Conan Doyle on the Side of the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, Miscarriages of Justice, and a Celebrated Detective Author

Nowadays, few people know that Conan Doyle, the celebrated author of detective stories about Sherlock Holmes, was also a well-known public figure and defender of the wrongfully convicted. Conan Doyle's intervention helped to mitigate the sentence of a friend accused of treason, restore legality in the high-profile case of a British man of Indian descent who became a victim of xenophobia, and, finally, free Oscar Slater, who was found guilty of murdering a wealthy lady. Sentenced to death, which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment, Slater spent over 18 years in custody, forgotten by almost everyone. Almost everyone, but not Arthur Conan Doyle. The writer managed to free Slater by conducting his own investigation, with his main weapons being observation and clear logic — exactly what brought worldwide fame to the hero of his stories. In the book by New York Times journalist Margalit Fox, the story is told of a man sentenced to death, whose innocence was proven without modern forensic methods, about a unique investigation method described in the tales of Sherlock Holmes, and then applied to a real crime.