The Ardlamont Mystery: The Real-Life Story Behind the Creation of Sherlock Holmes
by Daniel Smith (Michael O’Mara, 2018)
Whereas Smith sifts every last scrap of the defendant’s and victim’s backstories, the key medical witnesses—Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn, upon whom Doyle based Sherlock Holmes—have walk-on parts at best. An assiduously researched historical non-event with a reprehensibly misleading subtitle.