The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession
Where to buy The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession books online?
- ISBN13: 9780385517928
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Acclaimed New Yorker writer and leader of the breakout debut bestseller The Lost City of Z, David Grann offers a collection of spellbinding narrative television journalism.
Whether he’s reporting on the infiltration of the murderous Aryan Brotherhood into the U.S. prison system, tracking down a chameleon con artist in Europe, or riding in a cyclone- tossed skiff with a scientist hunting the elusive giant squid, David Grann revels in telling tales that explore the scenery of obsession and that piece together right and unforgettable mysteries.
Each of the dozen tales in this collection reveals a hidden and regularly treacherous world and, like Into Thin Air and The Orchid Thief, pivots around the gravitational pull of obsession and the captivating personalities of persons caught in its grip. There is the world’s foremost practiced on Sherlock Holmes who is establish dead in mysterious circumstances; an arson sleuth trying to prove that a man about to be executed is innocent; and sandhogs racing to perfect the cruelly treacherous job of building New York City’s water tunnels before the ancient system collapses. Throughout, Grann’s hypnotic accounts spectacle the power—and regularly the willful perversity—of the human spirit.
Compulsively readable, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant mosaic of ambition, madness, passion, and folly.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with David Grann
We had the opportunity to chat with David Grann about his bestselling debut, The Lost City of Z, and his second book of nonfiction, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession. Read on to find out what David thinks about the “infinitely weird” business of writing nonfiction.
Amazon.com: Have you stayed in touch with any of the individuals you wrote about in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes?
David Grann: In the course of researching the book, I got to know an array of astonishing characters. They include a marine biologist named Steve O’Shea who was trying to be the first person to ever to capture a giant squid and grow it in captivity; sandhogs digging an intricate maze of tunnels hundreds of feet beneath the streets of New York City; a Polish detective investigating whether an leader planted clues to an actual murder in his postmodern novel; a fireman who suffered loss of memory on 9/11 and is trying to piece together what happened to him on that tragic day; a baseball icon; cold killers; an imposter; and a school teacher, Elizabeth Gilbert, who attempted to prove that a man about to be executed for a deadly fire was really innocent. One of the weird things about reporting is that you spend a lot of time with a name and then resume your separate lives. But I occasionally hear from several of the characters in the tales. Gilbert, who had been paralyzed from the neck down in a car manufacturing accident, recently called to tell me that after more than five years of rehabilitation she had begun to take steps with the aid of a walker. “I made it eighty yards,” she said. “Nearly a football meadow.”
Amazon.com: Agreed the opportunity, are there any tales you want to revisit in the future?
David Grann: Most of the pieces hopefully capture the essence of a tale and don’t need explanation. But as I learned from the weird and unexpected twists in these right tales, there is permanently a possibility that something new and startling may occur that would draw me back in.
Amazon.com: As a journalist, how does the experience of writing essays differ from writing a longer work like The Lost City of Z?
David Grann: It’s very different. With a book, you can follow many different characters and paths. With essays, you have to keep the lens tightly all ears. I really judge that some tales need to be told in longer narrative form, and others, like the dozen in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, work ideally as shorter pieces.
Amazon.com: Much of your writing revolves around individuals with unusually strong obsessions. The people you write about have all ears their lives on everything from searching for giant squid to disbanding the most powerful gang in the U.S. prison system. Are there any characteristics that these individuals share?
David Grann: Yes, as you mention, many of the characters are compelled by an obsession, even if the object of their obsession is very different. The additional thing that many of them share is a curiosity and a hunger to clarify, like Sherlock Holmes, the world around them–whether it be the unexplored sea, an underground empire, a secret prison gang, or a mysterious murder.
Amazon.com: Many of these tales are rooted in ambiguous circumstances. Did your initial impressions change during the course of researching these people and events?
David Grann: Certainly. When I started investigating these tales, I knew nearly nothing about them. Many originated from small more than a tantalizing hint: a tip from a friend, a reference buried in a news brief. And so I hope that I take the reader on the same kind of journey that I veteran–a journey that regularly leads to conclusions that I never imagined.
Amazon.com: Many of the tales in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes have a “weirder-than-fiction” quality to them. Have you ever considered trying your hand at fiction, or is the real world weird enough for you?
David Grann: When I first ongoing out as a writer, I had aspirations of apt a novelist, but I could never invent compelling enough characters or plots. What’s wonderful about nonfiction is I get to meet these incredible characters–stick up men, sandhogs, prison escape artists, imposters, squid hunters, mobsters, FBI agents–and they allow me to spend time with them and document their private thoughts. If these dozen tales in the collection taught me anything, it is that life, to borrow a axiom from Sherlock Holmes, “is infinitely weirder than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
(Photo © Matt Richman)
Buy Cheap The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession Online
Related posts:
Received the book this morning – read all afternoon! Fantastic tales, quick reaad – kept you interested – all the tales were excellent.
!
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Really I would rate this book three stars for the collection and four stars for the writing. After learning that all of these essays have been previously published it made me look at the collection in a different light. I establish that most of the collection is nearly impossible to place down, filled with intrigue and masterful use of tale telling to keep you on the edge of your seat, except for maybe three of the essays where I finished reading them, thinking, okay, that had nothing to do with murder, madness or obsession. Now I feel like they were just stuck in there to make the book a bit heftier. Don’t get me incorrect, all of the essays are very will written and I establish myself unable to place the book down. I imagine that fans of Grann from The Lost City of Z will be excited with this collection, but fans who knew him from the New Yorker might be disappointed as none of this material is new.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
my spouse’s review:
“I’m pretty enthusiastic about this book. Leader David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker (or so the text on the back take in tells me) and presumably the twelve articles featured in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes were penned for that magazine. When you have what is essentially an anthology you permanently have to remember that the book is only going to be as excellent as its’ weakest tale. Happily there are no weak tales here-even the sports tale (and I am that rare male who has small use for organized sports) was fascinating.”
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Leader writes well loved book (The Lost City of Z). Editor goes to leader and comes up with a gutless scheme to cash in on his new popularity by repackaging ancient material around a theme. Leader agrees because he needs to refurbish his kitchen and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is born. Excellent material and well written. But, just about all the tales come from The New Yorker. Take your money and rather than buy the book, pay for an subscription to the The New Yorker that give you access to ancient articles.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
In the intro to “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes”, David Grann describes this body of work as essays on the obsessions of man which can plague a person to the very end. Tho obsession does play a part in nearly each tale it can regularly peter out before it’s conclusion as it does in “The Chameleon” & “Which Way Did he Run?” where both men really let go and go on to additional goals and in “The Brand” there is not so much obsession as dread and in “City of Water” we are introduced to the “Sand Hogs” the aquaduct diggers under New York city. Most of the employees are multi-generational and obsession really doesn’t play a part here, it’s just what they know so they stick with it. Thus obsession comes off as a weak thread.
In fact, many of the tales are fleeting, yet appealing vignettes of right crime cases and will appeal to mystery lovers as well as the C.S.I. crowd. But the collection is disjointed with the inclusion of the tales of the previously mentioned Sand Hogs, the baseball player who won’t quit (One of two of the right obsessives in the whole book.) and the scientist in search of proving the exsitence of giant squid (the least compelling read in the whole book. Especially now that there is well documented evidence of giant squid.) and the 9/11 fireman trying to regain his memory of the tragedy, really doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the book which focuses on crime, murders, gangsters and con-men.
Not particularly sensationalist the writing is at it’s best when the characters elaborate on their own tales, this was a sufficiently excellent read.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5