"A Study in Scarlet"

Considering recent technical difficulties and the exceedingly lengthy previous post I'm going to make this a mini-book review. Well, as "mini" as I can stand to make it.

As intriguing as "Dead Man Walking" is, it doesn't make for good bedtime reading. I'm fond of reading any Sherlock Holmes story before I go to bed; I can start and finish one in the time that it takes my eyes to go from "a little tired" to "can't keep open". I hadn't read "A Study in Scarlet" in a while so I chose to revisit it in the past few nights, despite the fact that it's a proper book, with chapters, instead of a self-contained short story.

First-time readers beware: five of the fourteen chapters take place in a third-person flashback that takes place in barren Utah. It starts of as dry as the land described, but gets much better and makes more sense. Not all Sherlock Holmes stories are like this, so it might be more fun to first read any other story besides this, "Sign of Four" and "The Valley of Fear." But logically it's the best place to start because it describes how Holmes and Watson meet and follows Watson's first case with him.

This is Doyle's first Holmes story, and having read many other stories before this one it was fascinating to see how the author introduced this famous detective and the instant chemistry (pun intended) sparked between Holmes and his biographer. Not my favorite but has a good amount of twists and dramatic chapter endings. Any time I get to spend with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson is time well-spent.