A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes has great powers of deduction. He tells how he identified a person has coming from Afghanistan by seeing characteristics of his appearance. Holmes also talks about how he can identify characteristics of blood. (thus the study in Scarlet). Then the book goes down to the murder mystery they are looking at. They identify an American, Jefferson Hope, that poisoned two others in England. It is a long running revenge tale where Jefferson Hope had wanted mary the girl that one of the men had married. The girl died shortly after. It tied into the Danites and the Mormons. (The girl and her adoptive father were the only survivors of an immigrant group. They then ran into Mormons who took them and offered them a place in Salt Lake if they joined the faith. The man did outwardly, but not inwardly. Things came to a head when as the girl became a marriageable woman. She wanted to marry Hope who was outside the faith. They fled rather than give in.
The depiction of Mormons does portray some of the more extreme, surly characters. The guys that were murdered actively practiced polygamy and wanted to force people into it. They later left the main church in a schism. It talks about a central leadership but seems to get things wrong. It does however respect it as a general movement and the people are not cruel, but they are tight-knit group. Once in power, the oppressed tend to be like those they fled.
Holmes tends to quickly make deductions. How many of these are really accurate?
The book also includes Speckled Band
In this story, a snake is used to attempt to kill somebody. This ends up backfiring and killing the perpetrator instead.
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