Study in Scarlet

another reread complete and just as always i enjoyed it! And i still get complete whiplash with the sudden story line switch.
So either that shows FANTASTIC writing or really POOR writing.
Personally? I have no idea which side i fall on.



I love this first story of Sherlock Holmes simply because it introduces us to the characters, it gives us the view into the crazy that is Holmes and the skeptic that is Watson. And while this entire book does feel rather dry and boring while reading i personally still kind of enjoy it.

Which might sound strange but i just do. Sherlock Holmes was always and probably will always be one of my favourite people to read, watch and learn more about, be it the original story or any kind of adaptation. I am a sucker! This is my weakness.

So while i understand that some people don't love this and find it very strange. I think it shows a kind of brilliance in Doyle himself, that he manages to write a story that completely surprises you in a very, very different way than you expect it.



And while its not the most riveting book you will ever read -it reads rather like dry toast- sometimes that is exactly what you need: to focus on the details on the actual story instead of everything else. And what would fit better to Holmes himself than that kind of story telling?



So after finishing this re-read i can also let Sherlock Holmes himself speak:



But don't worry. I am going to come back and do it all over again!

The birth of a legend....
n  n

This is it...the novel in which Sir Arthur ushered the world’s greatest second best detective (after Batman) into our collective consciousness. Being the non-conformist rebel that I am, I started off bassackwards by reading The Valley of Fear and then The Adventure of the Final Problem because those were the two stories with Moriarty in them. Shocking, I know, but that’s just how I roll. Btw, it still really chaffs my cheeks that Doyle wrote 56 short stories and 4 novels about Holmes and the arch-enemy appears in exactly TWO. I know less is sometimes more but, come on Doyle, that is on the scrimpy side of weak.

Anyway, I have now circled back and returned to the genesis of the Sherlockian mythos and begun with the tale that started it all. Now, for those that have never read any of the Holmes mysteries, I have come to believe that your level of enjoyment of these stories will be directly proportional to your feelings toward Sherlock Holmes himself. Sir Arthur’s a fine writer and his prose is concise and polished with enough flair to make reading him very enjoyable. In addition, his plotting and pacing are excellent and I think mystery fans will appreciate both the content and structure of the central investigation and the procedural components of clue-gathering and interpretation.

These things all point towards a pleasurable experience, However, in the end, the most important barometer in gauging your level of happy will be your reaction to Holmes himself. Thus, I thought I would focus most of my review’s attention on his character bio after briefly summing up the plot as follows:

PLOT SUMMARY:

Holmes and Watson meet....murder is committed...Holmes investigates....clues are found...Holmes figures it out....a murderer is caught...long flashback to America where Doyle does a Krakauer-style expose on Mormons describing and their child-stealing, polygamous ways...jump forward to present.... all is made clear..... Watson slobbers all over Holmes.......

A STUDY IN CHARACTER:

Now, let’s take a look at Sherlock’s profile. Whether you are a hater or a homey when it comes to Holmes, I think most people would agree with the following attributes:

** The man is unlikeable...very unlikeable...extremely unlikeable.
** He is self-absorbed to the point of being sociopathic.
** His has zero empathy for the victims of the crimes he investigates.
** He is so egotistical that it actually makes his general unlikeability pale in comparison
** While never explicitly diagnosed, he is a severe manic-depressive
** He is inconsiderate, callous, cold and socially inept.

From a personality standpoint, one of my buddies here on GR said it best...Holmes is “a dick.”

Despite that, I find myself very much in the “homey” camp and think he’s among the more fascinating creations in the annals of literature. Part of that appeal is precisely because he is such a prickish turd in the social skill department. However it his mental faculties, the trait he is best known for, that makes him so intriguing.

Yes, he is brilliant. However, that is not the end of the story Paul Harvey because it is a unique and very specialized kind of brilliance. Holmes knows the details, and I mean details, of every major crime to have been perpetrated in Europe (and possibly beyond) over the last 500 years. He can also distinguish between every variety of dirt or soil in London and and can tell you the precise brand of tobacco/pipe/cigar simply by its ash.

However, as is divulged in this story, Holmes also has no idea that the Earth travels around the sun. Further, ���of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing.” How can a man of such singular ability be so woefully lacking in common knowledge. Holmes explains to Watson thusly:

n  I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.n

This just struck me as particularly awesome from a story perspective. Not only does such a philosophy provide a cloak of believability to Sherlock’s preternatural detecting skills, but his glaring knowledge deficiencies make him that much more fascinating as a character.

I guess I just find Doyle’s profile of Holmes to be superb. He is like a “not quite human” storm of deduction. He’s dispassionate, callous and unimaginably effective. Additionally, he solves crimes not because of a perceived duty, but merely because it is the only thing that keeps the boredom of life away. That and the giant stroking his ego gets when he does “the big explain” which is always entertaining and makes each story worth reading all by itself.

Finally, I also see Holmes as a tragic figure. He is a sad, lonely and devoid of any lasting sense of contentment or pleasure. While alive and invigorated when the game is afoot, most of his time is spent as a mere husk of a man with no feeling of day-to-day happiness.

All of this makes Holmes an extraordinarily compelling figure to me and one I hope to spend a lot more time reading about. While I did not enjoy this as much as The Adventure of the Final Problem (my favorite so far), I was still glued to the page watching Holmes maneuver through his scenes and really enjoyed the flashback portion set in America.

I look forward to many more of his adventures.

4.0 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

When I read A Study in Scarlet first time I was very young and the tale seemed to be wonderfully mysterious…

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

I appear to be this sort of a fool – I drag to my attic everything that is within my reach and even beyond… And this makes me quite happy…

The proper study of mankind is man.

That’s the formula of Arthur Conan Doyle’s universal success.
Of course, now I see that A Study in Scarlet is rather short in plausibility so its main power lies in the charismatic nature of its two – now legendary – heroes: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Thanks to them, the story managed to carry its charms all the way through the years.
Charisma is a weapon that wins over everyone.

Who's the better detective: Sherlock Holmes, or me when I'm trying to figure out someone's entire moral compass based solely on who they're following on Instagram?

Like, sure, Holmesy might use the power of observation more effectively than any other fictional detective in history, but does he even know which usernames are red flags?

Doubtful.

This is one of the better mysteries, like, ever, but in terms of pacing it still manages to be a total nightmare. Stopping the entire narrative at the climax in order to inexplicably launch into a bone-dry description of Mormonism for seemingly 800 pages...brave. Bold. Unparalleled.

(I actually Wikipedia'd this book to make sure something wasn't wrong with the ebook I borrowed from the library. That's how much of a mindf*ck that switch-up was.)

Still, though, Sherlock Holmes rules and is very fun to read about, even if I have some association of his name with Benedict Cumberbatch and therefore have to occasionally feel fear strike my very heart when I think of his face while reading.

We take the wins with the losses in this life.

Similarly, I was browsing in a used bookstore recently and a cute boy started chatting me up about Sherlock Holmes, and then when I left to buy my book and a coffee he didn't chase me across the store / fall in love with me / hold a boombox playing In Your Eyes over his head.

Mixed history, really.

Bottom line: More Holmes, please!

A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes, #1), Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Written in 1886, the story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become two of the most famous characters in popular fiction.

The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "Study in Scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «اتود در قرمز لاکی»، «عطش انتقام»؛ نویسنده: آرتور کانن دویل؛ موضوع: داستانهای پلیسی کارآگاهی از نویسندگان بریتانیا سده 19م؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 2001میلادی

عنوان: اتود در قرمز لاکی؛ نویسنده: آرتور کانن دویل؛ مترجم: مژده دقیقی؛ تهران، شهر کتاب - هرمس ( کارآگاه )؛ 1380؛ در 180ص؛ چاپ دوم سال 1384؛ شابک 9647100841؛ چاپ سوم 1389؛ چاپ چهارم 1392؛ شابک 9789647100847؛ چاپ ششم 1396؛ چاپ هفتم 1397؛ موضوع داستانهای پلیسی کارآگاهی از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 19م

عنوان: عطش انتقام - ماجراهای پلیسی جنایی شرلوک هولمز؛ نویسنده: آرتور کانن دویل؛ مترجم: حسینقلی انگالی؛ تهران، موج، 1372؛ در 192ص؛

اتود در قرمز لاکی، نخستین بار در سال 1887میلادی، در سالنامه ی «کریسمس بیتن»، منتشر شد، و در ماه ژوئیه سال 1888میلادی، به صورت کتاب جداگانه، از سوی ناشران همان سالنامه، به چاپ رسید؛ نخستین داستان از مجموعه داستانهای «شرلوک هولمز»؛ و نخستین اثر «سر آرتور کانن دویل» است؛ داستان دو بخش دارد، بخش نخست را، «دکتر واتسن» روایت میکند، شرحی درباره ی حرفه ی پزشکی «دکتر واتسن» در ارتش، و ملاقاتش با «هولمز» است؛ بخش دوم رخدادنامه به روایت سوم شخص، در باره ی ماجراها، و راه حل کارآگاه زبردست، برای یافتن پاسخ معمای جنایتها است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 09/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

“What ineffable twaddle!” I cried, slapping a periodical (about Highways length and breadth; state wise in India) down on the sofa, which had been forcefully fed to me just before this book that I am going to talk about now.

I am staying with such people around me nowadays, who feel that if I love reading, they can bring anything on and I will read it. These silly rascals! The close buddies of my salad days; take advantage of my reading habits customarily. Anyway, we have struck the deal for the evening, I will pay for their espresso shots and they will pay for my foams of macchiato. A perfect foggy winter evening plan with old buddies! (Yes it was still winter when I read this book, I am very lazy in posting reviews).

For as long as I remember I am reading the author after four years. Maybe five. This book begins in the usual prototypical style of the author and what can I say about those hard-headed conversations between Holmes and inspectors trying to solve a murder mystery. Just Perfect! Two inspectors who are dealing with this mystery are Lestrade and Gregson. Holmes says Lestrade is pick of a bad lot and Gregson is smartest of Scotland Yard.

'I don’t deny that it is smartly written. It irritates me though. It seems the theories of some arm-chair lounger who deduct all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his study. It is not practical.'

This thing is said by Dr. Watson to Holmes who is sharing the room with him at Baker Street, after reading an article of an unknown author in a magazine. The article mentions how from a drop of water a logical brain can infer the Atlantic without even going there. Holmes says to Watson later it was he who wrote this!

The dialectics and argumentations since the outset were mind-opening. I think everybody likes those small skirmishes over the logical deductions among the detectives. They create humor and curiosity both. But the most exciting thing in this book is the second part. While reaching this segment I suddenly felt as if I was reading a Thomas hardy novel, or even at certain places I remembered H. Rider Haggard. A dry wasteland of Utah, and while I was still in the middle of the story, I felt a strong urge to see the places the author was talking about so I opened the maps and stared at those places for long. The Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, Yellow stone river to Colorado those regions of silence and desolation. How could the scene have been in this region in 1847? A question trimmed in my head.

This book first looked like a murder mystery, then like a travelogue, then a love story, and then flashed in the eye of my mind … valley, gorges, hunting, hunters, defiles, boulders, a great extravagance of natural sprawl. It gave me another sort of a reading experience. You will definitely like the love story too! This was interesting for me to know that while the author was going to get glory with his invention of Holmes in this book he had already begun something else. While a study in scarlet was yet to be published and was doing the rounds of the publishers, Doyle has started working on his first so-called “serious” work, a historical novel. During those days a historical novel was considered as a proper work of a serious novelist. That book was about the account of Micah Clarke. The year was 1889.

This book imparted a flawless reading pleasure, but I did not get carried away by the ending so it fell a bit short of full marks for me. Otherwise a great book for Doyle lovers… No doubt!

It was a mild yet efficacious dose of my ‘whodunnit' in between my longer reads.

I savored both parts of the book in a very good spirit.

Dr Watson, I'd like you to meet Mr Sherlock Holmes!

As Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduced a grateful reading public to Hercule Poirot, perhaps the second best known fictional detective of all time, Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet marked the debut appearance of the acknowledged master of detection, the one and only Sherlock Holmes!

John Watson, a medical doctor recently retired from the British military to recover his health and recuperate from wounds received in Afghanistan, is looking to stretch his limited budget by finding another gentleman with whom he can share accommodation. When a mutual friend introduced him to Sherlock Holmes, one might slyly suggest that the game was afoot and the rest, as they also say, became history. Already characteristically melancholy and moody, a jaded Holmes, who labeled himself the world's only consulting detective, is invited by Scotland Yard's Lestrade and Gregson to assist in the investigation of a baffling pair of murders.

With A Study in Scarlet, Doyle is clearly new to the craft of writing mysteries and the great detective's debut outing suffers from characteristic first novel and new character jitters. The style itself is markedly different from everything that follows in the Holmes canon with the story being told from a third-party perspective. The background to the mystery is revealed through the mechanism of a flashback to the western USA at the time of the Mormon migration to Utah. Feedback from the reading public must have been immediate and - we'll have to hand it to Doyle - he must have been a quick learner. Watson was thereafter appointed official narrator and diarist to the master and Doyle never looked back.

I leave it to others smarter than I to judge whether or not Doyle's historical characterization of the Mormons is justified or accurate! Suffice it to say, that the mystery is entertaining but the details are, quite frankly, entirely unimportant beside the overwhelming fact that this was the first time the world heard the name Sherlock Holmes. It took Doyle only a few pages for example to treat us to an aphorism that we would come to hear over and over again, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence."

This novel is a cornerstone in the annals of crime fiction, an extremely important piece of the history of English literature and a darned good read! Enjoy it!

Paul Weiss

like a 3.7 rounded up.

The very first Sherlock Holmes story, reading A Study in Scarlet seems to be appropriate at this time of year, since it was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. I didn't know that when I'd decided to read it, but I'd say that's a nice coincidence, considering that I finished it on 25th of December, some 130 years later.

A Study in Scarlet is an unusual novel -- in a big way, it doesn't really cohere like a novel should. The first part of this book brings together Holmes and Watson who both need roommates. Holmes introduces himself as a "consulting detective," stepping in to provide his expertise when government and private detectives "are at fault." Many of his clients come from "private inquiry agents," from whom he collects fees. Shortly after Holmes dazzles Watson with his "intuition," his "special knowledge," and his "train of reasoning," Holmes is called to the scene of a "bad business" at 3 Lauriston Gardens. There is very little to go on at the scene -- a dead body and few clues, the word "RACHE" written in blood on the wall -- but after a short time, Holmes manages to bring the guilty man to his very doorstep, and even knows his name. Leaving the reader wondering how the hell he did that, the next page takes us to "The Great Alkali Plain," and an intriguing story involving Mormons in Utah, a man with an orphaned little girl, and ultimately, a quest for revenge. Then it's back to the final act with Dr. Watson and Holmes for the dazzling solution. It is a flawed story in terms of its telling, but as Julian Symons notes in his book Bloody Murder, it doesn't really matter because "Sherlock Holmes triumphs as a character from the moment we meet him."

And that for me, in a nutshell, is why I've loved Holmes since I read this book as a teenager; it's why I keep reading Holmes over and over again -- it's that first meeting that really sealed the deal. I fell in love with his mind -- there's just no better way of putting it.

The introduction in this book (the Penguin edition) is by Iain Sinclair, and it is excellent, making me think of A Study in Scarlet in an entirely new way. I won't go into it, but if you can get this edition, it's well worth having just for that.

If your first experience of Holmes and Watson is from the fast-paced, high-tech BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch, well, the stories might come across as a bit tame. The luckiest people, I think, are the ones who've read the stories first and then watch them play out across the screen.

recommended. beyond highly recommended, even with its flaws.

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