By Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes solves his first murder
Subject
Themes
A dead man is found in an empty house in Brixton Road. His name is Enoch Drebber, an American from Cleveland, Ohio. There is no wound on his body and no obvious cause of death, only bloodstains on the floor and an expression of terror frozen on his face. The word RACHE is written on the wall in blood. Scotland Yard is baffled.
A dead man is found in an empty house in Brixton Road. His name is Enoch Drebber, an American from Cleveland, Ohio. There is no wound on his body and no obvious cause of death, only bloodstains on the floor and an expression of terror frozen on his face. The word RACHE is written on the wall in…
Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet in 1887, in Beeton's Christmas Annual. It was the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, and it arrived at a moment of considerable transformation in both science and detection. The late Victorian period had seen the emergence of forensic science as a…
Holmes's ability to solve the Brixton Road murder before either Scotland Yard inspector has identified the victim's cause of death is not presented as intuition or inspiration. It is presented as a learned, disciplined skill that anyone could theoretically acquire and that Holmes has spent years…
Jefferson Hope kills two men in London and describes himself at Scotland Yard not as a murderer but as an officer of justice. The claim is not made defensively or in panic; it is stated with the calm of a man who has considered the matter carefully over a long period and arrived at a conclusion he…
The Mormon community in the novel begins as rescue. A vast column of migrants crosses the alkali desert, finds two people dying on a crag, and brings them into the fold in exchange for a simple pledge of faith. The exchange seems fair, even generous: life for belief. Ferrier agrees without…
The novel's London story and its Utah backstory are connected by a single thread: the question of what happens when the formal mechanisms of justice fail or are unavailable. In both settings, justice as an institutional process produces outcomes that are either wrong or absent. The question the…
The London murder investigation is the visible surface of a story whose actual substance lies buried thirty years in the past on the other side of the Atlantic. The novel's peculiar structure, which breaks at its midpoint and transports the reader to the American West in 1847, is not a digression.…
Sherlock Holmes is introduced to the reader through the eyes of a man who cannot quite account for him. Watson meets him in a hospital laboratory, announces that he has been in Afghanistan without being asked, and provides no explanation. He is courteous, direct, and entirely opaque. The person…
Dr. John H. Watson arrives in London as a man with no clear place in the world. An army surgeon invalided home from Afghanistan after a bullet shattered his shoulder at Maiwand, he drifts through the city on a pension too small to sustain him and without any apparent direction. He is, at the start…
Jefferson Hope is the murderer at the centre of the London mystery, and also, as the novel eventually makes clear, the victim of an older injustice. He killed Drebber and Stangerson deliberately, across a span of more than twenty years, and he dies in his cell the night of his arrest, before any…
Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard is the senior police officer most closely involved in the Brixton Road murder, and his role in the investigation is defined largely by its contrast with Holmes's. He is described as lean and ferret-like, with dark eyes that are restless and sharp without quite…
Inspector Gregson is Lestrade's rival at Scotland Yard and the other senior police officer investigating the Brixton Road murder. Holmes describes him as the smartest of the Scotland Yard detectives, which is a relatively contained compliment given the company. Gregson is tall, flaxen-haired, and…
John Ferrier is the only survivor of a wagon party that perishes in the American alkali desert, saved from death by a Mormon migration column and absorbed into their community at a price that will eventually cost him everything. He is a frontiersman and hunter, gaunt and weatherbeaten when first…
Dr. John H. Watson returns to London broken and without purpose. An army surgeon invalided home from Afghanistan after a Jezail bullet shattered his shoulder at the Battle of Maiwand, he drifts through the city on a meagre pension, unable to afford his hotel yet unwilling to leave. A chance…
A dead man lies in an empty house in Lauriston Gardens. His name is Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, and there is no wound on his body. The room has bloodstains but no clear cause of death. His face is locked into an expression of terror and revulsion. Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade of Scotland…
Holmes returns from his afternoon concert in good spirits while Watson sits at 221B still unsettled by the events at Brixton Road. Holmes has already placed an advertisement in the evening papers: a plain gold wedding ring found in Brixton Road, apply to Dr. Watson at the Baker Street address…
Lestrade's announcement that Joseph Stangerson has been murdered in his hotel room brings the room at Baker Street to a halt. Gregson goes pale. Holmes says only "the plot thickens" and asks for every detail. What Lestrade describes is methodical and cold: a trail of blood under the door,…
The years in Salt Lake City are prosperous ones for John Ferrier. The Mormon settlement grows rapidly under Brigham Young's direction, farmland spreading across the valley floor and the great temple rising above it. Ferrier earns a large farm as reward for his service on the journey west, and…
The countdown begins the night Ferrier drives the two young Mormon suitors from his farm. They arrive uninvited, bickering over who has the stronger claim on Lucy, and Ferrier sends them out with enough force that Lucy has to prevent him from fetching his gun. The response comes that same night. A…
Jefferson Hope arrives at Scotland Yard calm and without resistance. His fight is over. Watson examines him and finds an aortic aneurism in an advanced state, likely to rupture within days. Hope asks to tell his story while he is still capable of telling it. He does not want to die remembered simply…
Sherlock Holmes is introduced to the reader through the eyes of a man who cannot quite account for him. Watson meets him in a hospital laboratory, announces that he has been in Afghanistan without being asked, and provides no explanation. He is courteous, direct, and entirely opaque. The person…
Dr. John H. Watson arrives in London as a man with no clear place in the world. An army surgeon invalided home from Afghanistan after a bullet shattered his shoulder at Maiwand, he drifts through the city on a pension too small to sustain him and without any apparent direction. He is, at the start…
Jefferson Hope is the murderer at the centre of the London mystery, and also, as the novel eventually makes clear, the victim of an older injustice. He killed Drebber and Stangerson deliberately, across a span of more than twenty years, and he dies in his cell the night of his arrest, before any…
Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard is the senior police officer most closely involved in the Brixton Road murder, and his role in the investigation is defined largely by its contrast with Holmes's. He is described as lean and ferret-like, with dark eyes that are restless and sharp without quite…
Inspector Gregson is Lestrade's rival at Scotland Yard and the other senior police officer investigating the Brixton Road murder. Holmes describes him as the smartest of the Scotland Yard detectives, which is a relatively contained compliment given the company. Gregson is tall, flaxen-haired, and…
John Ferrier is the only survivor of a wagon party that perishes in the American alkali desert, saved from death by a Mormon migration column and absorbed into their community at a price that will eventually cost him everything. He is a frontiersman and hunter, gaunt and weatherbeaten when first…
By Arthur Conan Doyle
Subject
Themes
A dead man is found in an empty house in Brixton Road. His name is Enoch Drebber, an American from Cleveland, Ohio. There is no wound on his body and no obvious cause of death, only bloodstains on the floor and an expression of terror frozen on his face. The word RACHE is written on the wall in blood. Scotland Yard is baffled.