Prologue: Prisoner 2988 -- Book one: Diamonds -- A footfall on the stair -- The mysterious Mr. Anderson -- The knight-errant -- The man in the Donegal cap -- Book two: Blood -- Traces -- The original Sherlock Holmes -- The art of reasoning backward -- A case of identity -- Book three: Granite -- The trap door -- "Until he be dead" -- The cold cruel sea -- Arthur Conan Doyle, consulting detective -- The strange case of George Edalji -- Prisoner 1992 -- Book four: Paper -- "You know my method" -- The ruin of John Thomson Trench -- Cannibals included -- The purloined brooch -- The gates of Peterhead -- More light, more justice -- The knight and the knave -- What became of them

"In this thrilling true-crime procedural, the creator of Sherlock Holmes uses his unparalleled detective skills to exonerate a German Jew wrongly convicted of murder"--

"In 1908 an elderly woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow apartment. The police found a convenient but innocent suspect in Oscar Slater--a Jewish cardsharp--who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, already the world-famous creator of Sherlock Holmes, was outraged by this injustice and became obsessed with the case. Over the years he scoured trial transcripts, newspaper accounts, and police diaries, meticulously noting myriad holes and inconsistencies. Finally, in 1927, his work won Slater's freedom. Conan Doyle for the Defense immerses readers in the science of Edwardian crime detection, telling the story of how Conan Doyle managed to get this murder conviction overturned by employing the methods of his most famous creation. Along the way, Fox illuminates a watershed moment in the history of criminal justice when reflexive prejudice began gradually to be replaced by reason and the scientific method"--