Research Catalog

Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer

Title
Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer / Margalit Fox.
Author
Fox, Margalit
Publication
New York : Random House, [2018]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
Request for On-site UseRequest Scan

Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.

TextUse in library JFD 18-3736Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
xxvii, 319 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps; 22 cm
Summary
  • "In this thrilling true-crime procedural, the creator of Sherlock Holmes uses his unparalleled detective skills to exonerate a German Jew wrongly convicted of murder"--
  • "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 story--in which Conan Doyle becomes a real-life detective on an actual murder case. In [this book], Margalit Fox takes us step by step inside Conan Doyle's investigative process and illuminates a murder mystery that is also a morality play for our time--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 Slater--an immigrant Jewish cardsharp--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 Slater's freedom. Margalit Fox ... 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."--Dust jacket.
Subjects
Genre/Form
True crime stories.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-308) and index.
Contents
Prologue: Prisoner 2988 -- Book one: Diamonds. A footfall on the stair ; The mysterious Mr. Anderson ; The knight-errant ; The man in the Donegal cap -- Book two: Blood. Traces ; The original Sherlock Holmes ; The art of reasoning backward ; A case of identity -- Book three: Granite. The trap door ; "Until he be dead" ; The cold cruel sea ; Arthur Conan Doyle, consulting detective ; The strange case of George Edalji ; Prisoner 1992 -- Book four: Paper. "You know my method" ; The ruin of John Thomson Trench ; Cannibals included ; The purloined brooch ; The gates of Peterhead ; More light, more justice ; The knight and the knave -- Epilogue: What became of them.
Call Number
JFD 18-3736
ISBN
  • 9780399589454
  • 0399589457
LCCN
  • 2017058151
  • 40028301838
OCLC
1030445407
Author
Fox, Margalit, author.
Title
Conan Doyle for the defense : the true story of a sensational British murder, a quest for justice, and the world's most famous detective writer / Margalit Fox.
Publisher
New York : Random House, [2018]
Edition
First U.S. edition.
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-308) and index.
Other Standard Identifier
40028301838
Research Call Number
JFD 18-3736
View in Legacy Catalog