Summary of A Study in Scarlet
In 1881, Doctor John Watson returns to London after his military service and takes lodgings at 221B Baker Street with the brilliant but eccentric detective Sherlock Holmes. What begins as a practical arrangement to share rent soon draws Watson into Holmes’s world of crime and intrigue. Their first adventure together involves a case for Scotland Yard: the body of an American found in Brixton, a cryptic word — “rache” (“revenge” in German) — written in blood on the wall, and a mystery that stretches far beyond London. The novel’s second half shifts to Utah in the United States and is linked to the murder in London.
Reasons to read A Study in Scarlet
“A Study in Scarlet” is the very first Sherlock Holmes novel, launching a literary phenomenon that would grow to include three further novels (“The Sign of the Four”, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, and “The Valley of Fear”) and 56 short stories, written by Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While not the origine of detective fiction – Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” introduced Auguste Dupin decades earlier in 1841 – Sherlock Holmes became the archetypical “gentleman detective”, inspiring many successors from Hercule Poirot to modern crime investigators.
Setting: London (England, UK)
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson reside on the first floor of 221B Baker Street. When the story was first published, Baker Street numbers only went up to 85. Today, the Sherlock Holmes Museum occupies number 239 but displays the famous number “221B” over the door.
Original title: A Study in Scarlet
Year of publication: 1887
Nr of pages: 256
