A Study in Scarlet
A reprint from the reminiscences
of John H. Watson, M.D.
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy world of criminality and violence. Accompanying Holmes to a house in south London, Watson is startled to find a dead man whose face is contorted in a rictus of horror. There is no mark of violence on the body yet a single word is written in blood on the wall. Dr Watson is as baffled as the police, but Holmes' brilliant analytical skills soon uncover a trail of murder, revenge and lost love...

A Study in Scarlet was Sherlock Holmes' first novel and was an immediate success. Sherlock, with his cold deductive mind, violin playing and cocaine addiction, fascinated the reading public, and laid the foundation for the many Sherlock Holmes books and short stories that were to follow over the next three decades. In this first work, all the winning ingredient of a Holmes novel appear fully-formed: a murder, puzzling clues, evil villains, startling locations and an elegant, surprising solution.