The book is based on a real-life episode in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took up the case of George Edalji, a second-generation Indian Solicitor wrongly accused of mutilating livestock. Although Sir Arthur’s intervention succeeds in obtaining a full pardon for George, I found it very disappointing that we never find out who really did commit the crime. This is most unsatisfactory!
For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the portrait it paints of Arthur Conan Doyle, which reminds us that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was nothing like so logical as his most famous character and believed in both spiritualism and cardboard fairies.
Conversely, I found the worst part of the book to be this sentence which occurs when Arthur is out in the Arctic shooting ducks: “Every bird you downed bore pebbles in its gizzard from a land the maps ignored.” Maybe I’m just too literal, but I found this needlessly opaque and pretentious. Still, that’s the sort of thing the booker judges seem to like...
I don’t think I would bother to read another book by Julian Barnes, but I might give his alter ego who writes detective novels, Dan Kavanagh a try. At least that way I might actually get to find out whodunit!
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