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A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

7 reviews

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naïvest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth-century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“’But the Solar System!' I protested.
“’What the deuce is it to me?' he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a penny-worth of difference to me or to my work.”

TITLE—A Study in Scarlet

SERIES—Sherlock Holmes, book one

AUTHOR—Arthur Conan Doyle

PUBLISHED—orig. 1887

PUBLISHER—orig. Ward, Lock & Co.

GENRE—Victorian detective fiction

SETTING—London & Utah, late 1900s

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Victorian London, British imperialism, logic & reason, murder mystery, epistolary style narrative voice, bachelor bffs, wry humor, & a weird tangent wild west pioneer backstory that featured Mormonism? for some reason?

WRITING STYLE—★ ★ ★ ★ ★

CHARACTERS—★ ★ ★ ★

STORY/PLOT—★ ★ ★

PHILOSOPHY—★ ★

PREMISE—★ ★ ★

EXECUTION—★ ★ ★

“Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. ‘Lecoq was a miserable bungler,' he said, in an angry voice; ‘he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid.'
“I felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired treated in this cavalier style. I walked over to the window, and stood looking out into the busy street. ‘This fellow may be very clever,' I said to myself, ‘but he is certainly very conceited.’”

My thoughts:

This is my first time reading any Sherlock Holmes stories. An offline friend of mine adores these books, has read them all, & rereads them frequently. She leant me her lovely clothbound omnibus copy of the first two books so I had to oblige her.

It’s possible that I just didn’t *get* this story. I definitely felt like I was missing something as I was reading it. Perhaps as his first Holmes story, ACD hadn’t quite narrowed in on what makes Holmes such a beloved classic character?

I kept comparing him to other detective characters I have read such as Poirot (Christie), Sister Fidelma (Tremayne), Brother Cadfael (Peters), or Brother William (Eco). What I like about Hercule Poirot is his vulnerability & the overarching spiritual & psychological themes behind those stories. I love how Poirot is often humbled by the depth & complexity of the characters around him & the ultimate acknowledgment that Man’s understanding of the world is in fact limited, especially once we begin to encounter elements of a supernatural order. His sense of justice is also less imperial & less carcerally oriented than Holmes’s—though I do appreciate ACD’s general satire of the police. ACD’s treatment of politics, media, & religion was also borderline satirical but fell short of being either especially clever or particularly insightful. In general I’d say that Holmes is basically the aspiritual version of Poirot. (Especially with that dog murder?? Yikes!)

Holmes reminded me very much of William of Baskerville of Umberto Eco’s THE NAME OF THE ROSE (which makes sense since apparently Holmes was an explicit inspiration for Eco’s character) which I had just finished rereading for the third time before starting STUDY IN SCARLET. Though in my reading of Eco’s classic, I think there is a significant intention of satire to Brother William’s character that I did not find in ACD’s characterization of his protagonist (though of course, again, may have just missed).

I feel like there’s something in the fact of the author being a titled white Englishman who, though was himself a ~relatively~ open minded dude, still simply did not have the experience or the perspective to write a truly insightful work on human psychology & certainly not one dissecting things like logic, science, & reality since he literally created two extremely aspiritual main characters. There were just a lot of thematic holes that kept me from being truly engaged in the story.

I think I also just didn’t really buy Holmes as an actually clever person who genuinely solved that mystery. It just felt like ACD made up some ridiculous scenario & then strong-armed his character into having solved it & having his other character be impressed by his solving it without actually convincing me, the reader, of any of that.

I will say that I do adore the Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes adaptations because I feel like RDJ gives Holmes that missing vulnerability. And I did not like the BBC Sherlock tv series, solely because of the villain’s mental illness being so overly implied to be the root cause of his evil—a very disappointing end to what was otherwise an excellent first (&, for me, last) episode.

This book is best read cozied up in a leather armchair in your study by the fire with a snifter of cognac & a freshly lit pipe—obviously. 😁

Final note: I’m still going to read SIGN OF FOUR though bc this one just felt so weird & was the first one so idk… I’ll give Sherlock another chance for sure. Also why did Part II kind of feel like it was an episode of Bonanza…?

“‘…I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. And now for lunch, and then for Norman Neruda. Her attack and her bowing are splendid. What's that little thing of Chopin's she plays so magnificently: Tra-la-ia-lira-lira-lay.’
“Leaning back in the cab, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I meditated upon the many-sidedness of the human mind.”

★ ★ ★

CW // imperialism, racism (including slurs), normalized murder of a dog, Mormons, implied rape (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Season: Fall

Music pairing: the Mr. Poe’s Library Soundscape track on the Calm App (https://www.calm.com/gp/AL48NF4L4PFFN7RMT3)

my Gothic Reading playlist on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5xGUBH3brLaVD0b0LvLBuV?si=e2N4gl5kRJe3Tt2d5ziwvQ&pi=u-pZR_MM5gSwCq)

Further Reading—

the Hercule Poirot books by Agatha Christie (First book: THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES)
& the Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot adaptations (which, imo, get what I love most about the books so right)
THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco
Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin stories: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842), & "The Purloined Letter" (1844)—TBR
MONSIEUR LECOQ by Émile Gaboriau—TBR
THE VALANCOURT BOOK OF VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES: Volume One, edited by Tara Moore
THE VALANCOURT BOOK OF VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES: Volume Four, edited by Christopher Philippo