Created by Scottish author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant London-based consulting detective, famous for his intellectual prowess and powers of deductive reasoning.
According to Conan Doyle, the character of Sherlock Holmes was based on his friend and mentor, Doctor Joseph Bell. Bell was interested in crime and had assisted the police in solving a few cases and, like Sherlock Holmes, he was known for drawing large conclusions from the smallest of observations.
Although Arthur Conan Doyle wrote fifty-six short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels. All but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories are narrated by his close friend and biographer, Doctor John Watson; two are told by Sherlock Holmes himself while the remaining two are written in the third person.
Synopsis
A Study in Scarlet is split into two parts.
The first part is entitled ‘Being a Reprint from the Reminisces of John Watson M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department’ and describes Watson’s introduction to Sherlock Holmes through a mutual friend in 1881 and the first mystery which he assisted Holmes with. The mystery revolved around a corpse with no visible wounds found in a derelict house in Brixton with the word ‘RACHE’ scrawled in blood on the wall beside the victim. The bumbling detectives of Scotland Yard are baffled and so Holmes resolves to solve the crime, although he vows not to take any credit for it.
The second part of the story is ‘The Country of the Saints’ and, in this part, the action moves to the Mormon community of the United States. Told in the third person, the story centres on the Danites and a family who wish to leave the community.
In the final two chapters both threads of the story are pilled together and Sherlock Holmes reveals how he came to solve the case.
Review
A Study in Scarlet is a fascinating introduction to the character and methods of Sherlock Holmes and is sure to leave the reader with the desire to read more of the adventures of the world’s greatest detective. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most intriguing and compelling characters in English detective literature and Doctor Watson is an excellent foil for him. Holmes’ methods of analysing and solving the murder were revolutionary at the time of publication and are equally impressive to read about today.
With this first novel Conan Doyle is still developing his detective fiction style and one possible flaw in A Study in Scarlet is the loss of Sherlock Holmes as the central figure when the action moves to the United States for the second half of the novel. However, such a change is necessary to provide a more active introduction to the background of the case and to avoid a long explanation narrative. Further, Holmes does return at the end of the book and so, fittingly, it is on his conclusions that the story ends.
Interestingly, when Doctor Watson first introduces himself to Sherlock Holmes at the start of A Study in Scarlet, he mentions that he was invalided out of the army after receiving a shoulder wound while serving in Afghanistan. In later novels, this wound has changed to be one to the leg.
A Study in Scarlet was followed by the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of Four.
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN 978-0755334476, Headline Review, 2006, £4.99, pp 176
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