Just before Christmas 1908, a wealthy elderly woman was gruesomely murdered in her Glasgow home. The following spring, despite an astonishing lack of evidence, a German Jewish immigrant, Oscar Slater, was convicted of the crime, sentenced to life in a hard-labor prison. That Slater's life did not end in the institution that would become known as "Scotland's gulag" is mainly due to the persistence of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who became obsessed with the injustice of the case and launched a meticulous investigation to prove the innocence of the accused. This elegant and fast-paced biography/crime procedural places the reader alongside the author-turned-detective, illuminating the burgeoning field of forensic science and, with surprising relevance to the present day, illustrating the power of Holmesian techniques of reason and the scientific method to combat the prejudices and political pressures rampant in the criminal justice system.