The True Crime Files of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I loved the investigative work of Arthur Conan Doyle in his snippets from actual cases of his day and generation. Once you start reading this fascinating book you will not be able to put it down. It beats anything from modern true crime (which I normally enjoy) because it has the historical significance and an almost otherworldly feel to it. Great book!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was not only a writer: he was a scientist, physician, political activist and an amateur detective himself. Two actual criminal cases same to his attention and inspired him to become involved: these two cases are documented in the True Crime Files Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the first time and will represent a 'must' for any avid Doyle reader surprised to find something new.

In 1903, there occurred an outbreak of animal maiming; farm animals were found horribly mutilated and left to die. Obviously a sick hand was at work. George Edalji, a 30-year-old solicitor became the suspect of authorities. At best George can be describes as a shy, anxious and physically quite frail, not exactly the hardened criminal type. On the evening of the grave event George returned home from work to take a short stroll before dinner, that night in the field less than a mile from his home, someone disemboweled a pony and left it to die. The police under pressure to apprehend the culprit arrested George and charged him with the crime. Conan Doyle on looking at the evidence decided a grave miscarriage of justice had occurred. Conan went out on a campaign to set the record straight and in doing so staked his reputation on the innocence of Edalji; condemned to seven years penal servitude by a country magistrate.Oscar Slater a pimp, hustler and a draft dodging German, had abandoned his wife and ran away with his mistress. On the eve of December as Oscar was planning to migrate to America, a few blocks away Marion Gilchrist was murdered by an intruder after he jewels. The case against Slater was circumstantial at best. Oscar was found guilty for the crime and sentenced; despite mountain evidence proving his innocence. In this case Oscar began a letter campaign and appealed to judges to re-open the case and correct the wrongs done.In both the cases Conan Doyle has shown his immense observation and deduction techniques to illustrate the grave injustice done.

I believe this book is more than a book just for Sherlock Holmes fans or Conan Doyle fans. It is for anyone who wants to match his or her wits against the Great Detective himself, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The authors or editors of this book have taken articles, letters to the editor, trial transcripts, and even handwriting samples and reproduced them from the pages of the Daily Telegraph of London, a paper that is still going strong today. They can match wits with Conan Doyle as he tries to solve the mystery of George Edalji. In a similar fashion they can follow along with the reasoning of Sir Arthur as he probes the case of Oscar Slater, a German-born jew convicted of jewel theft and murder in Glasgow. This is a book that lets anyone interested in mysteries, particularly true ones, be the judge of whether the men were innocent or guity as charged.

Truth is always stranger than fiction. In this interesting book, we see the messiness of real cases and the potential for miscarriages of justice. What's a intrepid author of detective stories to do but dive right in!This book will be most appealing to those who want to see how a writer of detective fiction could do with really solving cases. If you prefer the neatness of fiction, you will probably not enjoy this book.The book begins with a brief biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. At the end of the biography is a brief overview of the two real-life crime cases in which he became involved after the fact in trying to help people he viewed as innocent. In the first case, that of George Ernest Thompson Edalji, a young solicitor of exemplary character is accused and convicted of mutilating a horse. The man had long been the object of accusatory letters to the police. The motive seems to have been prejudice against a family of Indian descent While Mr. Edalji was in prison, Sir Arthur began a newspaper campaign to free Mr. Edalji. In the course of trying to free Mr. Edalji, Sir Arthur makes lots of mistakes that delay the progress of the public protest. Pretending to know more about optics than he did, Doyle created much confusion that initially made some think the worse of Mr. Edalji. Gradually, the right evidence emerged. One of the most fascinating parts of the case is the public challenge that Sir Arthur made to the conclusions of a handwriting "expert." Unlike fictional stories, there are loose ends that will never be resolved. That makes thinking about the case all that much more interesting. Most of the book is made up of this case. The material includes the letters by Sir Arthur to the newspapers, official reports, letters to the editors by those who support and oppose Sir Arthur's attempts, expert commentaries, and evaluations by other media of the case. Mr. Edalji was released from imprisonment after 3 years, but given no pardon. Sir Arthur kept on. Eventually, a commission was established that found Mr. Edalji deserved a pardon. Along the way, you will find many humorous circumstances. The police appear to have fabricated evidence. The police also suspected that Mr. Edalji might molest an animal and had him under surveillance. Their case depended on Mr. Edalji having sneaked past four policemen from a locked room in which he slept with his light-sleeping father, the vicar. Mr. Edalji was so nearsighted that he could probably not have even found the animal in the dark. The second case concerns Oscar Slater, a "blackguard" who was German Jew by origin. Based on questionable eyewitness testimony, Mr. Slater was brought back from New York to stand trial for beating an elderly woman to death to get her diamond brooch. The closest connection that Mr. Slater had was that he had pawned a different diamond brooch of similar value belonging to his live-in lady friend at about t