Title: A Study in Scarlet
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Publication date: 1887
Genre: Crime fiction
What’s it about?
This is the first story to feature Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. He takes up rooms with John Watson, former army doctor, and Watson finds himself drawn into Holmes’s unusual world of crime and deduction.
A body is found in an empty house. The crime scene has thrown up a number of odd features, which may be clues… or distractions. The police are stumped, and call on Holmes to help them out: which, naturally, he does with aplomb.
Heading down tracks the police can’t even perceive, he solves the crime within a short space of time, and then merely waits for further events to fall into place so that he can locate and catch the murderer. It is a virtuoso performance.
The action begins in Baker Street, and later takes off to the plains of Utah to pursue the back story of the murderer and his victims, before returning to London for the conclusion.
Read more information on Goodreads.
Where did I get hold of the book?
When I first quit my job to go freelance, I took some time off before starting self employment in earnest. During that initial ‘defrosting’ time, one of the things I treated myself to was to reread the entire Sherlock Holmes oeuvre – and so I downloaded and now possess the entire works on my Kindle app.
I should say that I feel the time must shortly come when I will need to possess them all in hard copy too…
- Find the book in a library near you.
- Support local independent bookshops by buying the book from Hive (UK).
What did I learn from it?
I learned that my brain isn’t as tired and sludgy as it sometimes feels. I actually spotted not one but two elements of the plot that didn’t quite hang together – which, for a Sherlock Holmes story, is quite something. In fact, I’ve almost convinced myself that I must have missed something – so I’ll tell you what I found, and you can tell me if I’m trying to be over-clever.
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
Firstly, Sherlock’s insistence that the cabbie won’t be suspicious when Sherlock summons him under the pretence of hiring his cab is surely misguided. It comes hot on the heels of the advertisement regarding the finding of the ring; although the name given in the advert is that of Watson, the address is the same. Surely a second request from the same address would ring bells with someone trying to remain undetected?
Secondly, I wasn’t convinced by the murderer’s modus operandi, i.e. forcing his victim to choose one of the pills and taking the other himself. This had a 50-50 chance of killing the murderer, and I find it difficult to believe that someone who has sought vengeance for 20 years would, at the last minute, allow his victim the chance of escape. Even though we’re made aware that the murderer had an aneurysm that could kill him at any moment, it still doesn’t quite ring true for me.
So what do you think? Have I missed something that explains these oddities, or are there indeed plot holes in this story of the great detective?
How did it make me see the world differently?
It reminded me of the importance of really taking notice of what is going on around me. Although I’m not in the business of solving crimes, I do love solving general problems; as an ex-librarian, looking things up and finding things out is second nature to me. However, I’m often rubbish at noticing the little random details.
Example: the film ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ features Rhys Ifans as one-armed scientist Dr Curt Connors. About two-thirds of the way through the film, I said to my husband, ‘Oh! When did he lose his arm?!’
I probably follow Sherlock’s example by only stocking my brain with things that I deem to be useful to me; although (a) that doesn’t explain the above; and (b) I don’t quite go to his extremes: I do know that the Earth moves around the Sun… I think… But, unlike him, as my business is not that of figuring out human behaviour, I’m not in the habit of trying to deduce personal circumstances from small details of dress or presentation.
The Sherlock Holmes stories remind me that, even though I’m not a detective, observing the minutiae of daily life can still be fascinating and richly informative. Not to mention helpful when following a film…
What changes will I make to my life as a result of it?
I’d like to say I’ll make more of an effort to notice the little things from now on; but I know myself well enough to be pretty confident that, in this area, I can’t see myself changing much. It’s a sad admission, but at least I have the virtue of self knowledge.
What I can do, however, is to give myself actual practice at ‘thinking like Sherlock’. I was given a book for Christmas a couple of years back, How to Think Like Sherlock: Improve Your Powers of Observation, Memory and Deduction, which includes exercises, tests and games. I dipped into this, but now I think the time has come to give myself some ‘brain training’ and see if I can improve my mental faculties.
And if I have indeed spotted holes in the plot of A Study in Scarlet, then maybe I’m not as far off achieving this as I’d thought…
Over to you…
Has this post inspired you to read the book for yourself?
If you’ve read it, do you agree with what I’ve said? Did you have insights that I’ve not mentioned?
Please share in the comments below!