First published in 1887, A Study in Scarlet is the first crime that Sherlock Holmes solves with his companion Doctor Watson. A murder that leaves the Police clueless is brilliantly solved by the master detectives - Holmes and Watson. The book's title is derived from a speech that Holmes gives to his companion Doctor Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his ""study in scarlet"": ""There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.""