Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Forensics is a scientific method of gathering and examining information about a crime. It is used in the law for figuring out when, where, and what happened at the scene of the crime. Mystery writers must use forensics when writing about crime solving. This draws in the readers because of how realistic the mystery seems. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Red-Headed League,” the author shows his perspective on justice while exemplifying his linear and detailed style, with the main character depicting the story in chronological order and the detective using deductive reasoning to solve the crime.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life in England contributed a lot to his writing. While he was still in school there were people around him who influenced the characters that he would write about later in life, including one of his professors. “If he needed a model for his detective, he need look no further than a lean figure in Edinburgh, with long white dexterous hands and a humorous eye, whose deductions startled patients as they would readers” (Carr, 2003). He also started looking at things differently which affected his writing style. “He had encountered a curious facility of being able to drop a mental curtain between himself and the world; and by inducing an artificial state of mind, becoming himself the character he wrote about” (Carr, 2003).
Early in his life he was a doctor of medicine and would attempt to write on the side. In 1892 he decided to abandon his medical training and started to write full time (Lycett, 2007). The Red-Headed League is about a man with red hair who came to Conan Doyle’s protagonist Sherlock Holmes, asking for help with the strange situation he found himself in. Sherlock Holmes solved the case by...

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...is writing style by having the main character tell the story in the order of events while the detective solves the crime. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was, and, is a mystery writer without parallel.

Resource Sheet
Carr, J. D. (2003). The life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2nd Carroll & Graf trade pbk. ed.). New York, N.Y.: Carroll & Graf.
Cox, J. R. (1988). Arthur Conan Doyle. In B. Benstock & T. F. Staley (Eds.), Dictionary of Literary Biography: Vol. Vol. 70. British Mystery Writers, 1860-1919. Detroit: Gale Research. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1200002740&v=2.1&u=miamidade&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=195f77572a41d90d4e0074cb8695c7ea
Doyle, A. C. (1893). The adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Copyright ed.). Leipzig: Tauchnitz.
Lycett, A. (2007). The man who created Sherlock Holmes: the life and times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Free Press.