Again the police seem to suspect the shy, aloof Birmingham solicitor. Then someone starts slashing horses and livestock. They appeal to the police, to no less than the Chief Constable, but to their dismay he appears to suspect George of being the letters' author. When the family begins to receive vicious anonymous letters, many about their son, they put it down to racial prejudice. George Edjali's father is Indian, his mother Scottish. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. This novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's extraordinary real-life fight for justice. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2005.
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