A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet, the 1887 novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes, begins with two men sharing rooms in London and a dead man in an empty house. Much of its pleasure lies in watching Watson work out what his strange flatmate does for a living, then seeing the method applied to cigar ash and footprints. Halfway through, the book abandons London for the Utah desert and a Mormon settlement of the 1840s, told as lurid melodrama, with a new cast and a darker mood.

In Vietnamese the two halves feel like separate books. The London chapters are lively talk: Holmes and Watson stay on level tôi and anh, and sentences stay manageable. Part 2 is harder, especially The Flower of Utah and The Avenging Angels, which are almost solid narration, with long sentences and bookish description. There, power shows in the pronouns: the Mormon leader calls a farmer ngươi and himself ta, and the farmer answers with a careful tôi.