The Real World Of Sherlock

Victorian policing, early forensic science and the real investigators behind the fiction are the subject of B. J. Rahn's study, which looks past Baker Street to the world that produced it. Conan Doyle's stories are the starting point, not the content. Rahn examines the people whose methods and writing fed into the creation of Sherlock Holmes, then sets out how nineteenth-century criminal investigation actually worked. Crime-scene photography, the reading of fingerprints and the slow professionalisation of detection all get explained in context. The effect is to make the original stories read differently, with a clearer sense of what was genuinely new at the time. Reader notes: • The real figures who influenced Conan Doyle's detective • Development of forensic methods across the nineteenth century • Victorian society and policing described in close detail • Scholarly research presented in readable narrative form A good match for Holmes enthusiasts, crime fiction readers and literature students, available in English at Boipoka.