Monday, January 17, 2011

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by: David Grann

7 stars- 3 for language = 4 stars

This book is a collection of 12 truly unique articles by New Yorker staff writer David Grann. They are strange, creepy, interesting, and at times disturbing. Here is a sample of a few of the articles.

- A real life murder mystery involving a scholar who studied Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.

-My personal favorite, a con man pretends to be a family's missing child. A suspicious personal investigator discovers that the family may have killed their 'missing' child and know full well the the con man isn't their child. Who has really been conned?

-A firefighter loses his memory shortly after the events of 9/11and tries to retrace his steps, struggling to learn whether he was a hero or a coward when the towers fell.

-A man convicted in what seems to be a clear cut arson case is revealed to be innocent after certain advancements in science.

-The world's largest prison gang is investigated and disturbing insights are revealed.

-And more!

The stories range from real life mysteries to strange events to bios of obsessive people. All are nonfiction and all are very interesting. I must say that I enjoyed the articles in this book a great deal. Unfortunately, the language is simply terrible. The author himself doesn't use any bad language but he quotes many gangsters, criminals, and tough characters that can swear up a storm. Although I found it very interesting, I can't recommend it to anyone who dislikes bad language in books.

1 comment:

  1. I think I almost picked this up the last time I was at the library. Weird. I'm glad to have the warning about the language, though.

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