David Grann was, probably still is, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and he's brilliant at writing really engaging, thoroughly researched, non-fiction pieces.

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a collection of his shorter pieces, most of them written for The New Yorker, one for The Atlantic, and a couple for other outlets. The title of the book is rather deliberately sensationalist, and I'll bet it was the choice of the publisher rather than of Grann himself. I could be wrong, of course.

There's only one story involving Sherlock Holmes. But the Holmes story, which is the first in the collection, is a very interesting one. It's really the story of Richard Lancelyn Green, an obsessive Sherlock Holmes scholar. Green's father, also named Richard Lancelyn Green, had been a writer and a close friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The younger Green discovered the Sherlock Holmes stories before he turned eleven, and was quickly obsessed, going on to become a prominent member of Sherlockian societies, and wrote a number of serious papers about the character. In his mature years, he was intent on writing a definitive biography of Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and was trying to track down an archive of letters, diary entries and manuscripts apparently in the possession of one of Doyle's surviving children. Though she had promised to donate the archive to the British Library, after her death it turned up for auction. I won't describe all the ins and outs of Green's quest for this archive, it makes interesting reading. Suffice it to say that Green made enemies, and one day was found dead in his home, apparently after being garrotted. No one was ever identified as the murderer. So we have a classic Holmesian mystery about this most obsessive of Holmes fans. Fascinating stuff.

There are twelve stories in total in this collection, and each one of them is individual, interesting and very well written.

It's clear that David Grann spares no effort in researching his articles and books: he goes far underground beneath New York to write about the vast construction project to provide the city with drinking water; he voyages in a leaky boat through treacherous seas to research a story about one man's obsessive quest to study the giant squid and perhaps capture and raise some of its young; he goes into a federal prison to talk to an old man who made a life-long career of robbing banks and escaping from imprisonment; back into prison again to study a violent gang within the prison itself; to Haiti to attend the trial in absentia of Toto Constant, a man called 'the devil' by those who suffered from his violent extremism. It's also remarkable how many of those involved in these stories Grann has been able to track down and interview in person.

All of these stories are well worth reading, and they all just convince me to keep tracking down the other books written by this author. Indeed, I am waiting my turn at the local library to get hold of a couple of others of his which I've already put on reserve. Great stuff! ( )

Loved the stories on the Holmes related murder and the con artist, but then I expected to. I also found the one on the New York city water supply fascinating. I read this author's "lost city of z," and was blown away, so I was not surprised by the quality of these stories. ( )

The crimes in the first part were totally engrossing, but sad too. Very hard to stop reading. The other two parts were also interesting but a little more par for the course. Overall, very solid non-fiction essays. ( )

David Grann is a great writer and this is another excellent read. It is true crime that is hard to believe. ( )

Since it is a collection of articles previously unwritten the book feels a little uneven. There are some great selections in here and well worth the time to read. There are others that are well written but simply about subjects that held no real fascination for me.

This makes the book a series of big hits followed by mildly interesting. I still think it is worth a read. Just skip anything that doesn't catch your fancy. I did read every selection because I liked his writing style but the book will lose nothing if you don't want to read every selection. ( )