I don’t know if it’s superior deduction like Sherlock Holmes or just some sort of black magic, but Lindsey Fitzharris has once again left me asking a simple question. How the hell does this author know to write exactly what I want to read about? She did it first with The Facemaker and now with the exceptional Sleuth-Hound. This is becoming a trend.
Sleuth-Hound is, most simply, about the person on whom Sherlock Holmes is based. His name was Dr. Joseph Bell, and he was a doctor and instructor of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Let me be honest, I have read things about Bell and a straight biography of him would be interesting, but not page turning. Again, somehow Fitzharris knew I felt this way and clearly decided to take a much better path. That’s right. She went full true crime on us when we thought we were getting a biography.
The book tells very short bios of Doyle, Bell, but also the much lesser-known police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn (who did not personally know Robin Hood as far as I can tell). There are also multiple Dr. Watsons. What Fitzharris does is put all of these men within the context of their time and the crimes they helped solve. It is one thing to read about Bell and Littlejohn and their personalities. It is much different to hear about the cases they were involved in and how they helped bring the guilty to justice (mostly). This means the reader gets to hear a multitude of true crime stories. The reader also gets more anecdotes about Bell’s superior deduction skills than you can shake a stick at.
What you are left with is a book that is both a general-audience people-pleaser and a deep, dark look at Victorian crime for the history nerds like me. Who says you can’t have it all?
(This book was provided as a review copy by FSG Books.)
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