Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes

by Lindsey Fitzharris

The untold story of the Edinburgh doctor who became Arthur Conan Doyle's model for Sherlock Holmes, and his adventures in the criminal underworld of Victorian Britain.

Throughout nineteenth-century Edinburgh, the surgeon Joseph Bell was known for his extraordinary talent for detection and diagnosis. To the amazement of onlookers at the Royal Infirmary, he could read a patient’s ailments, occupation, and personal habits from a single glance. Though such deductive powers were all quite “elementary” to Bell, they had a profound influence on the medical student and budding writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon enough, Bell’s methods helped spark the creation of fiction’s most iconic detective.

Since Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887, he has become a global phenomenon. Yet the man Conan Doyle credited as Sherlock's prototype has slipped into the shadows. In Sleuth-Hound, the New York Times bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris brings Bell center stage, recounting how his work took him from ward to witness box as a medical detective probing murder and misdeeds. He worked closely and covertly with the police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn and a pioneering ballistics expert named Dr. Watson, and even collaborated with Conan Doyle to overturn a homicide conviction. Bell’s forensic investigations took him from gaslit alleyways to Gilded Age drawing rooms, put him on the trail of poisoners and child killers, and even drew him into the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man’s gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. His sharp mind forever changed the way we read bodies, detect crimes, and serve justice.

Genres: Nonfiction

Kindle Edition

Expected publication October 20, 2026

About the author

I’m Lindsey Fitzharris, a New York Times bestselling author, television host, and medical historian with a PhD from the University of Oxford. I write about the strange, grisly, and deeply human history of medicine, and I’m a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Guardian, The Lancet, and New Scientist.

My first book, The Butchering Art (2017), dives into the brutal world of Victorian surgery. It won multiple literary awards, received international acclaim, and has been translated into 20 languages. In 2021, I also hosted the Smithsonian Channel series The Curious Life and Death of..., exploring some of history’s most mysterious deaths.

My second book, The Facemaker (2022), tells the extraordinary story of Harold Gillies, the pioneering surgeon who rebuilt soldiers' faces during the First World War and is credited for being the "Father of Modern Plastic Surgery."

I’ve been lucky to share this work with a wide audience across social media and through appearances on CNN, BBC, C-SPAN, and NPR’s Fresh Air.

I also have two childrens' books about medical history, which I co-wrote with my husband, Adrian Teal, who also illustrated them. Adrian is the lead caricaturist for the hit TV series, Spitting Image. We had great fun bringing medical history to life for young readers!

My forthcoming book, Sleuth-Hound (October 2026), is a whirlwind tour of Victorian forensics from the perspective of the medical detective, Joseph Bell, whose methods and razor-sharp logic inspired the creation of Baker Street’s famous resident: Sherlock Holmes.