Book of the Week

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Recommended by Aman Parekh

A Study in Sherlock?

It’s a Sherlock Holmes book! If I had to convince someone to read A Study in Scarlet, that's all I’d say. In fact, I could probably make this a one sentence recommendation. I won’t. In all seriousness, the best thing going for A Study in Scarlet is simply that it is a Sherlock Holmes book, one of the most popular and influential series of books in the history of English literature. It is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed human fictional character in all film and television.

Rathbone, Cushing, Brett, Downey Jr, Cumberbatch, McKellen ...

Being immensely popular isn't all that Sherlock Holmes has going for it. Whilst Sherlock is often considered as just ‘popular fiction’, I’d argue that it is more than that. It is perhaps a stretch to call Sherlock Holmes ‘literary fiction’ or call Arthur Conan Doyle ‘the Shakespeare of detective fiction’ - although many parallels can be drawn between the works of the two authors, like being written for the general public but being studied academically centuries later or being extremely influential in future literary works (while Conan Doyle didn’t create the detective genre, he certainly popularised it).

Nonetheless, for books meant to be easily readable, they are written well, and contain various psychological and philosophical musings that build up our understanding of Sherlock’s worldview. For example, in A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock explains to Watson why he doesn’t care for any astrological knowledge, telling us that he considers ‘that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic’, and so remembering information he considers useless clogs up his mind and is thus counterproductive. Sherlock instead chooses to curate his mind, filling the ‘attic’ with only information that he considers useful. Whilst Sherlock Holmes is of course fictional, and possesses capabilities that are exaggerated beyond even the most capable humans in the real world, such insights into Sherlock’s methods make him seem less superhuman and more genius.

Only one thing remains for me to do in this recommendation: explain why, of all the brilliantly crafted Sherlock tales that exist, you should read A Study in Scarlet. Yes, it is the introductory novel of Sherlock Holmes, but that in itself is not why I recommend you read it first. In general, the Sherlock Holmes books are completely episodic such that a chronological reading is neither necessary nor beneficial. No, the reason I recommend A Study in Scarlet is that it isn't a murder mystery. There is a murder that is solved by a detective, but that's about where the standard tropes of a detective novel - tropes which are not only patterns in the genre but rather rules that are almost always followed in some capacity - end. The first ‘commandment’ of Ronald Knox’s Ten Commandments, which states that ‘The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story’, is broken by Conan Doyle, as we are not introduced to a group of suspects at the beginning of the book, unlike almost every other detective novel. 

Ronald Knox's 10 Rules of Detective Fiction (summarised by detective fiction blogger The Invisible Event)

The novel also breaks rule 8, which states that the detective must declare any clues that he discovers during the story. Whilst it is true that some detective books do defy the rules of the genre, there is one key difference between A Study in Scarlet and genre-stretching detective stories; it is completely impossible for the reader to discern the culprit before we are told who they are. The detective genre is headed by the philosophy that it is a race between the detective and the reader to deduce the murderer, and the detective usually wins due to their superior intellect. Furthermore, while A Study in Scarlet doesn’t follow this philosophy, the vast majority of Sherlock tales do follow the tropes of the genre, and it is often possible for the reader to discern the murderer, leading to a ‘kick yourself’ moment when the detective explains the murder, and you are left with that tantalising feeling of being so close to finally solving a murder before the detective. 

If not a detective novel, then what is A Study in Scarlet? And why is it an excellent book? The answer to both of these questions has already been revealed earlier in the review! ‘Where?’, you ask, feeling confused. The answer lies in the title; A Study in Scarlet is really just a depth study into the character of Sherlock Holmes, and hence a study of Sherlock. And yes, I have just attempted to do a Conan Doyle on you and reveal the answer to a mystery which you could have solved yourself. Are you kicking yourself? Probably not.

I suppose now, seven hundred words into this book recommendation, is as good a time as any to give a summary of the book I’m recommending. A Study in Scarlet begins with a brief life recap of one army doctor, called Dr. John Watson. We learn about his struggles to settle back into London, and in particular to find affordable lodgings. Watson is complaining to his friend about his lodging issues, and then his friend remarks that he was the second person to use the expression ‘comfortable rooms at a reasonable price’ on the same day. And that is how Dr John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, one of the most iconic duos in the history of literature, met: they became roommates. 

The next one and a half chapters (the entire book is only about 10 chapters) are solely devoted to developing the relationship between Sherlock and Watson. Since Watson is our perspective, we easily learn about his background. Sherlock, however, remains much of a mystery to both the readers and Watson, especially since he is not a fan of explaining things he finds obvious. This allows Conan Doyle to employ an ingenious tactic to help develop characters; we follow Watson as he strides to discover what Sherlock does for a living. This also helps to explain to the reader what a ‘Consulting Detective’ is, which is necessary considering that the idea was mostly foreign to readers around the time of publication. Watson serves as a character to whom Sherlock can explain his occupation, methods, and worldview, giving us a perspective into Sherlock that best gets across what it would be like to know Sherlock.

Seeing the book as one that serves mainly for character development helps explain why it is such a non-conventional murder mystery; the fact that we have no clue who the murderer is before Sherlock enlightens us, and that we didn’t get all the clues before the murderer was revealed, emphasises just how smart Sherlock is. We are surprised as Sherlock suddenly makes deductions which seem nothing short of magic to us. It gives us the true Watson experience, where he experiences first-hand how quickly Sherlock makes leaps of deduction that lead to him unexpectedly catching the killer.

If you are at all interested in the detective genre, you should read the Sherlock books. But make sure you start with A Study in Scarlet, for that is something special: it is a A Study in Sherlock.