The Truth About Oscar Slater by William Park / Arthur Conan Doyle first 1927

DOYLE, Sir Arthur Conan; PARK, William. The Truth about Oscar Slater [With the Prisoner's Own Story]. London: The Psychic Press, [1927].

First edition. Octavo. 186 pp., followed by two pages of advertisements. Portrait frontispiece of Lieutenant John T. Trench and a plate reproducing an extract from his official diary. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the original printed dust jacket, priced 3/6 nett on the spine. With the original publisher's publicity flyer headed "To the Press" loosely inserted.

A couple of faint faded marks to the upper board; internally notably clean, with only light occasional spotting and browning, more pronounced on one page towards the rear. Jacket rubbed and marked, with a stain to the front panel, a tear at the upper front flap fold and shorter tears at the head of the spine; small losses to the spine ends and corner tips, but substantially complete. A very good copy in a good example of the scarce original dust jacket.

Glasgow journalist William Park's examination of the wrongful conviction of Oscar Slater for the murder of Marion Gilchrist in 1908, incorporating Slater's own account and a fourteen-page introduction by Arthur Conan Doyle. Published while Slater was still imprisoned, the book renewed public attention to his case shortly before his release in November 1927. His conviction was subsequently quashed on appeal in 1928; Gilchrist's murder remained unsolved.

Doyle's involvement extended beyond his introduction: the book appeared under the imprint of The Psychic Press, his own publishing venture, established in 1925 alongside his Psychic Bookshop and Library. Here he used that venture to advance his longstanding campaign for Slater, condemning the handling of the investigation and prosecution and calling for reform of criminal procedure. The book is dedicated to Detective Lieutenant John T. Trench, who lost his position after revealing evidence allegedly suppressed by the police. The accompanying publicity flyer explicitly promotes Doyle's intervention and appeals to the press to support demands for a public inquiry and Slater's release. Scarce in the original jacket, with the original publicity material a particularly desirable survival.