Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well aware of his predecessors and the expectation for this then-new genre. The narrator himself offers meta textual acknowledgement in an interesting comparison of Sherlock Holmes with Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin and shortly after Émile Gaboriau’s Lecoq:

“You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.”

Which Sherlock Holmes does not take as a compliment, though he acknowledges the good intention. And later:

“‘Have you read Gaboriau’s works?’ I asked. ‘Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?’”

Which also offends Mr. Holmes, for after some arguments of his own he answers, “It might be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid.”

So while A Study in Scarlet is a wobbly start into the detective genre due to its diversion into the American desert, with this debut the narrator promises readers a new, unique, and more analytical detective series than existed before. Doyle fully lives up to his promises, as both his success and the quality of the stories that follow in the Sherlock Holmes series attest.

Twisty plot and morally challenging theme

A Study in Scarlet is not entirely plot-focused, nor only character-driven, which, according to Raymond Chandler, a fellow detective story author, is essential for this genre. He defines the perfect story model as an “adventure in search of a hidden truth,” and therefore gives rigid demands to theme.

The narrator in The Honour of the Flag, for example, tries to achieve a similar effect by relying on court decisions, but, unlike the narrator in A Study in Scarlet, does not gain the modern reader’s sympathy for the evil doer. The deviation does impact pacing, though.

A Study in Scarlet (1887) contains humorous prose

In A Study in Scarlet, the image-filled prose, fledged with small archaisms, a tad of dialect, and truly historical world views, sparkles with humor. With the interactions between strong characters, the narrator manages to make us smirk almost on every page while the story unfolds in London.

Later on, Sherlock Holmes lets the officer pair Gregson and Lestrade loose on their hot scents, knowing they will return with more questions and fewer answers, and when he listens to each of their report, for they come to tell him proudly, Sherlock says he considers his news quite exciting, and yawns. It is also humorous how much detail the officers remark on, as if trying to impress Sherlock, and with this only show the reader how far off the track they have gone.

The narrator sometimes also uses humorous characterizations such as when he describes Lestrade as “lean and ferret-like as ever,” which does not distract from serving as a vivid and necessary characterization. The narrator is, however, also a man of his time when he attributes physical appearance as giving clues to character. It was a popular belief in the nineteenth century, and the narrator has this view when he describes Sherlock Holmes’ physical appearance:

“His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded [opium]; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in A Study in Scarlet

This truly historical world view shows even more when Sherlock Holmes uses his skills of deduction to discover the work of the man standing across the street:

“‘He was a man with some amount of self-importance and a certain air of command. You must have observed the way in which he held his head and swung his cane. A steady, respectable, middle-aged man, too, on the face of him—all facts which led me to believe that he had been a sergeant.’”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in A Study in Scarlet

It may be true that a man’s work was easier to discern back then, but it still seems unrealistic to a modern reader. Many jobs common at the time of penning have been lost, such as Boot (British, dated: a person employed in a hotel to clean boots and shoes, Oxford Dictionary of English), milk boy, or the racist “street Arabs” Sherlock employs, among other lost occupations. This truly historical world view is underscored with archaisms and dialect, much out of use nowadays in fiction. For example, we would not describe people lingering on the street as “loafers,” or describe someone as “dumbfoundered,” though it would surprise us to read someone “Ain’t afeared,” or hear an exclamation of “The last ink,” when someone solves a case. But these expressions also paint a historical picture and add to the vividness. 

Doyle’s imagery also adds to the vividness of his prose. For example, when Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson discuss Darwin’s theory, relatively young back then:

“There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in A Study in Scarlet

The most prominent and entertaining of Doyle’s narrative features, and which has captured readers for centuries, is his subtle and universal humor. A consulting detective didn’t exist back then, nor does it now, and no official detective would be happy to feel himself forced to consult an “amateur.”

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