Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World's Most Famous Detective Writer
By: Margalit Fox / Narrated By: Peter Forbes
Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
WOW…! That was ONLY 7-hrs and 41-mins…?!
I’d recently done an All Things Sherlock Holmes week, and it was so much fun that I’ve been having a hankering to do yet another, like, quite soon! What can I say? Holmes is a new diversion for me; and I know no such thing as Moderation when I’m newly diverted. Seriously, is there ANYthing that can stop me in my tracks when I’m newly diverted?! Saw Conan Doyle for the Defense, HAD to get it, listen to it BEFORE I got into the next All Things Sherlock Holmes, cuz truly, I’m pathetic…
True crime, a bloody murder of an odious old wretch of a lady, scapegoating a newly-arrived immigrant (Oscar Slater), a gross miscarriage of justice, a sentence of Execution commuted to Life in Prison, Heavy-Labor Until Death. Add a note smuggled out through a set of dentures; have it go to the famous and much-respected Arthur Conan Doyle; show how HE starts writing about the case, dismantling, piece by piece, each bit of the circumstantial/fatally-flawed case against our poor man, using the methods his famed character Sherlock Holmes would use? Dude! such a book would veritably STEAMROLL me into another week of ATSH with me breathlessly unapologetic about doing such a theme sooo soon!
Screeeeech! THUD! Dead stop…
Cuz oh my good golly gosh—and I swear to you that I never fell asleep through this—the construction of this book totally does NOT rock. Premise? Great! Execution? Not so much.
First, Margalit Fox does that whole, “I’m gonna tell you what to think” thing in her Author’s Note where she tells, not posits to be proven, that the case is particularly relevant to our time. I haaaate that; I can Listen (Except when I’m asleep, and I swear that didn’t happen this time!) as well as anybody, and I’ve been through enough clickbait in the past few years to know what’s going on in the world around me… I truly! honestly truly! can indeed hear the drawing together of facts into a cohesive structure, picture the scenes in my mind’s eye, draw conclusions and come up with 4 as the answer to 2+2. Dear Authors: Trust Your Skills; Trust Your Audience!
Second, Fox sets everything up to be taken In Context. By that I mean: She goes off onto oh so many tangents, all relevant, cuz she has to explain just what police procedures were like at the time, how detective work was done at the time, what racism and anti-Semitism was like At The Time, what the penal system was like… At The Time, how society’s high regard for Conan Doyle had diminished… due to his forays into Spiritualism… AT THE TIME. Yikes!
Peter Forbes? TreMENdous performance of characters (And there were many involved as this horrific miscarriage of justice spanned the nearly 20-years Oscar was imprisoned at that Scottish gulag Peterhead and continues for several yeeeears afterward), treMENdous performance of particularly charged actions (And there weeeeere at least a few), treMENdously inhabited our other Hero of note, Conan Doyle to where we see him as an outraged man of logic and reasoning first then morphing to outraged man whose gentleman-like sensibilities have suffered the dawning awareness that you can take a rascal offa the streets, but you can’t take the streets outta the rascal… Rascals shall always be a thorn in Society’s hide. No, Peter Forbes was really good, but the material he was given was so lackluster that I aaalmost -but did NOT- fall asleep several times, over not quite 8-hours of playing time.
I wanted to LOVE this, truly I did; I so wanted it to shamelessly springboard Audiobook Accomplice into another wallowing in ATSH, but alas: ‘tis looking more like I’m far more in the mood for a week of All Things Jane Austen…
Cuz tho’ this ain’t an I Want My Hours Back? My, how it did leave a bland taste in m’ mouth. Can’t win ‘em all…
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.