A Study in Scarlet

This is where it all begins: an invalided army doctor back from Afghanistan needs cheap lodgings, and a friend knows an odd fellow with rooms at 221B Baker Street. Watson's new flatmate deduces strangers' lives at a glance, keeps chemical experiments and tobacco in equal disorder, and is consulted (by the police themselves) when a corpse turns up in an empty Brixton house with a word scrawled in blood on the wall and no wound on the body.

Conan Doyle then does something bold with the novel's second half, leaping continents and decades to uncover the long fuse of vengeance behind the crime before returning Holmes to explain everything with infuriating ease. As the first Sherlock Holmes story ever written, it is both a brisk, satisfying mystery and the birth record of the most famous friendship in detective fiction.

At roughly 44,800 words, A Study in Scarlet runs about 5 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

A Study in Scarlet is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “A Study in Scarlet” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.