Blood splatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detectors, fingerprinting. It’s all in a day’s work for Edward Oscar Heinrich, the real ‘American Sherlock’.  Solving at least two thousand cases in a career that spanned more than forty years, Heinrich is an unsung hero of Criminology.

This biography is broken into eleven chapters, each with an unsolved case. And in true Sherlock fashion, each of the chapters starts with an excerpt from one of Conan Doyle’s classic stories. Through Heinrich’s cases, we learn how these cases turned into critical moments in the history of criminal investigation and forensics.

Perhaps the most most “Sherlock” case Heinrich ever worked on was the DeAutremont Brothers or the ‘Last Great Train Robbery’. DeAutremont brothers Roy, Ray and Hugh attempted to rob a Southern Pacific Railroad train in 1923. The gang blew up the mail car they were trying to rob  carrying an estimated $40,000, and fled the scene. Heinrich was brought in and given a pair of overalls found by an investigator. He then proceeded to give a detailed description of the suspect. With this description, police were able to track the brothers down. This was the beginning of criminal profiling. 

If Dawson was not busy writing biographies of long-forgotten detectives, then she’d have a solid career as a novelist. The story is engaging, descriptive, and impossible to put down. The amount of research that has gone into this book is astounding. From hundreds of boxes filled with Heinrich’s papers, Dawson gives readers a picture of a man both brilliant and broken. He truly is the American Sherlock.