Blurb

Our first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. And John Watson’s too! The young doctor is astonished by Holmes’ many idiosyncrasies, including his talents on the violin.

But it’s not long before Sherlock Holmes, with Watson in tow, is working with Scotland Yard investigating the murder of two Americans whose deaths have some mysterious connection to sinister groups gathering power in both Britain and America.

Here’s where it all began, ‘A Study in Scarlet.’ Meet Sherlock Holmes, one of the world’s leading consulting detectives – fictional of course!

Review

At this point, I’m not going to be able to add anything about this one that hasn’t already been said over the last 136 years. I’ve been going back and filling in some wholes in classic stories I never read when I was younger. I finally ready Frankenstein, and some Longfellow. I’ve been rewatching all the Bond movies. Well, the debut of Sherlock Holmes was one of those holes that needed filled. And yeah, it is easy to see how this became one of the most popular fictional characters of all time.

The storytelling holds up more than a century later, both in the verse and the structure in general. I did get thrown for a loop at the halfway point when the book seems to switch stories completely, immediately after the reveal, which was done without explanation. Only, the back half was a time jump and one long explanation. So for half of Holmes’ debut, Holmes was not even a character of the story. I have a feeling, Doyle did not know exactly what he had in the Holmes/Watson characters quite yet.

This falls under the “everyone should read this once” list. If for no other reason, to see the early days of what would become an entire genre.