The real-life mystery featuring the two men - Joseph Bell and Henry Littlejohn - who inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes. December 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle shocks his legions of fans by killing off the world's favourite fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, in Scotland, a sensational real-life murder trial is playing out. Alfred Monson, a scion of the aristocracy, is charged with killing a young army lieutenant, Cecil Hambrough, on the sprawling Ardlamont estate. The worlds of crime fiction and crime fact are about to collide spectacularly.

The Highlands and Islands of Scotland are full of iconic places, beautiful landscapes and flourishing wildlife, but its past has seen horrifying and brutal crime of all sorts. Nineteenth-century life in the Highlands was not easy. Rather than a rural idyll, the glens and moors were home to poachers and whisky smugglers, while the towns were often ready to explode into riot and disorder. Even the Hebridean seas had their dangers, while the Islands seethed with discontent. Whisky Wars, Riots and Murder reveals the reality behind the facade of romantic tartan and vast estates. Augmenting the usual quota of petty thefts and assaults, the Highlands had a coastal town where riots were endemic, an island rocked by a triple murder, a mob besieging the jail at Dornoch and religious troubles on the Black Isle. Add the charming thief who targeted tourist hotels and an Exciseman who was hanged for forgery, and the hidden history of the Highlands and Islands is unearthed in all its unique detail. Whisky Wars, Riots and Murder is a fascinating account of life as it really was in the nineteenth-century Highlands and Islands as the forces of law and order battled to bring peace to a troubled land.

Trial in the High court of justiciary, Edinburgh, December, 1893, on the double charge of attempting to murder and of murdering Windsor Dudley Cecil Hambrough at Ardlamont, Argyllshire, in 1893. Known as the "Ardlamont mystery."

Vols. 227-230, no. 2 include: Stuff and nonsense, v. 5-6, no. 8, Jan. 1929-Aug. 1930.

"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.