Rating: 4 Stars
In ‘Conan Doyle for the Defense’, Margalit Fox
examines one of the most infamous trials of the Victorian Age in a style that
combines the best elements of fiction and nonfiction writing.
A wealthy elderly lady
is found bludgeoned to death in her home in Glasgow in 1908. The Glasgow police
glom on to a suspect despite a staggering lack of evidence connecting him to
the crime. What then follows is a miscarriage of justice that sets a textbook
example of how not to try a case.
Fox deftly captures the
zeitgeist of a historic era at the junction of raging social forces. A nation
that unapologetically established an empire is paranoid about all the foreigners
encroaching on its own turf. Oscar Slater, a man of German-Jewish origins, is framed
for the murder of Mrs. Marion Gilchrist by the Glasgow P.D. The incompetence
and/or corruption of the police force meet their match with prosecutorial and
judicial misconduct. The end result is that Slater served nineteen years in
prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
The case captured
headlines at its time. Despite the prevailing mood of xenophobia, there were
many who were sufficiently troubled by the weak case against Slater, and the
biased trial that he was subjected to, that there was a persistent effort to
see justice done. The attempts to exonerate Slater began to gather steam when Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle joins the fight. Conan Doyle – writer, physician, rationalist,
veteran, sleuth, gentleman, and a knight of the old order…
At The New York Times where she is a senior writer, Margalit Fox is a
member of the obituary news department. I do appreciate stylish send-offs. ‘Conan
Doyle for the Defense’ is a study of flawed police procedure and a failed
justice system; but it is also a glowing tribute to the literary mastermind who
was Holmes and Watson in one.
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