OW that E. J. Wagner’s The Science of Sherlock Holmes : From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, The Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases has been released to an eager public, the reviews have started to appear, the first I could find being CSI: Sherlock Holmes? at the Christian Science Monitor:

Yet, this revelation about Holmes only scratches the surface. E.J. Wagner, a well-known crime historian and lecturer, has taken it one step further.

In her fascinating book, The Science of Sherlock Holmes, Wagner juxtaposes some of Holmes’s famous cases with a number of real mysteries, and finds some surprising similarities. She sets Holmes’s work in the context of the forensics of his time and proves that the detective’s scientific mind was more than a mere work of fiction.

Read the full review.

I was lucky enough to receive a copy, and I must say that it’s quite a fascinating read, combining history, forensics and Sherlock Holmes in a way that I’ll be unlikely to forget. I’ll be posting a review of my own here soon.