Book review: "A Study in Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle

As the first Sherlock Holmes book, "A Study in Scarlet" starts off pretty much as what you would expect. Then it gets weird.

Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 book begins with Dr. John Watson meeting the mysterious Holmes, simply because they are both looking for a roommate. If you've seen the Benedict Cumberbatch-Martin Freeman TV series this will feel comfortably familiar.

Watson, as the narrator and eyes and ears of the reader, describes the curious ways of the Sherlock Holmes, a man both brilliant and arrogant. Soon there is a murder and the game is afoot. Watson tags along as Holmes tries to solve a set of crimes that are baffling police.

It's all very readable and satisfying, in a style similar to what you've seen in Sherlock Holmes movies or TV shows. Conan Doyle's plot moves briskly along. as smooth as a skate on ice. 

Then, just after the halfway mark in the book, Holmes abruptly solves the case and arrests the perpetretor. But he doesn't explain how he solved the case.

You might expect the explanation to immediately follow, but instead the book launches into something called "Part II: The Country of the Saints."

This is an entirely different story, about a man and girl who are rescued from near-death in the American desert by a band of Mormons and their subsequent life in the religious group. There is no Sherlock Holmes, no Watson.

This story is not a not just different in content but in tone as well. Whereas the Sherlock Holmes story was playful and whimiscal, "Country of the Saints" is dark, sad, and grim. 

I wasn't even sure that it could be by the same author and wondered if it had been tacked on to my digital copy of "A Study in Scarlet" by mistake. 

But slowly the two stories start to come together. The first tip-off are some character names shared between the two stories. Eventually, it all makes sense. 

For all its differences, the second half is every bit as readable as the first. It was written by Doyle, who again shows his skill in storytelling. I read the whole book in a swift day and a half.

As strange as the combination of the two stories seemed at first, it does work. Not only does the second story explain the motive for two murders, it provides an appropriate balance of seriousness to the lighter Sherlock Holmes' story. We are talking murder, after all. 

One of the curiosities of this book is Conan Doyle's harsh portrayal of the Mormons as an evil cult that featured forced marriage, and used kidnapping and murder as its tools. A real person, Brigham Young, is portrayed as the brutal leader. 

According to Smithsonian magazines, this image of Mormons was common in 19th century England, perhaps fed by the Latter Day Saints slaughter of 140 people in the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. "At the time he wrote the story, Conan Doyle had never even been to America," said the magazine. 

The Salt Lake Tribune, in 1994, wrote: "From the LDS point of view, A Study in Scarlet was another in a long line of antagonistic Mormon-hating books that made for popular reading. Conan Doyle was not high on their list of favorite people."

Doyle tempered his views on Mormons latter in life and even came to Utah to speak.