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
by Margalit Fox 

Right before Christmas 1908, a very wealthy, old woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in Scotland. The victim, Marion Gilchrist, actually knew that she was going to be killed that particular week.
The following spring, Oscar Slater, a Jewish immigrant from Germany who had recently arrived in Glasgow, was tried and convicted for the crime. This case would be known as the Scottish Dreyfus affair. Slater would end up in in this horrible prison where he was consigned to do hard labor.
Arthur Conan Doyle was incensed by this injustice and for the last twenty years of his life he would scour the transcripts of the trial, read newspaper accounts, and witnesses' "evidence" that they saw Slater coming out of Gilchrist's apartment, finding holes in the story, and numerous lies made by the police and the prosecutors. Conan Doyle knew from the beginning that Slater was innocent. He would use the art of diagnosis, which is how his creation Sherlock Holmes solved all those mysteries. So Conan Doyle became a true-crime investigator ready to do battle.
Conan Doyle for the Defense is a phenomenal book. Author Margalit Fox is one heck of a writer. She has written some other books and now I can't wait to dive into them. It's not surprising that Arthur Conan Doyle would become a detective in real life. His stories were so popular that people thought that he could solve real crimes and were constantly badgering him to do so. He did take on some cases that were successful. Freeing Oscar Slater, though, would be the icing on the cake. This book will keep you riveted.
Very highly recommended.