I've somehow never engaged with Sherlock Holmes stories. Yet Sherlock is famous enough that I still know the basics: he's a brilliant but eccentric detective who can see things others don't, he wears a deerstalker hat and carries a magnifying glass, his partner is Dr. Watson, his arch-enemy is Moriarty, they live on Baker Street in Victorian London, etc. I chanced upon a copy of A Study in Scarlet, saw it was the first of the series and slim at that, and nursed it over a few distracted days. Enjoyable, but in an interesting enough way that I wanted to straighten out my own thoughts on it.

First and foremost, A Study in Scarlet, despite being published in 1887, is surprisingly readable. A number of references are now unfamiliar and a few turns of phrase raise an eyebrow ('"Wonderful!" I ejaculated.'), but the dialogue is tight and the cliffhangers compelling enough to keep you reading. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's no prose stylist, but the story steadily ticks to its conclusion. You can see why it's a classic, even if it's a little rough around the edges. It's not as pulpy or as rigidly plot-driven as modern-day detective stories, and it's a long way from Sherlock Holmes to a Dale Cooper or Rust Cohle. But the essence is there, even if you have to look a little harder from certain angles.

Seen with 2026 eyes, the characters and backstory are definite weak points. Sherlock himself and his relationships are the best-developed, especially the budding partnership with Watson, but the other characters are straight out of central casting. The initial investigators are comically incompetent, the bad guys are utterly irredeemable, and the innocent bystanders are as pure as the driven snow. You know how this will all plays out from the moment they enter the scene. Even the wild jump in setting in the middle of the story doesn't do much to offset this feeling. There is little emotional depth nor character development. So why keep reading? Because you want to know how Holmes managed to figure all this out, to find the order within the chaos, to draw the inevitable conclusion from mere observation, logic, and prior knowledge.

There's no way that we, the reader, could have solved this "whodunit" along with Holmes; between motive, means, and opportunity, one is ridiculously far-fetched even for fiction. I don't know enough about the history of the genre, but I assume there was somebody between Sherlock Holmes and Encylopedia Brown that mastered this particular literary device. But even ignoring all of this, it's hard to say that A Study in Scarlet is essential reading to those who are not already fans. (I hear The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is the masterpiece, with Doyle in peak form.) Here, we, like Watson himself, have to content ourselves with the cozy setting, the ineffable competence of Holmes, and the sense of adventure, a chance to break the monotony of our everyday struggle. But sometimes, like a trusty portmanteau, that's really all you need.