A biography of the creator of Sherlock Holmes shows how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, beginning as a small-town doctor, became a friend to the famous, a celebrated writer, and a psychic investigator.
An ambitious author and a fearless adventurer, Conan Doyle always considered Sherlock Holmes to be one of his less interesting achievements. He was a ship's surgeon on an Arctic whaling ship at only twenty years of age; traveled to exotic regions of the world; served as a war correspondent and military historian; used his fame as an author to promote social reform, overturn unjust convictions, and run for Parliament twice; and became the world's foremost spokesman for the new religion of Spiritualism.
Arthur Conan Doyle did not rely on imagination for the amazing cases tackled by his hero, Sherlock Holmes, after all. Drawing on new research that follows the tracks the author left in the real world, Peter Costello details how Conan Doyle's fictional outpourings were the direct result of his hidden career as an amateur detective and criminologist. This fascinating book shows how many of Holmes's methods of deduction were actually methods his creator used to solve real crimes, and how real-life Scotland Yard had a Sherlock Holmes of its own: Arthur Conan Doyle. Eight pages of rare photographs are featured in this updated, revised edition of The Real World of Sherlock Holmes.
