A Study in Scarlet Review

Holy sh*t that was amazing.

This is the very first Sherlock Holmes book I've read. And man, I'm hungry for more after finishing this one. The first encounter of Watson and Holmes is fun to read. The affinity between them is well established from the first ten pages of the book. The first half of the book is narrated from the journal accounts of Watson and not Holmes himself. The other half is a fly on a wall point of view of the revenge tale of the prime suspect of the case. Both are well written and are easy to read.

The problem that I always encounter when I'm reading flashbacks is the information overload. You can't follow the story because the author is trying to give lots of plot points in a limited number of pages. This is not the case in A Study in Scarlet. The part where there is a flashback to explain the motives of the suspect is not difficult to read. Even the part where Holmes is already explaining the reason why he had gotten the right conclusion is not a pain in the mind of the readers.

A Study in Scarlet is full of absurd instances and characters but Doyle made everything in it realistic for the enjoyment of everybody.