cloak and dagger; Julian Barnes's new novel looks at the real-life case Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to solve.(Arthur & George)(Book review)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is recognized, of course, for _creating the world's best-known fictional detective. But what many fans of Sherlock Holmes may not know is that Conan Doyle once tried to solve a real-life whodunit, an event Julian Barnes richly semifictionalizes in his latest novel, Arthur & George (Knopf). Alternating between two characters, Barnes documents the Edwardian-era lives of the famous Sir Arthur and George Edalji, a solicitor whose claims to fame were a little-read book on railway law and, as the reader soon finds, a false conviction for slashing farm animals in his village.

The half-Indian son of a Parsi vicar and a Scotswoman, George, it seems, was doomed to be marginalized from the start. When he begins at the local school, a classmate declares to him, "You're not a right sort," an opinion that will follow him throughout his life-and eventually help land him in prison.

When George is a child in Great Wyrley, Shropshire, vicious, anonymous letters start to arrive at the vicarage. Eventually, hoaxes are played on the Edalji family: Ads in the newspaper announce that their home is a slaughterhouse and "enough coal is delivered to stoke a battleship." But worse, livestock all around the parish turn up ...