Avid reader of narrative and lover of classic books, without knowing how, I reached this age in my life without having read any fiction of one of the most famous characters in world literature; which is why, a few days ago, I tried to solve that situation. "A Study in scarlet" represents the first appearance of the legendary Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in history, fictional or real, created by Arthur Conan Doyle at the end of the 19th century. It's true that A. Dupin, the detective of Edgar Allan Poe, is a previous character (40 years before Holmes) and incarnated for the first time in history a character who by means of deductive logic solved mysteries. However, neither Dupin, nor the Poirot of Agatha Christie, nor any other, enjoys the global recognition of the inhabitant of Baker Street.

In this novel we meet Holmes through his companion and later inseparable friend Dr. Watson, who tells the story. In their first meeting, Watson, and a mutual friend of both, find Holmes working on a reagent for bloodstains and he guesses correctly that Watson was in Afghanistan, without being able to know it beforehand. How did he do it? he explains:

“The train of reasoning ran, `Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan”

Here is the line of thought of a man who, although a master of observation, is not graduated, is not a professional in any area, much less a scholar in multiple fields. In Watson's words: "His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge". Following that same way of thinking, Sherlock Holmes discovers the perpetrator of two murders that are presented in the novel, using his analytical reasoning, or backwards, as he calls it:

“Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result.”

Without revealing here the crime, the motives, or the way in which they were solved (I don't wanna ruin the surprise for the possible readers) I want to highlight besides the genius of the detective, the moral dilemma that the author poses in the work. The murderer being caught and accused, does not deny his crime. On the contrary, he confesses it and shows no regret: “You may consider me to be a murderer; but I hold that I am just as much an officer of justice as you are.”

Faced with the impossibility of obtaining evidence to condemn his enemies, this man decides to take justice by his hand, becoming judge, jury and executioner. However, as it is seen, it's not the right action and that's why he must appear before that same justice in the name of which he claims to have acted. That is, he consummates his revenge, but he doesn't emerge unscathed from the situation, he must pay for his crimes in the same way that he made them pay theirs to their victims.

Going back to the eccentric detective, Sherlock Holmes shows a declared arrogance and superiority in front of other fiction detectives, whom he knows and with whom Dr. Watson compares him to when they have just met ("Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow." ; "Lecoq was a miserable bungler" ) and also in front of himself, since when he seems to show a trace of humility, he immediately compensates the possible "damage" to his image with a new presumption to balance things:

“If my view of the case is correct, and I have every reason to believe that it is...”

I greatly appreciate the work of Edgar Allan Poe and I give him all the credit he deserves for having created the first detective of fiction and with him a whole new literary genre, the detective novel, but I must admit that Holmes's superior fame over Dupin is due that when the latter is very quiet and parsimonious, the other one is dynamic and talkative; that, along with his science and his charisma, make him a more endearing character than his predecessor.
In the words of Sherlock Holmes himself, the secret to solve any mystery is, in addition to analytical reasoning, don't rush and wait to get all the necessary information:

“No data yet - he answered - It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment”

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