Greetings & Salutations, and A Study in Scarlet
First of all, greetings to all in this blog, and thanks for the invitation. As a graduate student in Ecology & Evolution, I’ll try to keep the nerdy biology books to a minimum. But they will pop up . . . now and again. :-)
So I just finished reading A Study in Scarlet, the first story (novella?) in the Sherlock Holmes mystery series by Arthur Conan Doyle. I don’t know if anyone else here ever watched the “Mystery!” series on PBS, but as a kid without cable, I think I’ve seen every British mystery literary adaptation ever made, and the Holmes stories were some of the best. I’ve always wanted to read the actual novels, but I’ve put them off until now, despite owning a rather fetching leather-bound copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
I hesitate to reveal any details of the story, since it is a mystery, after all. Suffice it to say that the story starts out in Victorian England but takes a rather bizarre detour into Mormon Utah (!). The clues and solution are very clever, and Holmes is just as insufferable as I remembered from TV. I have two major observations about this story:
First, Arthur Conan Doyle had never met an American prior to writing this. At least, I hope to God that he hadn’t, because the “Mormons” he spends about fifty pages on sound like the illegitimate love children of Margaret Thatcher and Mark Twain. Check out this dialogue: “No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You’ll just need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all right. Put your head up ag’in me like that, and then you’ll feel bullier. It ain’t easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let you know how the cards lie.”
Second, Victorian England (as portrayed in the story, at least) is amazingly similar to modern America. Maybe it’s the combination of insular, country bumpkins and cosmopolitan schemers, or maybe it’s the constant referencing of military campaigns. After all, in the opening paragraphs, Watson reveals that he moves into the apartment on Baker Street in order to recover from wounds incurred while he was an army surgeon in Afghanistan!
In any case, the surroundings of 19th century London are eerily familiar, and the book is quite good, even with the fake Americans. I’ve just started the next Holmes story, The Sign of Four, and it’s even better.
So I just finished reading A Study in Scarlet, the first story (novella?) in the Sherlock Holmes mystery series by Arthur Conan Doyle. I don’t know if anyone else here ever watched the “Mystery!” series on PBS, but as a kid without cable, I think I’ve seen every British mystery literary adaptation ever made, and the Holmes stories were some of the best. I’ve always wanted to read the actual novels, but I’ve put them off until now, despite owning a rather fetching leather-bound copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
I hesitate to reveal any details of the story, since it is a mystery, after all. Suffice it to say that the story starts out in Victorian England but takes a rather bizarre detour into Mormon Utah (!). The clues and solution are very clever, and Holmes is just as insufferable as I remembered from TV. I have two major observations about this story:
First, Arthur Conan Doyle had never met an American prior to writing this. At least, I hope to God that he hadn’t, because the “Mormons” he spends about fifty pages on sound like the illegitimate love children of Margaret Thatcher and Mark Twain. Check out this dialogue: “No, there ain’t nothing, dearie. You’ll just need to be patient awhile, and then you’ll be all right. Put your head up ag’in me like that, and then you’ll feel bullier. It ain’t easy to talk when your lips is like leather, but I guess I’d best let you know how the cards lie.”
Second, Victorian England (as portrayed in the story, at least) is amazingly similar to modern America. Maybe it’s the combination of insular, country bumpkins and cosmopolitan schemers, or maybe it’s the constant referencing of military campaigns. After all, in the opening paragraphs, Watson reveals that he moves into the apartment on Baker Street in order to recover from wounds incurred while he was an army surgeon in Afghanistan!
In any case, the surroundings of 19th century London are eerily familiar, and the book is quite good, even with the fake Americans. I’ve just started the next Holmes story, The Sign of Four, and it’s even better.
posted by Tony at
11:43 PM
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