthy confession. Despite being so far from perfect, I can't resist awarding it five starts for the pleasure of reading it.
One final thought: how would it have affected the balance of the story if the doomed maiden in Utah had not been named Lucy, but Rachel? show less

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has produced a very good tale that kept me interested enough to finish this book within a single day. One of the most surprising things was the author's ability to make me side with the villain. The first half of the story is all about Holmes's tracking down of the man who committed a murder. It abruptly ends with his capturing the man - someone whom no one suspected. The next part of the novel then starts in on a lovely narrative about the Latter-day Saints arriving in Utah, saving in the process the life of a man and young girl on the brink of death. The man joins the Saints in order to survive the harshness of the desert, but refuses to become polygamous - which leads to some problems:

"He had always determined, show more deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such a marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints."

While it is true that the Mormon leadership is made out to be a secretive society bent on incorporating as many young girls as possible into their polygamous harems, the novel, I feel, does a good job of describing the difficulties of having unorthodox opinions in a society where being a 'true believer' is highly valued. This ended up being the most interesting part of the novel for me (although I was anxious to see how this would all tie in Sherlock Holmes). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a terrific writer, I must say. Instead of writing the straightforward crime/mystery novel that I anticipated, he made me not only understand the motivations of the villain, but actually feel some sense of accomplishment on the villain's part. At the same time, I equally wanted to see Holmes track the man down and show that his superior use of deduction can solve a mystery that to others seems quite puzzling. However, in none of this was there a need to see justice done to the criminal. It would have been just as satisfying, perhaps more so, if the criminal had gotten away at the end (and in a way he does, dying of a heart condition before the trial is held).

The book was immensely enjoyable and I highly recommend it. The Mormon section of the book gets a bad rap for painting Mormons in a negative light and for being a too extended digression from the main plot. I would argue otherwise. The Mormon section contains some of the best narrative exposition, and the departure from the Holmes plot helps to put the motivations of the crime into a much-needed perspective. show less

I should start by saying that I’ve read a bunch of the short stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and seen a decent number of film adaptations, but this is the first Sherlock Holmes novel I’ve read. I always saw him as much more of a static character, but he seems much different in this novel than I remember him being in the short stories. So I’m glad I’m reading these in order so I can see if there’s deliberate character development on Doyle’s part or if he just gradually learns how to write him, finds the formula as it were.

I feel like most depictions I’ve seen of Holmes have shown him as more of an… all-encompassing genius of sorts? Or maybe that was a misreading on my part. But I just distinctly remember show more having him slotted in that category of characters’ whose main personality trait was “smart,” like Spock or Beast or Doc Brown.

In any case, the idea that he would, as he does in this book, not know something as basic as the fact that the earth revolves around the sun is just stunning to me. And his entire argument about avoiding “useless facts elbowing out the useful ones” is just… not how brains work, my dude. Though I do find it hilarious that when he says, “Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before,” he is basically asserting that the human brain works on the same principle as a Pokémon having to forget one of their four moves to learn another one. (“HOLMES wants to learn EARTH GO ROUND SUN… …However, HOLMES already knows four things…”)

I’m not going to dwell on it too much considering this was literally written in the 1800s, but it nevertheless bears mentioning that this text is riddled with racist language. What seems to get talked about a heck of a lot more is the controversy about the depictions of Mormons, but I mean… it’s sensationalized, to be sure, but it’s not totally ahistorical by any stretch of the imagination. And given the church’s continued persecution of racial minorities and queer people, I’m not exactly losing sleep over it.

This is also one of the first actual “communism is just a red herring” stories I’ve ever read, so that’s fun. It’s also apparently the originator of the trope of detectives using a magnifying glass, though I can’t say that really particularly jumped out at me while I was reading?

The story itself is pretty fun, though definitely not what I was expecting. The prolonged flashback in Utah was actually a lot more compelling than it had any right to be, and I was not expecting it to get as pulpy as it did. I especially loved the bits where the Mormons are literally painting the number of days Ferrier has left to agree to their demands somewhere he will see it.

So, yeah! I definitely enjoyed this one, and I’m gonna keep Holmes on my itinerary as I continue trying to get more into the mystery genre. show less

What a great introduction to the characters! Sherlock has a strong mind, but I was just as impressed by his equally strong personality. In this book, Sherlock is a young man in his 20s, carving out a position for himself as the world’s only consulting detective. This ability to support himself by being self-employed in a never-before-seen job, to build up enough of a reputation to continue receiving clients, to carve out a niche where one had never existed—all of this seems amazing to me. I was prepared for the idea of Sherlock being a great detective, of course, but to dedicate himself to this sort of career would take not just intellect, but courage and self-confidence, attributes that Holmes has in spades. I also like that show more Sherlock isn’t perfect. Sometimes he misses things, and his personality isn’t always the kindest. I like that his flaws are present but not excused. And I really love Watson: a doctor, a war vet, a quiet man who is happy to be included in the adventure.

The story itself is a little awkward in places; Doyle’s craft certainly gets better as the series goes on. The lengthy flashback sequence seems a little out of place, although the tension continues to build. I liked the way that Doyle took his time with the story; he builds Holmes’ and Watson’s relationship slowly, and he really gives the readers time to enjoy the characters and their quirks. The early parts of the book are warm, humorous, and charming. These are some well-developed characters, right from the start, and this sets the tone for every Holmes book that follows. I also thought it was nice that Doyle gave a shout-out to Poe, who pioneered the genre, but it’s a bit unfair (and slightly ironic) that Sherlock Holmes felt the need to complain about him: “Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial.” Showy? Superficial? Has Sherlock looked in a mirror lately? :P Not to mention the fact that he’ll pull the same stunt on Watson in a later story.

All in all, this book is delightful. show less

People forget how strange the start of Holmes' adventures really are. A Study in Scarlet is split into two narratives; the introduction of Holmes with the murder mystery, and the western story about mormons that people tend to forget entirely. Indeed the book as a whole was forgotten by the reading public when it was first published and it's easy to see why - the split narrative format is clunky, the way Holmes is introduced makes a point to cast shade on Poe's popular detective; while there's a lot of bragging about the science of deduction few deductions are actually made. It's a good thing this attempt and its reception didn't end him trying to make it work.

I haven't read anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a long time but my vague recollection was that I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes series more than I did this one — the very first. Let's just say that it was long and drawn out. Also, if you are a Mormon or even just a "regular" American, you might feel somewhat negative about this tale. I did like Dr. Watson though. I admit this a bit unfair, as Holmes really was a master of deduction in this story but so be it.