A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (****)

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!