Review: 'Paddington Pollaky' Private Detective

So ubiquitous have the stories become of Sherlock Holmes and his pipe-smoking, deer-stalker profile, that many tourists visiting London believe that the fictional detective did actually inhabit 221b Baker St.

Even so, there were real 19th-century private detectives whose exploits brought them fame. Of these, none stood out more than Paul Ignatius Pollaky - a Holmes-esque figure whose life was worthy of the descriptive powers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Indeed, there is speculation that Polacky was the inspiration for the tales of Sherlock Holmes. And, in Bryan Kesselman's book, 'Paddington Pollaky' Private Detective (The History Press, £12.99), the accomplished, eccentric sleuth whose life story he has written is described as "the real Sherlock Holmes".

With a forensic investigation itself worthy of a clue-gathering master, Kesselman has discovered that Pollaky was born the son of a synagogue caretaker in what was then Pressburg in Hungary, now the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, before coming to London where he took rooms in Paddington.

Kesselman has unearthed much of Pollaky's correspondence, which allows us to follow his story in the detective's own erratic prose - reading his letters, you can almost hear his accent.