Poudelivre

I mentioned not too long ago that I don't really like detective novels since I usually always manages to solve the puzzle myself way before the end and that I find them all to be very much the same. That being said, I'm taking a literature class now and I'm supposed to read both old and new detective novels to see how different they are. Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes is a classic, of course and despite not liking this type of novel I was excited to read A Study in Scarlet and meet this legendary detective myself.

This is the first novel about Sherlock Holmes and it's also here that he meets Watson for the first time. They band together to solve two complicated murders which leaves detectives from Scotland Yard mystified. There aren't many clues and Watson is amazed at the way Holmes thinks and analyses everything. With a keen, sharp eye and a logical way of thinking, Holmes manages to catch the bad guy and create a lasting partnership with Watson.

In some ways, Holmes is very much like Auguste Dupin from Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, something that Watson points out in the story as well. They have the same analytical sense which makes it both fun and mind-blowing to follow their train of thoughts and that anyone can draw such accurate conclusions is beyond me. It's amazing to see how Holmes thinks and how he is able to solve the mystery, something I actually wasn't able to myself, this time.

I wasn't entirely blown away by this novel, however. The beginning was a little slow but the pace picked up after the first murder and I followed along with interest until the end of part one and the beginning of part two. Here everything changes and the novel moves across the Atlantic to America for a background story on the two men that was killed and the man who murdered them. It was confusing at first and then I just thought it was boring and strange to read about everything this way. Before this and before Holmes naming the guilty man, no mention had been done about him and thus it was impossible for me, the reader, to solve the mystery myself. This took the edge off the novel for me and I lost interest in it. The end was filled with explanations as to what happened and why and it was rather boring reading about it all like that. I was disappointed by the turn in the story and while it still had some charm I'm not sure I'll actually read another Sherlock Holmes story again. If I do then it will have to be sometime in the far-off future when I've forgotten about this one.