Crime-solving with Sir Arthur

Julian Barnes' new detective tale mines history for ripping good read

Vicky Uhland, Special to the News

Published January 13, 2006 at midnight

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If you listen to the critics, there's a certain way to assess a book by a serious author such as Julian Barnes.

You might start by noting the author's credentials. Three of Barnes' books - including the latest, Arthur & George - have been on the short list for England's most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize. You could then evaluate Barnes' trademark elegant prose and controlled narrative. And don't forget to highlight his books' socioeconomic impact, psychological insight and sophisticated use of irony.

Gee, bet you can hardly wait to crack open that 384-page tome.

Fortunately for fans of fine literature and compelling stories, Arthur & George is one of Barnes' most readable novels. Craftsmanship aside, the best reason to buy this book is that it's simply a ripping good yarn.

Barnes' newest book harks back to the 1980s, when he wrote four crime novels under the pen name Dan Kavanagh. In Arthur & George, Barnes and Kavanagh merge to create a literary detective novel that's even more fun because it's based on a true story.

Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of The Hound of the Baskervilles. George Edalji is a small-town solicitor, author of Railway Law for the "Man in the Train."

Arthur is the poverty-stricken son of an alcoholic Scotsman; George is the middle-class offspring of an English vicar. Arthur is big, boisterous and excels at sports; George is frail, careful and limits his exercise to walks in his neighborhood.

Normally, these men would never meet. The fact that they did - after George's entanglement in a notorious crime - and the circumstances leading up to their meeting, is an interesting story. But it needs Barnes to make it fascinating.

In a recent online chat, Barnes said he spent two years researching and writing Arthur & George. He consulted letters, newspapers, government reports and Conan Doyle's writings. As a result, he's able to take the reader through Arthur's and George's lives from birth to death. This plot device allows him to gradually reveal pertinent details about his characters and create a near constant state of suspense as the reader waits for the next revelation.

For instance, we don't learn that Arthur is Arthur Conan Doyle until page 48, or that George is half Indian and considered "not a right sort" in his rural English village until the story is well under way.

Any plot summary will dilute the suspense Barnes has so carefully constructed, so if you want to preserve the mystery of Arthur & George, don't read any further. But if you're already familiar with the early 20th century British case that came to be known as the Great Wyrley Mystery, you'll be fascinated by Barnes' retelling.

When a series of threatening letters and animal mutilations occurred in Great Wyrley, police turned to the convenient suspect: the half-caste George. Even though anyone familiar with George's timidity and propriety would clearly understand he wasn't the type to sneak about at midnight and slit horses' bellies, police assembled a circumstantial case that swayed a jury eager to restore tranquility to their village. George was sentenced to seven years of penal servitude.

When he was released, he did as many others did in that era - he wrote to Sherlock Holmes. George wanted a pardon, and he hoped Doyle could take on his case and find the real culprit. George's is one of the few letters that Doyle answered personally, going so far as to don a disguise and sleuth around George's village. He also used his considerable influence to sway public opinion in favor of George, writing a series of newspaper articles about the case that eventually helped establish the British Court of Criminal Appeal.

Through George's story, Barnes recreates the atmosphere of post-Victorian England, chronicling the class differences and the lingering sense of imperialism that celebrated a manly British ideal - Arthur - and punished those like George who fell short. Barnes sets the mood not only through George and Arthur's experiences, but also with a deft use of punctuation, grammar and word choices that so subtly evoke late Victorian literature, the reader senses rather than notices the old-fashioned tone. When discussing Arthur, for example, Barnes writes: "The path lies where honour directs. Honour has told him how to behave in the past years; now honour must tell him where he is to head. He cannot tell at this distance if he will ever be truly happy again; but he knows that for him there can be no happiness where honour is absent."

It's an astonishing and impressive exercise in writing. But all literary devices aside, Arthur & George would not be as satisfying if Barnes hadn't preserved the mystery of the story, throwing subtle "gotchas" at the reader until the last line on the last page.

At one point, Barnes writes that Arthur's goal when creating a Sherlock Holmes book is "firstly, to be intelligible, secondly, to be interesting, and thirdly, to be clever." He could not have summed up Arthur & George any better.

Arthur & George

• By Julian Barnes, Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pages, $24.95.

• Grade: A

Vicky Uhland is a freelance writer living in Lafayette.

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