A01=Margalit Fox
arthur and george
arthur conan doyle
author turned detective
Author_Margalit Fox
Category=DNXC
crime solving
doctor watson
edwardian antisemitism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
falsely accused
famous mysteries
marion gilchrist
scottish history
sherlock holmes
sleuth
the suspicions of mr whicher
true crime
unsolved murder
xenophobia
Product details
- ISBN 9781781253571
- Weight: 260g
- Dimensions: 130 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jun 2019
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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 rumoured 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.
Drawing from original sources including Oscar Slater's prison letters, this is Margalit Fox's vivid and compelling account of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Scottish history.
Margalit Fox is an award-winning senior writer at The New York Times. Her previous book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth (Profile, 2013), about the decipherment of the mysterious Bronze Age script Linear B, received the 2014 William Saroyan Prize for Nonfiction. Find her on Twitter @margalitfox
