From the bestselling author of The Butchering Art and The Facemaker comes the astonishing true story of Joseph Bell, the Scottish surgeon whose extraordinary talent for detection inspired Sherlock Holmes

From the bestselling author of The Butchering Art and The Facemaker comes the astonishing true story of Joseph Bell, the Scottish surgeon whose extraordinary talent for detection inspired Sherlock Holmes

Edinburgh, 1878. A medical student squeezes into the Royal Infirmary’s packed operating theatre, eager to catch a glimpse of his celebrated professor—a man whose uncanny powers of observation blur the line between diagnosis and detective work.

That man was Joseph Bell. With a flair for the theatrical and an eye for clues hidden in the tiniest details, Bell astonished his students with lightning-fast deductions about his patients’ lives. Though he considered his methods to be quite ‘elementary’, they captured the imagination of his audience – including his prized student, a young Arthur Conan Doyle, who would eventually abandon his medical career in order to create the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

In Sleuth-hound, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris guides us through the smog-choked alleys and crowded slums of Victorian Edinburgh to recount the untold story of the man who inspired literature’s most iconic sleuth. Bell’s talent was so formidable that he was called upon to investigate criminal cases and, alongside Edinburgh’s chief police surgeon, worked on some of the highest profile murders of the century, including Jack the Ripper. Together, the two men pioneered a new era of forensic science to crack crimes.

By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man’s gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. The result, as Sleuth-Hound grippingly shows, changed medicine, literature – and detection – forever.

"Bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris turns a Sherlockian magnifying glass on [Joseph] Bell in Sleuth-Hound, tracing the life and career of a medical pioneer whose accomplishments have been overshadowed by the fictional hero he inspired... Fitzharris vividly recreates Victorian era Edinburgh, with its grand edifices, fetid slums and grisly crimes… As Fitzharris makes clear in this masterful account, a formidable real-life sleuth was amassing evidence and fighting for justice before his fictional counterpart stole the spotlight" - The Scotsman

"As spellbinding as any work of fiction" - Booklist

"A highly entertaining addition to Sherlockiana" - Irish Independent

"Fitzharris… revisits this familiar story and sets it in the context of the era’s rapidly developing forensic science" - The Times

"Atmospheric and wide-reaching ... an account of the remarkable doctors and scientists who together created what we know today as forensics ... [Fitzharris] recounts cases of gaslight and grisly murder, vividly depicting the biting cold of Scottish streets and the searing heat of courtroom drama" - Wall Street Journal

"[A] fascinating tale of medicine and murder ... [and] a vivid, sometimes grisly, sometimes enraging portrait of 19th-century British society ... The real-life model for Sherlock Holmes [is] the solid moral center of this probing and excellent book" - New York Times