Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell (A Victorian Mystery) - Softcover

Engel, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585675520 ISBN 13: 9781585675524

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2004

Synopsis

Howard Engel is the award winning writer whose Benny Cooperman mysteries garner rave international reviews-fans stretch 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. The year is 1879 and in Edinburgh, 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 he’s innocent and pleads with Dr. Bell, a celebrated professor of anatomy, to uncover the truth. Bell agrees and sets out to crack the case with his keen powers of deduction and the help of his student, Arthur Conan Doyle.

About this title

About the Author:

Howard Engel is the winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction and creator of the acclaimed Benny Cooperman mystery series as well as Murder in Montparnasse, a departure from the series. He is a founding member of the Crime Writer's Association of Canada, where his private eye has been described as a cherished national institution.

From Publishers Weekly:

Canadian Engel's serviceable venture into the Sherlock Holmes genre suffers by comparison to David Pirie's The Patient's Eyes (2002), likewise substituting a young Arthur Conan Doyle and his real-life mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell, for Watson and Holmes. When a beautiful opera singer and her lover are found brutally slain, suspicion falls on Alan Lambert, "a man of good family fallen upon evil days," whose brother asks Bell for assistance. As the doctor and his protege race the clock to save Lambert from the gallows, Edinburgh's power elite impedes their efforts at every turn. Undeterred, the pair persists in exploring numerous avenues of inquiry that the police have ignored or discounted. While the period details ring true and Bell is a convincing master detective, with his deductions based on careful observation and encyclopedic knowledge, his personality remains far less developed than that of Pirie's hero. Similarly, Engel barely alludes to Doyle's well-documented family difficulties, which provided Pirie with ample grist for making the future creator of Sherlock Holmes sympathetic and complex. Moreover, the murderer's identity will come as less than a surprise to most readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1585675520
• ISBN 13: 9781585675524
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224