Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet

by Arthur Conan Doyle

[sa090]

I was actually struggling through Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere before I put it on an indefinite hold and started this one instead, it was going really well before the second part of it started but more of that later 🙃

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First of all I really really enjoyed seeing how exactly did Sherlock Holmes and John Watson meet, the movies were great but that piece of info was never available and I personally haven't watched nor read up on the latest series concerning the duo so I'm ignorant of any aspects of it regarding their meeting and how it goes in accordance to what actually happened in Arthur Conan Doyle's story. Now the best thing about it that Holmes is just as eccentric and weird as when he was portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. so tuning in to see how he would act in this novel was both easy and exciting.

I feel like I learned a lot more about him here concerning his thinking process, habits and interests that it's a win no matter how I look at it. Learning more about Watson as well was another interesting-ish event but since I feel like this book was more focused on Sherlock as it should be, I didn't learn too much but no matter.

Now the murder itself and how it was solved was pretty interesting, I really enjoyed seeing his genius at work and how meticulous about everything, as you'd expect a great detective to be. The motive behind it was insanely common though so there isn't much to wonder about there but nonetheless the execution of the crime with how carefully planned it was deserves a little bit of recognition.

Now my main issue here is the sudden shift in time lines, I didn't need it, I didn't enjoy and tbh I couldn't care less about it or what happened in it. Of course it was there to provide me with a little bit of background as to why all of this happened and where the players in this crime come from or more accurately what they lived through but here's the thing; it didn't have to be like this. Arthur Conan Doyle literally gave our criminal the chance to talk about their motives and why this crime happened so would it have been such a terrible idea to add a few more lines to that dialogue to help with the missing pieces of the narrative? I don't think so, at least half of what was told in that time jump was honestly not needed for the plot of this story, at least it wasn't for me.


Final rating: 3/5