'Arthur and George,' by Julian Barnes

Salon.Com

Drawing on a true story about Sherlock Holmes' creator and disemboweled farm animals, Julian Barnes delivers his most substantial novel.

By Laura Miller

Feb. 1, 2006 For years, Julian Barnes wrote as two authors. Under his own name, he published literary novels, the most popular of which, including "Flaubert's Parrot" and "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters," were breezy, postmodern meditations on French culture, romantic love and the ironic injustices of history. (Some respectable experiments and some pretty tedious relationship novels appeared under his real name as well.) Barnes' other authorial self, under the name of Dan Kavanaugh, wrote crime fiction. Barnes' latest novel, the rousing and elegant "Arthur & George," is like a protracted negotiation between Barnes and Kavanaugh, and the mingling of a little detection into the literary author's work has produced his most substantial novel yet.

"Arthur & George" is based on a real incident, the intervention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, in the case of one George Edalji, a solicitor from Staffordshire. Edalji, the son of a Scottish woman and an Indian-born Anglican vicar assigned to a rural parish, was falsely convicted of a series of nocturnal livestock mutilations and sentenced to seven years in prison. (He was released after serving three.) Doyle was only the most famous of a group of notable Britons who campaigned to have Edalji's case reconsidered by the Home Office and his reputation cleared in order that he could once again practice law.

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