But the biggest surprise is yet to come: several chapters of a tale of horror, survival, and revenge in the early Mormon settlement of Salt Lake City. At the point when Holmes lays his hands on the guilty party, it comes as a terrific surprise. The mystery develops along the expected lines, though Holmes only reveals some of the clues he discovered at the end, while explaining how he solved it so, don’t expect to be able to solve it yourself. And the motive for his crimes is as stunning as it is moving. And sure, the killer has the same occupation, the same diabolical means of persuading his victims to take the poison, and the same life-threatening health condition that enables him to disregard his own safety, as the perpetrator in Sherlock‘s “A Study in Pink”-but he’s not a psychopath. ![]() Sure, there is an old lady who turns out to be an actor in disguise, and one clever enough to elude Holmes’ pursuit but the person under the disguise isn’t Irene Adler. No qualm against doing in the landlady’s dog with poison (partly to end its suffering, and partly to test a theory about the crime). Perhaps equally surprising is what isn’t in this first novel. Here we first meet the street urchins Holmes employs as his junior detectives, and the Scotland Yard chumps Gregson and Lestrade, who are keen to take credit for his sleuthing. This is where Holmes first lays out the science of deduction and his “attic theory” of the brain, first displays his talent as a violinist, first exhibits mood swings ranging from morbid depression to fierce energy, and most importantly, first has Watson along as an observer and chronicler. Did you know that A Study in Scarlet included the first depiction of a magnifying glass being used as a crime-detecting tool? Did you realize that the pilot episode of Sherlock is, up to a certain degree, a faithful adaptation of this first Holmes novel? This is the one where Holmes and Watson meet and become roommates at 221B Baker Street. And that meant, alas, blowing four or five bucks at the Kindle Store. But I have enjoyed all of them too much to be able to wait a minute longer to reacquaint myself with Holmes as Conan Doyle created him. I know very well that none of these entertainments is especially faithful to the original Holmes. And Jonny Lee Miller has turned in a very different, but still marvelous, present-day account of Holmes in CBS’s Elementary. Benedict Cumberbatch has ridden BBC’s Holmes-in-the-21st-century series Sherlock to overnight superstardom. Holmes has been everywhere lately! Robert Downey has played him in a recent brace of blockbuster movies. And because I wanted to read the series in canon order, that meant waiting before reading anything Holmes.Īnd then, Hollywood happened. I grudged the $0.99 Amazon wanted me to pay for the e-book edition of a novel first published 101 years before I sold my hard copy of it. This included parts of the Holmes Canon, but among the exceptions was this book. I meant to use the device only to read books that I could download for free. I also didn’t read this book when I got my first Kindle. They are the bane of reading and the germ of procrastination. This, together with a few other experiences, has taught me to avoid omnibus editions. This is partly due to the repulsive, eye-straining layout of the book, and partly due to its uncomfortable heft. One almost had to give the book away it seemed more a doorstop or a paperweight than something actually to be read. I saw piles of the same edition marked down for clearance at the late and lamented Borders as recently as 2006. I had that book for several years, and read many of the shorter Holmes tales before I sold it in a garage sale circa 1988. ![]() I didn’t read this book when I owned an omnibus volume called The Complete Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes canon now includes four novels and 56 short stories, written over a period of 40 years, but it all began here. ![]() Just imagine: It was the first anyone had ever heard of Sherlock Holmes! Then a young physician, just starting to stretch his literary muscles, Arthur Conan Doyle here created a character who has become one of the most enduring figures in the popular imagination. When detective fiction was still in its infancy, in the year 1887, this novel first appeared in an issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual.
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