A gripping historical true crime narrative that "reads like the best of Conan Doyle himself" (Karen Abbott, author of The Ghosts of Eden Park), American Sherlock recounts the riveting true story of the birth of modern criminal investigation.Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities--beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books--sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest--and first--forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.Heinrich was one of the nation's first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His work, though not without its serious--some would say fatal--flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon--as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.

BUILDING OFF OF HARDCOVER BUZZ: Praise is pouring in for American Sherlock, with coverarge from the Washington Post to NPR, and more. Before its hardcover publication, it was also selected as the inaugural book club pick for Jenny Lawson's bookstore, Nowhere Bookshop.AUTHOR PODCAST: Kate Winkler Dawson has a forthcoming true crime podcast being developed on the "My Favorite Murder" podcast network, with promotions for American Sherlock on every episode.AN ENGROSSING NARRATIVE FOR TRUE-CRIME READERS: With vivid detail, Kate Dawson writes about some of the most groundbreaking cases in American forensic history-and the implications of those cases which are still being grappled with today.THE REAL-LIFE SHERLOCK HOLMES: Fans of the Arthur Conan Doyle series will be intimately drawn to our book, with its uncanny parallels, including a real-life "Dr. Watson," and the same high-energy sense of adventure.FOR FANS OF CSI: Hitting the intersection of science and crime, Dawson dives into the birth of forensics and CSI before the term was even invented, which is sure to strike a chord with the thousands interested in the procedure, and its depictions across entertainment culture.A CAPTIVATING PORTRAIT OF AMERICAN HISTORY: Going beyond just a biography of Heinrich's career, American Sherlock is a snapshot of our nation during a period of rapid societal change, with Prohibition at its height and the birth of a field whose impact is still felt today.