Howard Engel is the award-winning writer whose Benny Cooperman mysteries garner rave international reviews-fans stretch to thirteen countries: from Canada to Japan, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and the United States. His latest, Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell, is a brilliant departure from the Cooperman series, set in the Edinburgh of late 1800s and peopled with such illustrious historical figures as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Benjamin Disraeli. The year is 1879 and Alan Lambert has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang for the murder of a dazzling opera star and her lover. But Lambert's brother believes in his innocence and pleads with Dr. Bell, a celebrated professor of anatomy, to uncover the truth. Dr. Bell agrees and sets out to crack the case, with his keen powers of deduction and the help of his young student, Arthur Conan Doyle.
Another author (in addition to David Pirie) has chosen the Conan Doyle - Joseph Bell relationship as the basis for a novel. The story hangs together well, and the book is well written, after the reader gets past a few glaring problems - primarily the misinterpretation of Arthur Conan Doyle's name. Conan Doyle is a Welsh surname, and I doubt seriously anyone would ever seriously call him 'Conan'. Joseph Bell as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes is well documented, and this conjectural work provides an interesting look at how it may have worked to influence Conan Doyle.
Conan the Victorian
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
I read this almost immediately upon completing David Pirie's "The Night Calls", another novel that uses the characters of Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Joseph Bell as "real-life" stand-ins for Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes, and the variations are fascinating.Whereas Pirie paints a dark moodish piece with all of his characters (including the leads) as sombre, haunted individuals caught in a web of horror and intrigue, Engel's picture is bright, snappy, and breezy (or as much so as possible given that it details a wrongly convicted man facing the gallows). Pirie is rich in minute detail and atmosphere, Engel skips from scene to scene, plot point to plot point, like a runner trying to break the hundrde yard dash. In sum, I must confess that Pirie's book, the second in his Doyle/Bell series, is much more literary and engrossing but Engel's, originally published in paperback in 1997, is simply, a lot more fun. As they say in the ads though; "even better, try them both!"
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