Tea Time returns to Baker Street with the adventure that began it all!
A Study in Scarlet (presented in four parts, beginning today)
With this story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's introduces
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become two of the most famous
characters in popular fiction. The title is derived from a speech given by
Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the
nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as
his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder
running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and
isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
The novel is written in two major sections. Part I begins by establishing the role of Dr.
Watson as narrator and sets up the narrative conceit that the work to follow is
not fiction. It charts the introduction
of Holmes and Watson, their installation at 221B Baker Street, and the discovery of one
Enoch Drebber - dead on a crime scene that displays plenty of blood, but no
wound on the corpse. Then there's the enigmatic scrawling in blood of the word
"RACHE" in the nearby plaster.
A Study in Scarlet attracted little public interest when it
first appeared. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine in which the story
first appeared, Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, are known to exist now and
they have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories
featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in
the original canon.
This story was the first work of detective fiction to
incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool.
Corwyn Allen, Kayden Oconnell, and Caledonia Skytower live
in voice, in the Fireside Room (lower level) at Seanchai Library on Holly Kai.
A Study in Scarlet 
