Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

I’m a Sherlock Holmes superfan. I’ve read and reread the entire canon—all the stories, all the novels, and watched the Granada Television / Jeremy Brett adaptation—multiple times over the years.

But my most recent reread of A Study in Scarlet struck me differently. I finally noticed just how unique this novel is compared to everything else in the Holmes canon.

Two Stories, One Mystery

A Study in Scarlet is really two completely separate stories. One takes place in Victorian London with Holmes and Watson investigating a murder. The other takes place in the American West—Utah, specifically—decades earlier.

When I first read this book years ago, I was deeply confused when the narrative suddenly jumped from foggy London streets to the Mormon frontier. And I won’t say Arthur Conan Doyle seamlessly weaves them together from a craft perspective. The shift is jarring. There’s no smooth transition—you just suddenly find yourself reading what feels like a completely different book.

But here’s what I love: even though the writing itself doesn’t elegantly bridge these stories, the way they connect thematically is brilliant. The American story explains the murder in London. Actions taken in Utah years ago directly cause a death on a London street. The two narratives are inseparable.

Victorian Globalization

What really struck me this time is how Conan Doyle was grappling with an idea that people in the Victorian era were just beginning to understand: something that happened halfway around the world—something you didn’t even know about—could have real consequences right at your doorstep.

We take this for granted now. In 2025, we understand that an event in Myanmar or Ukraine can directly affect us. But in the 1880s, this was still a novel and somewhat unsettling concept. The world was shrinking, and people were still wrapping their heads around what that meant.

A Study in Scarlet captures that moment. It’s a story about how the past—and distant places—reach forward and inward in ways you can’t predict or control.

Worth Reading (or Rereading)

If you’ve never read it, or if you read it years ago and remember being confused by the structure, I highly recommend giving it another shot. It’s worth seeing how Conan Doyle pulls it all together.

I read it this time as a free ebook from Standard Ebooks on my Kindle, which made the whole experience even better.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is unique in the Sherlock Holmes canon for its jarring dual-narrative structure—one story in Victorian London, another in the American West. Though not seamlessly written, the stories connect brilliantly: actions in Utah years earlier directly cause a London murder. Conan Doyle captures Victorian-era people grappling with an emerging reality—that distant events could have immediate, local consequences.

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