A Study in Scarlet [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Author), Peter Mesney (Narrator)

Product Details

• Audible Audio Edition
• Listening Length: 4 hours and 3 minutes
• Program Type: Audiobook
• Version: Unabridged
• Publisher: Recorded Books
• Audible.com Release Date: December 16, 1999
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00005478D
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Editorial Reviews

Join Sherlock Holmes - and his faithful companion and chronicler, Dr. Watson - on their first case. The adventure begins when Holmes and Watson are asked by Scotland Yard to step around to a house off Brixton Road. In the vacant house, the police have discovered a body: one Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. There are quantities of blood all over the room, and on one wall, the single word, Rache is scrawled in blood red letters. Inspector Lestrade wants Holmes's opinion: "If this man was murdered," he asks, "how was it done?" "Poison," Holmes said curtly. "Come, Watson. The game is afoot."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First Sherlock Holmes mystery, a curiosity in style and structure.,, April 16, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Study in Scarlet Pb (Popular Classics) (Paperback)

Published in 1878, this first Sherlock Holmes story is a curiosity, rather than a finely developed novel. Here Dr. Watson, just released from the British army and recovering from serious wounds from the second Afghan war, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time. Both have been looking for someone to share the rent--at 221B Baker Street. Holmes, without a "real" career, spends considerable time experimenting in a hospital chemistry lab and interviewing people who come to the apartment. Watson soon discovers that Holmes is a detective consultant, working with police detectives and private detectives alike.

Written before Doyle had fully developed his skills as a mystery novelist, this novel divides in half. In the first part, which begins around 1880, Holmes helps investigate the murder of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, apparently poisoned in an abandoned house. A tall stranger has been seen in the neighborhood, and some clues have been planted at the crime scene. Later, Drebber's traveling companion is killed. Holmes, however, manages to solve both cases by the halfway point in the book.

The second half of the novel flashes back to 1847. John Ferrier, one of twenty-one people in a caravan, is traveling through "an arid and repulsive desert" in the American west when the caravan runs out of food and water. Ferrier and a small girl, the only survivors, search for water until they collapse. Rescued by Brigham Young and a wagon train of Mormons on their way to found their city, Ferrier, in exchange for food and water, agrees to convert and become a good Mormon. Years later, when Ferrier is a successful rancher and Lucy has fallen in love with a Gentile, the elders of the church demand that Ferrier agree to wed Lucy to a member of the church, a decision he resists.

These seemingly unrelated stories eventually overlap, but Doyle's incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of Mormon beliefs show his deliberate attempt to capitalize on the mysteries of the "wild west" and of Mormonism for the sake of his story, now quite dated. The ending consists of Holmes simply ticking off the clues which have led him to solve the murders and capture the murderer, not a dramatic or exciting climax. Watson is seen as a soldier-hero and doctor, and not as a bumbling side-kick to Holmes, who is shown here as a decidedly odd and pompous man, less "clever" than he becomes in time. Fun to read and interesting primarily because it is the first Holmes mystery. Mary Whipple

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