Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator

Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder

â€œA wonderfully vivid portrait of the man behind Sherlock Holmes . . . Like all the best historical true crime books, itâ€™s about so much more than crime.â€â€”Tana French, author of In the Woods

One of USA Todayâ€™s â€œFive new books you wonâ€™t want to miss!â€Â

For all the scores of biographies of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the most famous detective in the world, there is no recent book that tells this remarkable storyâ€”in which Conan Doyle becomes a real-life detective on an actual murder case. In Conan Doyle for the Defense, Margalit Fox takes us step by step inside Conan Doyleâ€™s investigative process and illuminates a murder mystery that is also a morality play for our timeâ€”a story of ethnic, religious, and anti-immigrant bias.

In 1908, a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home. The police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slaterâ€”an immigrant Jewish cardsharpâ€”who, despite his obvious innocence, was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor in a brutal Scottish prison. Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was outraged by this injustice and became obsessed with the case. Using the methods of his most famous character, he scoured trial transcripts, newspaper accounts, and eyewitness statements, meticulously noting myriad holes, inconsistencies, and outright fabrications by police and prosecutors. Finally, in 1927, his work won Slaterâ€™s freedom.

Margalit Fox, a celebrated longtime writer for The New York Times, has â€œa nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personalityâ€ (Kathryn Schulz, New York). In Conan Doyle for the Defense, she immerses readers in the science of Edwardian crime detection and illuminates a watershed moment in the history of forensics, when reflexive prejudice began to be replaced by reason and the scientific method.

Praise for Conan Doyle for the Defense

â€œArtful and compelling . . .Â Conan Doyle for the DefenseÂ will captivate almost any reader while being pure catnip for the devotee of true-crime writing.â€â€”The Washington Post

â€œDeveloped with brio . . . [Fox] is excellent in linking the nineteenth-century creation of policing and detection with the development of both detective fiction and the science of forensicsâ€”ballistics, fingerprints, toxicology and serologyâ€”as well as the quasi science of â€˜criminal anthropology.â€™â€â€”The New York Times Book Review
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2018-06-26
UnitCount 1
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2018-06-26
UnitCount	1
Format	Kindle eBook

Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder

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