Conan Doyle For The Defence by Margalit Fox

Author : Margalit Fox
Title : Conan Doyle For The Defence
Published : 2018
Publisher : Profile Books
Pages : 344
Genre : Biography / True Crime

     Just before Christmas 1908, Marion Gilchrist, a wealthy 82-year-old spinster, was found bludgeoned to death in her Glasgow home. A valuable diamond brooch was missing, and police soon fastened on a suspect - Oscar Slater, a Jewish immigrant who was rumored to have a disreputable character. Slater had an alibi but was nonetheless convicted and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in the notorious Peterhead Prison. Seventeen years later, a convict called William Gordon was released from Peterhead. Concealed in a false tooth was a message, addressed to the only man Slater thought could help him - Arthur Conan Doyle. Always a champion of the downtrodden, Conan Doyle turned his formidable talents to freeing Slater, deploying a forensic mind worthy of Sherlock Holmes. 

     Conan Doyle is one of those writers who's names I think will never fade from people's minds. His creation has to be one of the most well known fictional charters to ever grace the page. If not through his books, I would imagine that it would be hard to escape the films or T.V shows. Sherlock Holmes is one of those characters that is hard to escape. But when someone suggested to me this book I became aware that I did not know much of the man himself. It's one of those funny things that a person's work can be so well known but they themselves remain an enigma. This I suspect is through my own lacking. Too often I greatly enjoy an author's work with little knowledge of who they are themselves. So with this in mind, I was left curious as to how the most well-known crime writer could find himself in the mix of a true-crime book.

     Slater is a name that would not ring any bells in the mind of most readers or for that matter anyone walking the earth. He is someone how has been relegated to history amongst the great unknown. This is just the way of the world, he was no more famous than anyone of us if not for his connection to Doyle.  But like so many that find themselves imprisoned behind bars, he was a man who screamed his innocents. And if not for some grain of truth to peak Doyle's curiosity I guess this book would never have come to be. In many ways, it is a murder that would seem like a great many others to have taken place. It is not pleasant in its details but should it not have been for a turn of events would never have been given a second thought to after the judge brought down his hammer. What befell Oscar Slater is something that I would not really wish upon anyone no matter how much I disliked them. The author has clearly done a great deal of research digging into long dusty files to pull apart every aspect of the case and deliver it to us in the most straight forward and clear way. all the while delving an interesting tail. 

     As true crime novels go this author has done an amazing job in doing what any true crime novel should. But for me what raises this book up, is her research into Conan Doyle himself.  Throughout this work, we get to pull back the curtain on this man. I cannot count all the new information I have learned about this man. For me, it was interesting to see the blurring between the very real man and his creation. As you progress through the book you start to realize that the way in which Holmes sets about solving a crime are principles Doyle applied to real cases himself. In our modern-day and age, it seems truly absurd for an author to set about trying to solve a case by getting his hands truly dirty in the manner of Doyle. But then again perhaps this is the realm of some true-crime writers, they too are following in the footsteps of one of our greatest authors.  Whichever way you look at it Fox has delivered a book that contains the lives of two men both important in there own ways. It is simply a matter that one's name is famous the world over and the other through the words she has put into this book.

     This is a book that I am very great full to have been able to read. It has done what any nonfiction book should truly do and that is to expand my knowledge in it's chosen field.  I would say it has also given me a greater connection to Conan Doyle.  In understanding the man, it gave me a better understanding of his most famous creation. She also shows us that justice can sometimes not go the way we would expect.