Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder - Margalit Fox Audiobook

Written by Margalit Fox
Read by Peter Forbes
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

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

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: June 26, 2018
Duration: 07:46:54

A sensational Edwardian murder. A scandalous wrongful conviction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the rescue—a true story.

After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world renowned as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom.

With “an eye for the telling detail, a forensic sense of evidence and a relish for research” (The Wall Street Journal), Margalit Fox immerses readers in the science of Edwardian crime detection and illuminates a watershed moment in its history, when reflexive prejudice began to be replaced by reason and the scientific method.

“Peter Forbes provides an impeccable narration of the shocking 1908 murder of an elderly Glasgow woman. Forbes highlights the rush to judgment to convict the most convenient suspect, Oscar Slater, a Jewish immigrant who was a professional gambler. … Forbes skillfully delivers documents, newspaper articles, court transcriptions, eyewitness statements, and poignant letters between Slater and his family illustrating the ways Slater’s lifestyle was an affront to the rigid Victorian social order. By using the Sherlockian technique of deduction, Forbes shows how Conan Doyle proved that the original trial offered no substantial evidence and was filled with “creative” facts. It took 18 years, but Slater was eventually released.”—AudioFile