A Study in Scarlet

Dr John Watson, back in London from the war in Afghanistan with a wound and a small pension, is looking for cheap lodgings and is introduced to a strange young man in a hospital laboratory who greets him with 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.' They take rooms at 221B Baker Street, and soon Sherlock Holmes is called to an empty house where a man lies dead, with the word 'RACHE' written in blood on the wall. The second half of the book jumps back in time to the American West, among the Mormon settlers of Utah, to tell the story behind the crime.

Arthur Conan Doyle, a young doctor in Southsea, published the novel in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 after several rejections, selling all rights for twenty-five pounds; in his notes the detective was first called Sherrinford Holmes. It is where the most famous partnership in detective fiction begins. The second Holmes novel is The Sign of the Four.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh, trained as a doctor and wrote stories while waiting for patients at his practice in Southsea. Sherlock Holmes, modelled partly on his old teacher Joseph Bell, who could diagnose a patient's life at a glance, first appeared in 1887 and soon made Doyle one of the best-paid writers in the world.

He grew tired of his detective, killed him off in 1893 and was forced by his readers to bring him back. Doyle also wrote historical novels, the adventure The Lost World and campaigns for wrongly convicted men. Start with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles.