Conan Doyle takes a turn as Sherlock Holmes in this historical curiosity by a NY Times obit writer. In late-Victorian Scotland, the mystery writer flexed his own detective muscles by investigating a real-life murder & helping free a wrongfully convicted man. It’s duller than it sounds. Conan Doyle bios (like Michael Sims’ Arthur and Sherlock) have already told the backstory. The mundane murder ain’t the Dreyfus Affair. And the author’s awe for Conan Doyle’s deductive powers feels like a stretch. (He never even leaves his living room.) Too elementary, Watson.

Excellent. Now off to read everything this book cited.

Conan Doyle is mostly known for his clever detective Sherlock Holmes (and for going down the less respectable road of spiritualist in his older years). In real life, Conan Doyle solved a couple of crimes the exonerated individuals who were falsely accused and convicted of murder. This is the story of Oscar Slater who spent 18 years in prison after being convicted of the brutal murder of a rich old lady who he had never met or crossed paths with. Guilty of being a gambler, con man, possibly a pimp, and a Jew, Slater was followed to America, where he was initially tried for the murder, returned to Scotland in custody, and then tried and sentenced based on a weak case. While his Victorian sensibilities were at odd with the man, Conan Doyle couldn't let an obvious case of injustice go unchallenged.

Adult.

Easy, intriguing read. Worthwhile for fans of ACD himself.

This book was so interesting! I really enjoyed the style it was written in, and the author makes the case very clearly. There was a lot of background on all the important figures, from Conan Doyle's earlier sleuthing to Slater's family back home. It gave the book more of a sense of continuity and reality. It wasn't just a clever story an author came up with, it was a real miscarriage of justice that hurt real people. Of course I'd have liked to find out who the real murderer was, but more than a century on that just isn't feasible. To me, this was more about the attitudes and criminal justice system of the age, and I would have liked to read more about that from this author. I'll look out for her other books.

Thoroughly enjoyable revisit to the story of Oscar Slater. Well written, though stylistically choppy, the book gives an exciting recounting of the story of one of Scotland’s most outrageous miscarriages of justice.

In parts repetitive, and tending to wander off on tangents occasionally (perhaps to pad the story out to book size), this is nonetheless a gripping and interesting read.

As an aside, she refers on several occasions to the legal writer William Roughead. He attended Slater’s trial and wrote about it at the time, and I can recommend his writing on true crime cases in Scotland.

Because I write about Victorian literature – and write neo-Victorian literature! – I am always interested in Victorian history and how it manifests or is read in the modern day. Although this book is now a few years old, it's underpinned by strong research that presents an interesting window into one of the most notorious crimes in fin-de-siècle Scotland, the murder of Marion Gilchrist. The crime was originally 'solved' with the arrest and conviction of Oscar Slater (a German Jew, born Oscar Joseph Leschziner). However, it should have been clear almost immediately that there was no reasonable evidence against him, and the Oscar Slater case is now a renowned miscarriage of justice, reflected in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Fox's book sets out how the miscarriage of justice was perpetuated and, ultimately, overturned. Slater was a victim of the prejudices of the time, as well as a blinkered rush to conclude a nasty case, and a refusal to challenge a case once settled. The absence of good legal counsel or a criminal appeal court in Scotland certainly helped seal his fate. Fox's prose is neat and precise in setting out the case, and the book is well researched.

However, I haven't rated this more highly because I found it rather slow in places. There is less Conan Doyle than one might expect based on the title, but I would much rather have read more about his involvement and less about Oscar Slater's family exchanges. (This was a feature, too, in Murder by the Book, and it's understandable from a marketing perspective, but always a little bit of a disappointment.) Or, alternatively, more about the early-twentieth-century criminal justice system and its reforms pre- and post-Slater, as there were manifestly structural problems that weighed against Slater. In the absence of either slants, the book fell a bit flat for me.

3.5 probably, but rounding down. the second half is not so good as the first half; it sets up intriguing premises that do not follow through.