A Study in Scarlet

My first Sherlock Holmes novel! Definitely slower-paced than I was expecting, but I enjoyed it, even though it took me a long time to get through this short book because I kept trying to read it before bed. I can definitely see the bones that have made these stories such compelling movies, TV shows and book adaptations, and I'll probably read more (considering this was the first novel in one of those Barnes and Noble collections of all the Sherlock Holmes books, which my husband brought to our marriage - one of the first times Matt read something before I did!).

Because I'm likely to forget which is which when reading a mystery series: rich man Drebber and his secretary Stangerson are murdered due to a 20-year-old love feud between Jefferson Hope (a "Gentile" engaged to marry the daughter of a semi-Mormon rich man), and Drebber/Stangerson (the former-Mormon fundamentalist men who kidnapped her when she tried to escape the Mormon church, whose leadership was trying to force her to choose her marriage between the two Mormon men instead of marrying the man she actually loved, and the woman's immediate death after marrying Drebber, who might have also killed her father). Hoo boy, that was complicated now that I wrote it out. Can't believe all that was in 96 pages. And also, this part was much more interesting than the parts where Sherlock plays his violin and thinks.