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

Description

From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon comes this “gripping” (The Miami Herald) and “hilarious” (EW) collection of true crime mysteries about people whose obsessions propel them into unfathomable and often deadly circumstances. Whether David Grann is investigating a mysterious murder, tracking a chameleon-like con artist, or hunting an elusive giant squid, he has proven to be one of the most gifted reporters and storytellers of his generation. In The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, Grann takes the reader around the world, revealing a gallery of rogues and heroes with their own particular fixations who show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.Look for David Grann’s new book, The Wager, coming in April 2023!

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Horrifying, hilarious, and outlandish. . . . These straightforward tales grip you as unrelentingly as the suckered appendages of the giant squid Grann attempts to track down in ‘The Squid Hunter.’”—Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)“A gripping read. . . . Obsessives get themselves into some interesting places. Grann is the perfect guide to take you there.”—The Miami Herald“A dozen intricately crafted accounts. . . . Like the best of stories, each carries the spice of intrigue and the momentum of a search. . . . [They] will make your heart race and, at times, ache. They’re stories to share with friends, even if Grann can’t be there himself.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Grann’s obsession with how narratives are told is complex and compelling. . . . But it’s the basic stories themselves—bizarre and fascinating, bolstered by exhaustive research—that make the book so gripping.”—Time Out New York“Titillating. . . . Evidence of Grann’s abundant talent as a writer.”—Providence Journal “The most powerful essay I read this year was David Grann’s ‘Trial by Fire.’”—David Brooks, The New York Times “The truth is always stranger than fiction, even when it comes to murder mysteries. That’s the take-home lesson of Grann’s latest collection, which brings together 12 stories of real-life mysteries, each one stranger and more gripping than the last.”—The Daily Beast “A gifted storyteller, Grann has a Sherlock Holmesian gift for unearthing facts that are hidden in plain sight, presenting a crystal-clear narrative and letting his compelling cast of characters speak for themselves. . . . Easily worth the price of admission, a visit to Grann’s rogue’s gallery is likely to leave you with a sense, at once awful and awesome, of the profound desire we all have for recognition.”—The Oregonian”Beautifully constructed, highly improbably real life reports.”—GQ (UK)“Eclectic. . . . Haunting. . . . Skilfully crafted. . . . [Grann] does not just tell these bizarre tales, he meets, interviews, gets to know and seems to understand many of his strange subjects.”—The Irish Times “There is humanity in the writing, and it’s all the more impressive that Grann manages to evoke it without drawing any attention to himself; his tales are first-person ones, but they don’t foreground the writer in that manner so popular among magazine editors today. Indeed, his selflessness as a writer, along with his gentle rectitude, cause him to bear a resemblance to another hero who never hogs the spotlight: Holmes’s assistant, Watson. Rarely does modesty produce such stunning results.”—Bookforum “Thoroughly documented, well written and full of surprises.”—Toronto Star “Grann’s in-depth reporting and vivid writing make this worthwhile reading for lovers of good journalism.”—Booklist”Chilling. . . . Poignant. . . . Haunting and gripping. . . . Gets into worlds that are otherwise invisible to us.”—Daily Mail (London)”Grann is a worthy heir to Truman Capote.”—Le Monde (Paris) About the Author DAVID GRANN is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON was a finalist for The National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. He is also the author of THE WHITE DARKNESS and the collection THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. Grann’s storytelling has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Mysterious CircumstancesRichard Lancelyn Green, the world’s foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes, believed that he had finally solved the case of the missing papers. Over the past two decades, he had been looking for a trove of letters, diary entries, and manuscripts written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Holmes. The archive was estimated to be worth nearly four million dollars, and was said by some to carry a deadly curse, like the one in the most famous Holmes story, “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”The papers had disappeared after Conan Doyle died, in 1930, and without them no one had been able to write a definitive biography—a task that Green was determined to complete. Many scholars feared that the archive had been discarded or destroyed; as the London Times noted, its whereabouts had become “a mystery as tantalizing as any to unfold at 221B Baker Street,” the fictional den of Holmes and his fellow-sleuth, Dr. Watson.Not long after Green launched his investigation, he discovered that one of Conan Doyle’s five children, Adrian, had, with the other heirs’ agreement, stashed the papers in a locked room of a château that he owned in Switzerland. Green then learned that Adrian had spirited some of the papers out of the château without his siblings’ knowledge, hoping to sell them to collectors. In the midst of this scheme, he died of a heart attack—giving rise to the legend of the curse. After Adrian’s death, the papers apparently vanished. And whenever Green tried to probe further he found himself caught in an impenetrable web of heirs—including a self-styled Russian princess—who seemed to have deceived and double-crossed one another in their efforts to control the archive.For years, Green continued to sort through evidence and interview relatives, until one day the muddled trail led to London—and the doorstep of Jean Conan Doyle, the youngest of the author’s children. Tall and elegant, with silver hair, she was an imposing woman in her late sixties. (“Something very strong and forceful seems to be at the back of that wee body,” her father had written of Jean when she was five. “Her will is tremendous.”) Whereas her brother Adrian had been kicked out of the British Navy for insubordination, and her elder brother Denis was a playboy who had sat out the Second World War in America, she had become an officer in the Royal Air Force, and was honored, in 1963, as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.She invited Green into her flat, where a portrait of her father, with his walrus mustache, hung near the fireplace. Green had almost as great an interest in her father as she did, and she began sharing her memories, as well as family photographs. She asked him to return, and one day, Green later told friends, she showed him some boxes that had been stored in a London solicitor’s office. Peering inside them, he said, he had glimpsed part of the archive. Dame Jean informed him that, because of an ongoing family dispute, she couldn’t yet allow him to read the papers, but she said that she intended to bequeath nearly all of them to the British Library, so that scholars could finally examine them. After she died, in 1997, Green eagerly awaited their transfer—but nothing happened.Then, in March, 2004, Green opened the London Sunday Times and was shocked to read that the lost archive had “turned up” at Christie’s auction house and was to be sold, in May, for millions of dollars by three of Conan Doyle’s distant relatives; instead of going to the British Library, the contents would be scattered among private collectors around the world, who might keep them inaccessible to scholars. Green was sure that a mistake had been made, and hurried to Christie’s to inspect the materials. Upon his return, he told friends that he was certain that many of the papers were the same as those he had uncovered. What’s more, he alleged, they had been stolen—and he had proof.Over the next few days, he approached members of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, one of hundreds of fan clubs devoted to the detective. (Green had once been chairman.) He alerted other so-called Sherlockians, including various American members of the Baker Street Irregulars, an invitation-only group that was founded in 1934 and named after the street urchins Holmes regularly employed to ferret out information. Green also contacted the more orthodox scholars of Conan Doyle, or Doyleans, about the sale. (Unlike Green, who moved between the two camps, many Doyleans distanced themselves from the Sherlockians, who often treated Holmes as if he were a real detective and refused to mention Conan Doyle by name.)Green shared with these scholars what he knew about the archive’s provenance, revealing what he considered the most damning piece of evidence: a copy of Dame Jean’s will, which stated, “I give to The British Library all . . . my late father’s original papers, personal manuscripts, diaries, engagement books, and writings.” Determined to block the auction, the makeshift group of amateur sleuths presented its case to Members of Parliament. Toward the end of the month, as the group’s campaign intensified and its objections appeared in the press, Green hinted to his sister, Priscilla West, that someone was threatening him. Later, he sent her a cryptic note containing three phone numbers and the message “please keep these numbers safe.” He also called a reporter from the London Times, warning that “something” might happen to him.On the night of Friday, March 26th, he had dinner with a longtime friend, Lawrence Keen, who later said that Green had confided in him that “an American was trying to bring him down.” After the two men left the restaurant, Green told Keen that they were being followed, and pointed to a car behind them.The same evening, Priscilla West phoned her brother, and got his answering machine. She called repeatedly the next morning, but he still didn’t pick up. Alarmed, she went to his house and knocked on the door; there was no response. After several more attempts, she called the police, who came and broke open the entrance. Downstairs, the police found the body of Green lying on his bed, surrounded by Sherlock Holmes books and posters, with a cord wrapped around his neck. He had been garroted.“I will lay out the whole case for you,” John Gibson, one of Green’s closest friends, told me when I phoned him shortly after learning of Green’s death. Gibson had written several books with Green, including “My Evening with Sherlock Holmes,” a 1981 collection of parodies and pastiches of the detective stories. With a slight stammer, Gibson said of his friend’s death, “It’s a complete and utter mystery.”Not long after, I travelled to Great Bookham, a village thirty miles south of London, where Gibson lives. He was waiting for me when I stepped off the train. He was tall and rail-thin, and everything about him—narrow shoulders, long face, unruly gray hair—seemed to slouch forward, as if he were supported by an invisible cane. “I have a file for you,” he said, as we drove off in his car. “As you’ll see, there are plenty of clues and not a lot of answers.”He sped through town, past a twelfth-century stone church and a row of cottages, until he stopped at a red brick house surrounded by hedges. “You don’t mind dogs, I hope,” he said. “I’ve two cocker spaniels. I only wanted one but the person I got them from said that they were inseparable, and so I took them both and they’ve been fighting ever since.”When he opened the front door, both spaniels leaped on us, then at each other. They trailed us into the living room, which was filled with piles of antique books, some reaching to the ceiling. Among the stacks was a near-complete set of The Strand Magazine, in which the Holmes stories were serialized at the turn of the twentieth century; a single issue, which used to sell for half a shilling, is now worth as much as five hundred dollars. “Altogether, there must be about sixty thousand books,” Gibson said.We sat on a couch and he opened his case file, carefully spreading the pages around him. “All right, dogs. Don’t disturb us,” he said. He looked up at me. “Now I’ll tell you the whole story.”Gibson said that he had attended the coroner’s inquest and taken careful notes, and as he spoke he picked up a magnifying glass beside him and peered through it at several crumpled pieces of paper. “I write everything on scraps,” he said. The police, he said, had found only a few unusual things at the scene. There was the cord around Green’s neck—a black shoelace. There was a wooden spoon near his hand, and several stuffed animals on the bed. And there was a partially empty bottle of gin.The police found no sign of forced entry and assumed that Green had committed suicide. Yet there was no note, and Sir Colin Berry, the president of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences, testified to the coroner that, in his thirty-year career, he had seen only one suicide by garroting. “One,” Gibson repeated. Self-garroting is extremely difficult to do, he explained; people who attempt it typically pass out before they are asphyxiated. Moreover, in this instance, the cord was not a thick rope but a shoelace, making the feat even more unlikely.Gibson reached into his file and handed me a sheet of paper with numbers on it. “Take a look,” he said. “My phone records.” The records showed that he and Green had spoken repeatedly during the week before his death; if the police had bothered to obtain Green’s records, Gibson went on, they would no doubt show that Green had called him only hours before he died. “I was probably the last person to speak to him,” he said. The police, however, had never questioned him.During one of their last conversations about the auction, Gibson recalled, Green had said he was afraid of something.“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Gibson told him.“No, I’m worried,” Green said.“What? You fear for your life?”“I do.”Gibson said that, at the time, he didn’t take the threat seriously but advised Green not to answer his door unless he was sure who it was.Gibson glanced at his notes. There was something else, he said, something critical. On the eve of his death, he reminded me, Green had spoken to his friend Keen about an “American” who was trying to ruin him. The following day, Gibson said, he had called Green’s house and heard a strange greeting on the answering machine. “Instead of getting Richard’s voice in this sort of Oxford accent, which had been on the machine for a decade,” Gibson recalled, “I got an American voice that said, ‘Sorry, not available.’ I said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought I must’ve dialled the wrong number. So I dialled really slowly again. I got the American voice. I said, ‘Christ almighty.’ ”Gibson said that Green’s sister had heard the same recorded greeting, which was one reason that she had rushed to his house. Reaching into his file, Gibson handed me several more documents. “Make sure you keep them in chronological order,” he said. There was a copy of Jean Conan Doyle’s will, several newspaper clippings on the auction, an obituary, and a Christie’s catalogue.That was pretty much all he had. The police, Gibson said, had not conducted any forensic tests or looked for fingerprints. And the coroner—who had once attended a meeting of the Sherlock Holmes Society to conduct a mock inquest of the murder from a Conan Doyle story in which a corpse is discovered in a locked room—found himself stymied. Gibson said that the coroner had noted that there was not enough evidence to ascertain what had happened, and, as a result, the official verdict regarding whether Green had killed himself or been murdered was left open.Within hours of Green’s death, Sherlockians seized upon the mystery, as if it were another case in the canon. In a Web chat room, one person, who called himself “inspector,” wrote, “As for self-garroting, it is like trying to choke oneself to death by your own hands.” Others invoked the “curse,” as if only the supernatural could explain it. Gibson handed me an article from a British tabloid that was headlined “ ‘curse of conan doyle’ strikes holmes expert.”“So what do you think?” Gibson asked.“I’m not sure,” I said.Later, we went through the evidence again. I asked Gibson if he knew whose phone numbers were on the note that Green had sent to his sister.Gibson shook his head. “It hadn’t come up at the inquest,” he said.“What about the American voice on the answering machine?” I asked. “Do we know who that is?”“Unfortunately, not a clue. To me that’s the strangest and most telling piece of evidence. Did Richard put that on his machine? What was he trying to tell us? Did the murderer put it there? And, if so, why would he do that?”I asked if Green had ever displayed any irrational behavior. “No, never,” he said. “He was the most levelheaded man I ever met.”He noted that Priscilla West had testified at the inquest that her brother had no history of depression. Indeed, Green’s physician wrote to the court to say that he had not treated Green for any illnesses for a decade.“One last question,” I said. “Was anything taken out of the apartment?”“Not that we know of. Richard had a valuable collection of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle books, and nothing appears to be missing.”As Gibson drove me back to the train station, he said, “Please, you must stay on the case. The police seem to have let poor Richard down.” Then he advised, “As Sherlock Holmes says, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ ”Some facts about Richard Green are easy to discern—those which illuminate the circumstances of his life, rather than the circumstances of his death. He was born on July 10, 1953; he was the youngest of three children; his father was Roger Lancelyn Green, a best-selling children’s author who popularized the Homeric myths and the legend of King Arthur, and who was a close friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien; and Richard was raised near Liverpool, on land that had been given to his ancestors in 1093, and where his family had resided ever since.Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was the American consul in Liverpool in the eighteen-fifties, visited the house one summer, and he later described it in his “English Notebooks”:We passed through a considerable extent of private road, and finally drove through a lawn, shaded with trees, and closely shaven, and reached the door of Poulton Hall. Part of the mansion is three or four hundred years old. . . . There is [a] curious, old, stately staircase, with a twisted balustrade, much like that of the old Province House in Boston. The drawing-room looks like a very handsome modern room, being beautifully painted, gilded, and paper-hung, with a white-marble fire- place, and rich furniture; so that the impression is that of newness, not of age.By the time Richard was born, however, the Green family was, as one relative told me, “very English—a big house and no money.” The curtains were thin, the carpets were threadbare, and a cold draft often swirled through the corridors. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The author of this book, David Grann, is the author of Lost City of Z, one of my all-time favorite books. Grann isn’t a novelist, but rather he writes wonderful essays, and has been featured in the New Yorker. So you should assume immediately that this book isn’t going to be another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, because it’s not. Instead, it’s a book of essays, but don’t let that put you off. It is absolutely delightful.Grann has this thing about people who are absolutely obsessed about what they do, a fact you already know if you’ve read his splendid Lost City of Z. In this book, he takes his readers on a journey through a dozen different profiles, all completely true, all dealing with different types of obsessions. You have to admire his ingenuity in picking such different cases, yet having them all tie together so wonderfully.Structured in three parts, all headed by quotations from various Sherlock Holmes stories, the first section is subtitled “Any Truth is Better Than Infinite Doubt.” Here’s the guy whose lifelong ambition was to write the ultimate and the definitive biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. After there was a dispute over some of Sir Arthur’s papers, the subject of this essay was found dead under some murky circumstances. Was it murder or suicide? Then there’s the incredibly sad and horrifying case of the Texas man who may or may not have set his own home on fire, killing his children, and who may have paid the ultimate price due to the zealousness of certain arson investigators. The third entry in this section is the odd story of a French man that reads along the lines of Tey’s Brat Farrar or even the movie “The Changeling,” leading into the strange account of a man who may or may not have been guilty of murder, based on a book he wrote. Finally, there’s the story of a firefighter who lost all memory of what happened to him on 9/11 as his unit went into the towers before they collapsed.Part Two, entitled “A Strange Enigma is Man,” contains four stories: one about one man’s obsession with giant squids, one about the Sandhogs deep under the streets of New York City, one about a man whose life was spent as a criminal, and the fourth relating to why a championship baseball player won’t give up.Part Three, “All that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe,” contains three essays. The first of these is about the Aryan Brotherhood and how it got its start, as well as its impact on prisons and law enforcement. The second focuses on Youngstown, Ohio, a city long under mob control. The final essay in this section (and in the book) stopped me cold. It focuses on a known Haitian political and death-squad leader who somehow ended up in New York as a real-estate agent. Even though the US government knew that this guy was an assassin, for “political” reasons, he’s still free here in our country. If this one doesn’t creep you out about the political system in our country, nothing will.Grann is an absolutely fabulous writer and his essays will keep you interested up to the minute you turn the last page. His approach is different and definitely holds your attention, and the added bonus is that you get a chance to learn a lot about things you probably had no clue about otherwise. I can most highly recommend this book and this author.And as a sidebar, if you have not yet read his other book, run, do not walk, and go get it.

⭐Fine prose.

⭐I have read several of David Grann’s books, most especially his amazing tale about the vast Osage Native American wealth of the 1920’s/30’s Oklahoma (Killing of the Flower Moon), a story far too good not not know, and in Grann’s telling even better finally to learn. In this collection of his essays from some years ago, he probes further astonishing stories that are fun and deeply educational to discover. From a search for the elusive giant squid to the amazing death of a Sherlock Holmes fan, you will enjoy these 12 narratives greatly. And if you have yet to read about the richest Americans of the 1920’s, and the devilish White folk who tried to get their hands on the dough, get a copy now.

⭐Stories were gruesome and only a small segment was concerning Sherlock Holmes devotees.

⭐The book is a collection of twelve previously published articles for such well-respected magazines as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. There are twelve pieces in ‘The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.’ Mr. Grann’s stories are fascinating and educational. No one can say the guy doesn’t get his hands dirty while investigating. He ventures out as a passenger in a dinky boat during a storm, travels six-hundred feet underground into New York City’s water system, and travels to New Zealand, France, Poland, and various places in the U.S. to interview people or research material. The book is divided into three sections. All the stories show the quirkier sides of the human condition but the third section’s four reports are truly disturbing.’The Devil and Sherlock Holmes’ includes articles about a man’s obsession with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes; a Texas man who was executed despite being very likely innocent; a French con man would was a serial child impersonator; the only surviving firefighter of a station’s crew during 9/11 but can’t remember any of it; searching for the elusive giant squid; building New York City’s underground water tunnels; a lifelong bank robber who was still at it when he was 78 years old; baseball’s Ricky Henderson playing way beyond his prime in hopes of getting back into the major leagues; a deadly nationwide prison gang; the Ohio mob takes over a down-on-its-luck steel town; an author/murderer in Poland; and the Haitian ex-dictator/ mass murderer Toto Constant who is living in New York City. All the stories are engrossing. The book was published in 2010 and the articles were originally published from 2000 through 2009.This is my type of book. I learned plenty of stuff from each article. Despite some of the first eight stories involving death, they were not gloomy works. Even the 78-year-old bank robber story had me smiling while reading it. Each piece is solid reporting and educational. The one I found the most disturbing was the prison gang called Aryan Brotherhood. If parents want to scare their kids into avoiding a life of crime and ending up in prison, then baby, that story oughta do it.

⭐I wanted an easy reading book for the holiday season and “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes…..” did not disappoint. Short interview/documentary type stories that really catch your attention and made you think. I can read stuff like this all day.David Grann is an excellent writer, I own other books by him that are very good.But it only had 1 Sherlock Holmes story in it!

⭐Love this series of essays/short stories by the author of Killers of the Flower Moon. Ranging in subjects from baseball to murder; giant squid hunting to con artists.

⭐I don’t know if I could be more entertained!

Keywords

Free Download The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession in PDF format
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession PDF Free Download
Download The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession 2011 PDF Free
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession 2011 PDF Free Download
Download The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession PDF
Free Download Ebook The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession