“What ineffable twaddle!” I cried, slapping a periodical (about Highways length and breadth; state wise in India) down on the sofa, which had been forcefully fed to me just before this book that I am going to talk about now.
I am staying with such people around me nowadays, who feel that if I love reading, they can bring anything on and I will read it. These silly rascals! The close buddies of my salad days; take advantage of my reading habits customarily. Anyway, we have struck the deal for the evening, I will pay for their espresso shots and they will pay for my foams of macchiato. A perfect foggy winter evening plan with old buddies! (Yes it was still winter when I read this book, I am very lazy in posting reviews).
For as long as I remember I am reading the author after four years. Maybe five. This book begins in the usual prototypical style of the author and what can I say about those hard-headed conversations between Holmes and inspectors trying to solve a murder mystery. Just Perfect! Two inspectors who are dealing with this mystery are Lestrade and Gregson. Holmes says Lestrade is a pick of a bad lot and Gregson is the smartest of Scotland Yard.
‘I don’t deny that it is smartly written. It irritates me though. It seems the theories of some arm-chair lounger who deduct all these neat little paradoxes in the seclusion of his study. It is not practical.’
This thing is said by Dr. Watson to Holmes who is sharing the room with him at Baker Street, after reading an article of an unknown author in a magazine. The article mentions how from a drop of water a logical brain can infer the Atlantic without even going there. Holmes says to Watson later it was he who wrote this!
The interesting fact is that author wrote this book in less than three weeks and the Sherlock Holmes was invented in this book. What happened next? There is no need to say anything! The dialectics and argumentations of the plot since the outset were mind-opening. I think anyone can like those small skirmishes, over the logical deductions, among the detectives. They create humor and curiosity both. But the most exciting thing in this book is the second part. While reaching this segment I suddenly felt as if I was reading a Thomas hardy novel, or even at certain places I remembered H. Rider Haggard. A dry wasteland of Utah, and while I was still in the middle of the story, I felt a strong urge to see the places the author was talking about so I opened the maps and stared at those places for long. The Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, Yellow stone river to Colorado those regions of silence and desolation. How could the scene have been in this region in 1847? A question trimmed in my head.
This book first looked like a murder mystery, then like a travelogue, then a love story, and then flashed in the eye of my mind … valley, gorges, hunting, hunters, defiles, boulders, a great extravagance of natural sprawl. It gave me another sort of a reading experience. You will definitely like the love story too! This was interesting for me to know that while the author was going to get glory with his invention of Holmes in this book he had already begun something else. While a study in scarlet was yet to be published and was doing the rounds of the publishers, Doyle has started working on his first so-called “serious” work, a historical novel. During those days a historical novel was considered as a proper work of a serious novelist. That book was about the account of Micah Clarke. The year was 1889.
This book imparted a flawless reading pleasure, but I did not get carried away by the ending so it fell a bit short of full marks for me. Otherwise a great book for Doyle lovers… No doubt!
It was a mild yet efficacious dose of my ‘whodunnit’ in between my longer reads.
I savored both parts of the book in a very good spirit.
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