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Join Live: Second Floor Reads

Conan Doyle for the Defense

Join us for our non-fiction book discussion group. This month's title: Conan Doyle for the Defense: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Turned Real-Life Detective and Freed a Man Wrongly Imprisoned for Murder by Margalit Fox.

Register to receive the Zoom link and reserve a loan copy of the book.

After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world renowned as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom. With “an eye for the telling detail, a forensic sense of evidence and a relish for research,” Margalit Fox immerses readers in the science of Edwardian crime detection and illuminates a watershed moment in its history, when reflexive prejudice began to be replaced by reason and the scientific method.

This program will take place online on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a link to the Zoom meeting at least one hour in advance of the program. Don't see the email? Make sure you check your spam folder!

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