April 2013 Discussion: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (spoilers)
 

The time has come to discuss the fascinating April 2013 MobileRead Book Club selection, A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What did you think?

I got to what I thought was the end and wondered what all the fuss was about - then realised and carried on! :smack:

It has been disliked by some over the years, in part due to the portrait of the Mormon's that it paints. What I've never been able to understand is why Watson misses the clues relating to Jefferson Hope's health. He is a Dr. after all and should have caught on I would think. Of course there is the mystery of the bull pup as well. Some say it's a gun and some that it's a reference to Watson being short tempered at the present. I think it's the latter myself. First he's shot at from ambush in the war and narrowly misses death. Then he contracts typhoid (the fever mentioned) then has the long land & sea voyage back to England. Between having PTSD and his health problems I don't wonder that Watson's nerves were a bit high strung at the time.

You can find it online with illustrations at:
A study in Scarlet

This was the first time I'd read a Sherlock Holmes story and I did enjoy it. I couldn't help focussing on the advances that have been made in forensic science since Conan Doyle's time. I enjoyed the author's style and may well read more of the series.

It's so long since I read it that I had completely forgotten the plot, which was good. I found the sudden change to the US a bit clunky, but otherwise enjoyed it.

I was a bit surprised that Hope was able to do quite physically demanding things without dropping dead on the spot, but I suppose that was possible. My uncle died of an aortic aneurism without its even being suspected.

And I think it's a great title.

Sorry to hear about your uncle Bookpossum. Mr. Hope had spent a lot of years living hard on the land so I figured myself that it had toughened him up a bit while leading to the heart trouble. Then again the force of will to see revenge through might also have played into it.

Thanks, crich. It was a long time ago, but of course a great shock to everyone at the time.

Yes, I suppose that Hope was very tough and athletic because of the life he had led, and that would have helped him. And willpower is amazingly strong.

You're welcome Bookpossum. I know what you mean about it being a shock to everyone. My dad died of heart trouble back in 1996 (he was only 58) and it was quite a shock to us as well. Even when the person has known health issues it's never expected. I imagine Jefferson Hope had had plenty of warning (the nosebleeds) when he was pushing himself too hard. I'd think Arthur Conan Doyle's medical background helped in the writing of his stories about the Great Detective.

Honestly, I was a bit disappointed by the book. It was the first Holmes I'd ever read and perhaps I waited too long.

I liked the atmosphere, and I really liked reading from the horse's mouth what Holmes and Watson are originally supposed to be like in comparison to their many screen incarnations, and to get their back story with regards to what they were up to before meeting and how they came together. Also, I happened to really enjoy the mid-book U-turn that came out of absolutely nowhere and had me scratching my head. I definitely wasn't expecting half a book set in U.S. Mormon country from a Holmes book, with Holmes and Watson nowhere in sight, that's for sure!

I admit I don't know so much about Mormon history or the forming of Utah/Salt Lake City and all that, so I found it all quite interesting. I know he gave a very slanted and fictional view of it all, but still it inspired me to look up a bit of Mormon history and find out more about it.

All that said, I just didn't find the book so compelling otherwise. It has its place in history as one of the first mystery/detective books and helped to form a now-huge genre, so I respect it for that. And maybe I went in with expectations too high. And perhaps the Holmes books and stories get better as they go along. But regardless, I can't say I particularly cared for this one so much besides the points mentioned.

I've not read this for some time but I generally enjoyed Part I, which centres on Holmes and the mystery.

Part II: The Country of the Saints I found much less effective, primarily because Jonathan Hope simply hasn't the charisma and interest that is generated by Holmes. The Victorian reader might well have enjoyed it more as there would have been an interest in Doyle's {slanted} portrayal of the Mormons while the tragic romance and revenge-for-love plot would have been right down their alley. I think most modern readers would find the villains to be cardboard figures and the maiden is also rather a stereotype. So that section hasn't aged well. It was with some relief that I returned to Baker Street! ;)

But the second section dealing with the Mormons did have some interesting aspects. Doyle's description of The Danites isn't completely off the mark {though clearly he has fictionalised it for dramatic effect}. If you would like to read more about this area there is an interesting study by Leland Gentry, "The Danite Band of 1838". It can be downloaded free as a 28 page pdf document and can also be read in HTML format here: {I found the pdf download much easier to read}

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=ie

I remember I liked this book when I first read it when I was a teenager (I'm guessing 14-15 yo). Now, 40 years later, not so much...
It was nice to return to the beginning of Holmes/Watson relationship and I enjoyed that part more than the rest of the book. I very much agree with Fantasyfan's view on part II.
Once the book was finished I had no desire what-so-ever to go look for more Sherlock Holmes books. I do remember reading quite few of them back in my teens, and also that I was pretty fascinated by them back then. I think the "scientific" side of them appealed much to me, and maybe today's abundance of forensic science TV series has made me "jaded". Back when they were published they must have bee ground breaking though!

Asawi, do you have any opinion of the updated Holmes in the Sherlock series? I thought A Study in Pink was excellent.

I haven't seen it! I made a drastic cut down of my TV watching a caouple of years ago, but now that you say this I must try and watch that one somewhere!

Briefly, I'm with the naysayers; it didn't hold up. Fun to revisit and refresh my memory about Holmes's and Watson's backstories and I loved the Victorian setting, but purely on its merits the story was lacking. As I mentioned in a different thread, I'm amused that so far this year we've had several examples of faulty use of a narrator; Watson is like Noel Strachan with his detailed knowledge of events in Utah that he couldn't possibly have possessed.

So, an amusing story but faulty as a detective story and as literature.

I was pleased to be revisiting Sherlock Holmes after so many years away, and it has sparked an interest in me to reread some of the other stories. It has been so long that I had completely forgotten the story and came to it almost afresh.

To those that have read their first Holmes with A Study in Scarlet and are less than impressed, I would urge you to try another, as I don't feel this is entirely representative of the full body of Conan Doyle's work (I would recommend The Hound of the Baskervilles). The departure mid-story in the US and Hope's back story was untypical - so much so that I thought the tale had ended, and we had moved onto a non-Holmes story for a little while...

That said, it was a great introduction to Holmes and Watson, and to a certain extent felt like a scene-setter whose main purpose was to introduce us to the characters for the many stories to come.

As an aside, I agree with fantasyfan that they did a marvellous job of updating this story with A Study in Pink, and in fact the scene where Sherlock is being forced to choose between the poison or a harmless pill was better played and much more suspenseful than in the original story.

I also found myself less pleased with this story than in the past, certainly less then when I first read the Sherlock Holmes books when a YA. This may be in part because for the first time I was reading it with an eye to later discussing and criticizing it. Mainly though I just could not be as credulous about Holmes and his supposedly infallible logic. I just kept seeing gaps and other alternate explanations for his 'obvious' conclusions. The sudden switch in the middle from Watson's personal account, to an omniscient observer in America, and then back again to Watson did not really bother me. I recalled enough about the story from previous reads to expect that. So it was not as good for me as back when when I could believe in Holmes' deductions. Back when I dreamt of being Holmes. :)

Here, here. I'd also add that this is the 1st Sherlock Holmes story ever written and that the genre was still in its infancy at the time when it was written. So it's more than possible that A.C. Doyle was still finding his proper voice in regard to his most famous creation. Hound of the Baskervilles was written yrs later (I believe after 'The Final Problem' and before 'The Empty House') by which time A.C. Doyle's writing style had no doubt matured quite a bit. Judging by how many people world wide know of the great detective through story, OTR, TV and movies there has to be something to his stories that has held up well over time. Holmes appeared in Dec. 1887 in Beaton's Christmas Annual and he's still going strong 126 yrs later in 2013.

Thanks for the comments about the shift in the story halfway through, I'd given up on the audiobook after the first half because I thought the recording was scrambled or missing a section. After reading this thread I figured I might as well listen to the last couple of hours, even though I didn't actually care what happened.

This wasn't my first Sherlock Holmes and despite loving mysteries I've never clicked with this series. I find the stories overly detailed, the plots bizarre, and the characters unlikable. The manipulation of the back story to fit all the strange clues always seems too convenient and implausible and this one was one of the most extreme: polygamy halfway across the world, poison, and an aneurysm. I guess I'm unable to suspend disbelief far enough to buy into the Sherlock Holmes mystique.

hm, as I didn't read this one before, I liked the introduction how Sherlock Holmes and Watson met. But it gave me the impression of reading a 'Sherlock Holmes for beginners" rather than a Holmes story of which I read, reread and enjoyed several throughout my life.
I found the second part of the story, which took part in the USA, read like an old-fashioned somewhat moral book, though I found the historical context interesting. It would have been better if this had been interwoven in the first part. I had the feeling of a 'forced' reading a second book, which perhaps I wouldn't have read otherwise.
The discoveries of Holmes and Watson have a kind of 'deus ex machina' effect on me. I find several conclusions too much a 'pop-up', too farfetched.

I rather liked the idea of reading a Sherlock Holmes novel I didn't know, but I am a bit disappointed now.

Well as I said in an earlier post this was the 1st one written so I figure you have to expect it to not be quite as developed as the later adventures were.

True, true.......perhaps my expectations were too high.:bulb2:

I agree that this one felt a bit rough round the edges, and some of the solutions seemed a bit difficult to accept, but as crich70 says, it was the first one, and I think it sets the scene very well. Suspension of belief was required once or twice, but then that's half the fun :).

I think I'm going to read some of the others soon, to hopefully remind me of how good they really can be (though maybe it's only my fond memories that are keeping this view alive. I hope not).

Although it takes up half of the book, I had completely forgotten the Mormon connection as well. But it's been about 35-40 years since I've read the book.

But he's also the narrator. A good narrator of a mystery yarn has to be at least a bit slower than the reader. ;)

I'm currently reading Maria Konnikova's Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. It offers some surprising insights into Holmes' methods and the basic assumptions underlying them.

:thumbsup:

Very few literary templates were available at the time. One was was Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, who could hardly be called a detective proper as the term had yet to be coined, but even so, in the book we just read, Holmes appeared to have only a small respect for him.


As for Gaboriau's creation Monsieur Lecoq, Holmes had this to say:


I have to confess here that I've never read any of the writings of Émile Gaboriau, but he was very popular in the day in which Doyle began writing.

I do have to wonder if maybe A.C. Doyle is stepping forward for a moment when Holmes gives his opinions on Dupin and Lecoq. Maybe it was his way of saying "I can do better than that, and here it is." :)

I've been wanting to read a Book Club selection for some time, and finally jumped on the bandwagon with this one. I wanted to practice summarizing my opinion of a book beyond a star rating. I don't think this was the book to practice on. Like others have said, the abrupt story jump had me thinking the book was improperly formatted and someone had pasted an excerpt of an entirely different story. It was my first Sherlock Holmes book by Doyle. I enjoyed the introduction of Holmes and Watson because I have read a few of Laurie King's Mary Russell series, but beyond that, I found the plot too choppy to develop any suspense.

I agree with Issybird, but then so would have A. Conan Doyle. His later stories are more polished. It is because of Holmes' popularity in those days before movies, television, and radio, as well as his later mythological status that he is worth reading.

There is no way to deduce the killer before Holmes exposes Ball which violates a cardinal rule of mysteries, but a rule that did not exist at the time A Study in Scarlet was written.

I thought Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal in the BBC series caught the spirit of Holmes more successfully than anything I've ever seen set in Holmes' historical time.

Holmes is a fascinating character. He is concerned with solving puzzles, but has no interest in the great questions that have always plagued humans since he sees no way of solving them. He is obsessive about solving problems that can be scientifically proven. When no problems come to him he attempts to cure his boredom by shooting cocaine into his veins. Even when he eventually kicks his habit he never deals well with monotony.

Were the seeds of the cocaine habit placed in A Study in Scarlet? One could argue fom the folllowing scene that Holmes was subject to some mental malady, perhaps bi-polar disorder.

Or maybe Holmes already had the habit and Watson just didn't see what was right in front of his face.

My first impressions of the book were that it must have had two authors and stories. I was totally confused when the second part started and went nuts going back and forth on my readers trying to figure out what happened. I even started the audio book to see if that section was there and yes it was. Once I finally continued to listen and reached the continuing part to the first section, I understood what was going on with the back story being the reason for the murders.

Then I checked online to find out more about this story.

I did enjoy reading this first encounter of Watson and Holmes, but felt as if the two parts could have been separate books; a western romance and the Holmes mystery (that should have had parts of the murder's thinking sprinkled within to give us the murder's rationale).

This was not one of my favorite books to date, but I did enjoy reading it and will read more of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

:ditto: everything you just said. Sums up my experience very well.

As a young man, I read the two-volume Annotated Sherlock Holmes cover to cover, and like others here I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes. It's a funny thing, but I have to admit I'd completely forgotten the sudden switch to Utah. It has been 35-40 years since I'd read the story, but I still don't recall having the kind of shock I had as I was reading it in Harry's omnibus. Like others here, I thought for some time into the section that somehow another novel got somehow inserted into this one. I'm pretty sure none of the other Holmes stories do anything like that, but then again, I don't remember A Study in Scarlet doing it.

What I do remember, perhaps because other sources so frequently reference it, are such things as the list of Holmes strengths and weaknesses that Dr. Watson drew up shortly after their acquaintance, and things like Holmes insistence that he was ignorant of Copernican astronomy. But as for the latter, Maria Konnikova's Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes, the book I mentioned earlier, has this to say:

It reminds me of the story about Einstein having a discussion with another scientist which they could not finish at the time. They agreed to meet again and the other scientist asked Einstein for his phone number. Einstein picked up a phone book, looked himself up and gave the other man the number. Seeing his astonishment, Einstein said "Why should I clutter up my mind with information that I can easily look up if I need to do so?"

I have that set myself. It's a good resource not only for the original illustrations which accompanied the stories but for information about things that were commonplace at the time but which we in the 21st century might not understand.

I have the 1892 Harper and Brothers 1st American edition of Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I first read it in late childhood and adored it. The innocence of forensic knowledge I had then probably had a lot in common with late nineteenth century readers. We also had some Golden age detective novels, so my reading more or less followed the trajectory of decades of the genre right through the pulps of the mid-20th century and into today's novels featuring sophisticated forensic technique. Sherlock Holmes, influenced by Poe's Dupin, influenced everything in the genre that came later, if not always directly.

People tend to think of Holmes as middle-aged, but he was 27 (born 1854 as stated in "The Last Bow") when he moved to 221B Baker Street in 1881 with Dr. Watson.

Two of my treasured print books are 'The London of Sherlock Holmes' by Michael Harrison (1972) and 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' (1981), 40 mystery stories contemporary to late Holmes stories published in The Strand. Both books have a multitude of pictures and original illustrations.

If memory serves Rivals of Sherlock Holmes has a few tales also written by A.C. Doyle about other detectives among its pages. :)

^ Yes, there are four.

Yep.
The story of the man with the watches
the story of the lost special
the story of the black doctor
the story of the jew's breast-plate

The first one "the story of the man with the watches" contains the following:
An off the cuff reference to Mr. Sherlock Holmes perhaps?

Dang- I missed another one....that is what I get for not logging in for a long time!

I never cared for this novel (nor The Valley of Fear) as they deviate too much from England. The quintessential part of any Holmes story or novel is the long descriptive narrative of the problem given to Holmes. I like when it has to do with England (or its empire) and not this mess of life w/ the Mormons. I read it happily to get the background on how Watson meets Holmes, but not much else I enjoyed.

It was very much like two books glued together in a somewhat messy manner.