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A study in scarlet

antihippy

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A local bookshop has an excellent sale on the classics at present so picked up a few books I had never gotten around to reading. Amongst them was the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Story number one is "A Study in Scarlet". I have to confess to having seen some adaptations of the Holmes stories so I pretty much knew what was going on - or so I thought. I've never actually read it before.

Right in the middle of the book it jumps to western setting and goes on to discuss the latter day saints in quite umcomplimentary ways. It even alludes to the early settlers creating a religous totalitarian state.

I've had a wee look at the net and it seems there is a little controversy about this.

The fact that Doyle breaks the normal conventions of detective novels (well they were only being created when he wrote this) is really a side issue; I was wanting to know what other readers thought of the sudden change in the book.

Your opinions!
 
I presume you have been in Afghanistan?

Actually, there are several Holmes stories that have an American connection (The Advernture of the Dancing Men, for one). Study in Scarlet was an excellent book and, I guess I was suprised at the western setting but I don't remember since it has been probably 40 years since I first read it.

And I still want to know what happened to Watson's dog.
 
Hey! I just finished reading it last night - it is one of the readings for my book club this month.

I found the switch a bit jarring to the narrative but intriguing. I don't know the history of the Mormons, but the picture he paints is believable. The requirement of complete obedience with violent punishment for disobedience fits with what we know about the beginnings of break-away groups.
 
Doyle uses the same type of technique in probably the least-known Holmes novel "The Valley of Fear", having Holmes solve the murder and then going back in the second half to describe why the murder took place--in this case, in the Coal mines of Pennsylvania and the "Molly Maguires".

Not one of the better Holmes stories, but interesting.
 
antihippy said:
A
The fact that Doyle breaks the normal conventions of detective novels (well they were only being created when he wrote this) is really a side issue; I was wanting to know what other readers thought of the sudden change in the book.

Your opinions!
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Well, I personally don't like it very much. Conventions of detective fictions be damned; the general conventions of narrative have been around since the "Aristotelian unities," and this kind of flashback breaks them. I don't mind brief illustrative flashbacks, and I also don't mind narratives that are all flashback (e.g. Wells' Time Machine), but extensive jumps from the present to the past and back indicate, to me, an inability to commit to a narrative framework.

I suspect this is one reason why the conventions of detective fiction evolved the way they did; other writers than Conan Doyle found the structure annoying and figured out a set of conventions for retelling past events within the narrative itself, e.g. either through witness testimony or through a detective's reconstruction of events.
 
antihippy said:
The fact that Doyle breaks the normal conventions of detective novels (well they were only being created when he wrote this) is really a side issue...
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Excuse me, but it is Poe who invented the detective story, in the Purloined Letter, not Doyle.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Excuse me, but it is Poe who invented the detective story, in the Purloined Letter, not Doyle.
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I'm not sure it's fair to say that Poe invented all the modern conventions of detective fiction, any more than it's fair to say that the Wright brothers invented the Boeing 747. Certainly "the Purloined Letter" was influential, but most of the elements of the modern mystery novel were hammered out much later. This site reprints a 1929 list of "The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction," from what has become widely recognized as the "Golden Age" of mystery writing.

Any reasonable history of detective fiction would start with Poe, note the long and largely deserted gap between Poe and Conan Doyle, and then discuss how detective fiction, as distinguished from mere cheap thrillers or Gothic novels, really only came into its own as a genre in the Golden Age with the development of the "cozy" mysteries on one side of the Atlantic and the corresponding "hard-boiled" ones on the other. But almost everything that today we associate with detective fiction originated in one of those two groups.
 
drkitten said:
I'm not sure it's fair to say that Poe invented all the modern conventions of detective fiction, any more than it's fair to say that the Wright brothers invented the Boeing 747.
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Whoa there. I said that Poe invented the Detective story, I didn't say he invented all its conventions.
 
antihippy,
I just finished re-reading "A Study in Scarlet" (my wife got me "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" for my birthday).
The insertion of the back story right at the end is a bit odd. Don't let it put you off the rest of the stories. Although he does something of the sort in "The Vally of Fear" (noted by Hutch above) and "The Sign of the Four", it is less extensive. The short stories are more straightforward with a minimum of flashbacks, which are much more relevant to the narative.
My understanding of the "In the Land of the Saints" insert is that Doyle had a pretty good Detective short story, and a pretty good Western short story in mind, and a potential sale of a novellette in hand. He grafted the two together and paid the rent.
I hope you will read, and enjoy, the rest of the stories.

Robert Klaus
 
SteveW said:
Actually, there are several Holmes stories that have an American connection (The Advernture of the Dancing Men, for one). Study in Scarlet was an excellent book and, I guess I was suprised at the western setting but I don't remember since it has been probably 40 years since I first read it.
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[ETA: Doyle "spoiler" ahead.]

I always remember the unexpected (and implausible) American connection from "The Five Orange Pips", where Holmes discovers that the Ku Klux Klan "dunnit".
 
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Pope130 said:
antihippy,
I just finished re-reading "A Study in Scarlet" (my wife got me "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" for my birthday).
The insertion of the back story right at the end is a bit odd. Don't let it put you off the rest of the stories. Although he does something of the sort in "The Vally of Fear" (noted by Hutch above) and "The Sign of the Four", it is less extensive. The short stories are more straightforward with a minimum of flashbacks, which are much more relevant to the narative.
My understanding of the "In the Land of the Saints" insert is that Doyle had a pretty good Detective short story, and a pretty good Western short story in mind, and a potential sale of a novellette in hand. He grafted the two together and paid the rent.
I hope you will read, and enjoy, the rest of the stories.

Robert Klaus
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Thanks Robert.

I had guessed as much myself. And I intend to read the rest of the stories in the book I've got. The Sign of Four was quite good as well.
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The things that struck me were:

  1. The complete disconnect between the London part and the American part was: completely jarring and, in my opinion, it ruins the narrative somewhat. It seems odd that a writer of Doyle's calibre would have made such a mistake without a reason. As Robert Klaus mentions - it might well have been "about the money". Does anyone know of a good biography? I might as well do some supplementary reading while my curiosity is aroused.
  2. And, I might be over-asserting here, his apparent dislike for the Mormons. Of course he might be reflecting contemporary prejuidice, but it seems fairly overt that he really didn't like the idea of the mormons. Does anyone know if he's on record somewhere as stating this? I've had a wee look at the net and the noise to signal is a bit too high to get an objective view.
    It's almost as if he was stating something, dare I say, political... I'm very wary of reinterpreting stories from other eras as there is the danger of projecting your own prejuidices and opinions - especially if you fail to consider the attitudes of the day.

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a quite lovely companion piece to this is Neil Gaiman's "A Study In Emerald". A Sherlock Holmes story set in a Lovecraftian world. It's online here:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories
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I love Lovecraft! Neil Gaiman has talent of his own! I'll try to find the time to check that out. Thanks for the recommendation.

As complete aside (but in a similar vein): do you like Alice in Wonderland? If you do check out "Automated Alice" by Jeff Noon. A brilliant piece of writing. Completely captures the barmy nature of Alice in Wonderland and is a trippy a piece of Science Fiction as you could imagine.

----

It was the recent re-screening of the Jeremy Brett Holmes on a UK digital channel that had put the idea of reading Holmes into my head. I needed a break from reading history, science and SF so I thought the Holmes book would make a good diversion.
 
I found it helpful to re-read the chapter just prior to "In the land of the saints" before reading the chapter just after it. (if that makes sense :))

Don't know about the Doyle/Mormon issue. It is discussed in the amazon reviews but I haven't seen anything official.
 
well I like the Red Head story, because it was a bit amusing. What I like is that the stories really differ. So reading one isn't like reading another. That was part of his genius. And it's off how he really keeps the woo out of the Holmes stories.

None of them quite work up as well as a movie though as the HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES!!!!
 
All non-English characters are "odd" in some way. His xenophobia was entirely typical of his era, and I don't think it detracts from the stories.
 
Antihippy,
Doyles attitude toward the Mormons has been discussed extensively within the Sherlock Holmes fanbase. (Some of the debates make the squabbles in our "Politics" section look like schoolyard spats!) The concensus seems to be that the Mormons served as a "Bad Guy" for the purposes of the story, and do not represent any specific antipathy on Doyles part.
Consider that from the contemporary British point of view the Mormons appeared to be a dangerous foriegn cult advocating immoral and illegal practices. It was rumoured that Mormon agents recruited, seduced or kidnapped decent British girls for their harems, that they had a secret inner group responsible for armed protection of the leadership and enforcement of doctrine, and that they were attempting to establish a seperate nation in Utah. Given this general belief, "A Study In Scarlet" didn't seem too improbable.
In "The Valley of Fear" Doyle includes a fictionalised account of the Pinkerton Detective Agency operations against the Molly Maguires. This is actually a more slanted account than his treatment of the Mormons. The Scowrers in this story are unmitigated scoundrels. No appreciation of the broader issues of big business versus the nascent labor movement are considered.
In other stories where non-British characters are featured his treatment is more even handed I think.
I think you'll find the rest of the stories as interesting for their glimpses of Victorian life as for the mysteries themselves.

Robert Klaus
 
Hi all, I'd like to add that I felt a similar and surprising discontinuity when I read A Study In Scarlet. It was not what i expected at all. I still enjoyed the story, and the info about the mormons will make me forever cautious when those smiley fellows knock on the door! I agree that part of the pleasure was the glimpse into victorian life. Similar to when I read Alan Moore's League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I'm sure there's a reference to almost every victorian piece of literature jammed in there).

My only contribution really here is to say thanks for the links to those Neil Gaiman lovecraft stories. Excellent! I'm re-reading The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward at the moment, and those babies are right up my street! Also the detective commandment links, very interesting as I drink my tea.

Take it easy,
Tobias van de Peer
 
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