Blog on A Study in Emerald

Of all the stories I've read in my life, no piece has ever engaged me as deeply as Neil Gaiman's, A Study in Emerald (can't figure out how to underline). The narrator successfully serves as a channel into the world in which he lives, which in this story, is centered around his curious friend, the unnamed consulting detective. The introduction to the detective is enough to make you interested in whatever interests him, because he is so observant, analytical, and as the narrator puts it so plainly: "he was a mystery." Conclusions like this are perfectly placed after descriptions of the detective's curious behavior, giving the reader the feeling that sometimes the narrator's only reason for accepting the detective's behavior is that thinking further into it would prove useless. The reader knows, not only from the descriptions of the detective, but from the narrator's resignation from understanding him, that the detective is strange and intriguing. The detective character acted as a crucial element in making the mystery captivating, because once the detective proves his prowess, it becomes interesting, wondering what he is on to when he examines the crime scene. Suspense builds as we watch the detective piece together details of the case and try to figure it out for himself. I never read Sherlock Holmes, and didn't figure out that this was a parallel until well after I finished reading it, but it is more than the mystery that I enjoyed. The craft of the writing illuminated the characters (such as when the italics for the voices of the royalty, or the note from the obviously intelligent Rache) and it created cool images (the crime scene, described as the work of an artist). The main reason I was entertained by this was that it was a strange story, but not just for the sake of strangeness; it tied together very well, but had some idiosyncratic elements that kept it interesting paragraph by paragraph.