littlestcabbage 's review for:

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

3.0

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After reading two Holmes short-story collections in a row, I figured I should give the entire canon another spin (I've read them all at various points of my life, but I have a wickedly poor memory for plots and only a few stick -- makes rereading them all the more pleasurable!). Off to the first Holmes novel, and my, what a doozy. It's interesting to see what Doyle did here (so many chapters, grand lead-in, extreme backstory for those involved in the crime at hand, lengthy dictation by Holmes as to his methods, etc.) that he stopped doing later in the short works. I can also see that I might not be a fan of Doyle's non-Holmes stories, as I found my mind wandering a bit in the center section of the novel, where we learned a great deal of information that led up to the crime committed in London. It DID make me wonder how much of the Mormon story is legit and how much is fictionalized, though. Eager to continue this project with The Sign of Four!