A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The first shock upon reading this justifiably admires piece of pulp fiction is how unexpectedly short it is. But then, like so many “novels” of its era, it is in reality just an extended short story written for publication in a periodical, much as many of what we know as lengthy Victorian novels were serialised versions of the same. Yet, as a murder  mystery and as the introduction of the immortal Sherlock Holmes, it is a work of magnificence.

This is not quite she Sherlock Holmes we shall eventually come to know, of course. Both he and the still physically frail Watson are young men, both certainly in their twenties. Holmes May disdain Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin but, like the earlier fictional detective, he is shown to rarely leave his room in order to investigate crime, the case depicted being very much described as an exception.

Indeed, the very profession of “consulting detective” as shown here is not as we shall come to see it. Holmes is not a private detective with his own clients but rather a consultant who aids other detectives, including both Lestrade and Gregson, with their cases. This is not quite the fully-formed Holmes, and the section where Watson describes the odd gaps in his knowledge feels awkward.

Nonetheless, the tale rattles along very pleasantly indeed, including the Mormon flashbacks, which rightly decry the twin evils of forced marriage and forced religion and read much better now than they did when I was young, and skipped them.

I rather enjoyed this. I may as well zoom through the rest of the Sherlockian canon, but first let’s have some more Michael Moorcock…