Woke John Watson

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Format: Digital (ty Project Gutenberg)

After listening to a recent episode of the Queer as Fact podcast, I was reminded that I’ve never actually read the Holmes novels before, so these were fun. Holmes does his thing, Watson is sufficiently impressed, it’s all super British etc. Then Doyle throws in 5 full chapters of MORMONS 😭 (though it is very funny to treat Mormonism as an exotic American curiosity as Doyle does).

The Sign of the Four did feel like the weaker of the two: barring the FIVE chapters of Mormon backstory, the majority of A Study in Scarlet is genuinely devoted to either setting up Holmes and Watson or following Holmes through his investigation - past the initial observations by Holmes in The Sign of the Four, essentially the entire rest of the book just involves tracing the tracks of the criminals, primarily with the help of a bloodhound, with little or no mystery remaining for Holmes to solve except where they hid a getaway boat. Also, you have to struggle through random persistent racism towards Indians and Andaman Islanders in particular, with the only bright spots being #woke king John Watson silently defending women in his internal monologue 😤.