Bookless and broke on a seven-hour bus ride, I downloaded a free version of "A Study in Scarlet" on my cellphone, and finished it on the way home. Being unfamiliar with the very first Sherlock Holmes story ever written felt like a serious gap in my reading career, and the lengthy commute seemed like the perfect time frame with which to fill this gap. "A Study in Scarlet" is a relatively short novel, and while it was in many ways exactly what I was expecting from Doyle, the structure of the story was quite a bit different from the shorter Sherlock stories I had previously read.

For instance, half of this book is classic Sherlock, but the second half is a dark Western revenge tale about evil Mormon polygamists. It took me a few pages to realize that I was not reading an unrelated story altogether. it turned out to be a very lengthy explanation of what led to the murders in London. I wasn't a huge fan of this aspect of the story, but it kept me relatively engaged. I admit it was kind of interesting to get some historical background on Mormonism.

This wasn't my favourite Doyle story, but it provided lots of fascinating character tidbits that the shorter stories would never allow for. Is it awful that I didn't know Sherlock started out working as a chemist?

Overall, I give this book three Mormon wives out of five.