Margalit Fox – Conan Doyle for the Defence (2018)

Preamble

As I read and write and think a lot about detective and crime fiction, I’ve a series of reviews on the theme. Sadly, capacity is too limited to cover detective films and TV series too! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.

Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies, which is out in just a few days, so preorder now!

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See also

These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!

• Murder by the Book, Claire Harman
• The Mangle Street Murders, MRC Kasasian

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Review (3 out of 5)

Because I write about Victorian literature – and write neo-Victorian literature! – I am always interested in Victorian history and how it manifests or is read in the modern day. Although this book is now a few years old, it’s underpinned by strong research that presents an interesting window into one of the most notorious crimes in fin-de-siècle Scotland, the murder of Marion Gilchrist. The crime was originally ‘solved’ with the arrest and conviction of Oscar Slater (a German Jew, born Oscar Joseph Leschziner). However, it should have been clear almost immediately that there was no reasonable evidence against him, and the Oscar Slater case is now a renowned miscarriage of justice, reflected in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Fox’s book sets out how the miscarriage of justice was perpetuated and, ultimately, overturned. Slater was a victim of the prejudices of the time, as well as a blinkered rush to conclude a nasty case, and a refusal to challenge a case once settled. The absence of good legal counsel or a criminal appeal court in Scotland certainly helped seal his fate. Fox’s prose is neat and precise in setting out the case, and the book is well researched.

However, I haven’t rated this more highly because I found it rather slow in places. There is less Conan Doyle than one might expect based on the title, but I would much rather have read more about his involvement and less about Oscar Slater’s family exchanges. (This was a feature, too, in Murder by the Book, and it’s understandable from a marketing perspective, but always a little bit of a disappointment.) Or, alternatively, more about the early-twentieth-century criminal justice system and its reforms pre- and post-Slater, as there were manifestly structural problems that weighed against Slater. In the absence of either slants, the book fell a bit flat for me.

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My short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies, plus Sherlock Holmes and much, much more, is out in just a few days, so preorder now!