A Study in Scarlet

I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Two-part engine: London RACHE murders + Utah Mormon backstory resolved by the cabman-arrest and Hope's aneurysm death-with-confession; canonical detective plot with imperial flashback, so plot scores 86.

the marks of the horse's hoofs, too, the outline of one of which was far more clearly cut than that of the other three, showing that that was a new shoe.

Holmes + Watson + Lestrade + Gregson + Jefferson Hope + John Ferrier + Lucy Ferrier + the cabman-Simmons carry a Victorian-canonical cast that internationalizes the crime across two continents, so cast scores 90.

a four-wheeled cab, which was drawn by a horse with three old shoes and one new one on his off fore leg. In all probability the murderer had a florid face, and the finger-nails of his right hand were remarkably long.

Six deductions in a single paragraph keep Part I taut; the Utah flashback at ~50% slows the engine before the cabman-arrest sequence restores velocity, so pace scores 84.

I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

The "great cesspool" Beeton's debut paragraph and Holmes's clipped reportage (RACHE for revenge, four shoes, six-feet-high writing) fuse imperial-Beeton's voice with science-of-deduction, so prose scores 88.

Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehmgericht, nor the Secret Societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the State of Utah. Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard.

1847–60 Utah Mormonism (Salt Lake City, Eagle Cañon, the Holy Four, Danite avenging angels) and 1880s London (Criterion Bar, Lauriston Gardens, Halliday's Private Hotel) collide inside one novel via Jefferson Hope's twenty-year transatlantic chase, so world scores 88.

"Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?" he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. "You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut."

Stamford's Maiwand-wound reunion at the Criterion Bar launches the Holmes-Watson pairing and the medical-military narrator convention that defines detective fiction, so hook scores 92.

From under the door there curled a little red ribbon of blood, which had meandered across the passage and formed a little pool along the skirting at the other side.

First Holmes-Watson novel + first science-of-deduction procedural + first imperial-murder-twist frame + first cabman-arrest detective resolution + first Watson-as-publisher narrator; the Sherlockian template for mystery fiction, so innov scores 96.

the murder of Stangerson was an incident which was entirely unexpected, but which could hardly in any case have been prevented. Through it, as you know, I came into possession of the pills, the existence of which I had already surmised.

The Echo notice closing both Hope's death-by-aneurysm and the Watson-marriage frame, plus Holmes's chain-of-logical-sequences retrospective, closes the London crime and the Mormon backstory at once, so ending scores 90.