Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made his name and cemented his literary reputation as the master of detective fiction with the Sherlock Holmes tales, but his wide-ranging interests led him to produce a remarkable array of books over the course of his career. This is his meticulously researched account of England's war with the Boers in South Africa, which he wrote while the conflict was still underway. Although Arthur Conan Doyle is now best remembered as the creator of the timeless Sherlock Holmes series of detective stories, he was also something of a social activist in his day who used his acclaim to shed light on injustices. In The Crime of the Congo, Conan Doyle builds a devastating case against the Congo Free State, a kind of sociopolitical experiment undertaken by Belgium's King Leopold II, under whose rule indigenous Africans were subjected to horrible maltreatment. The Crime of the Congo tackles a difficult topic, but this is Arthur Conan Doyle at his rabble-rousing best.