Barnes simply wanted to cram into these pages all the evidence his own research turned up. Barnes has gone into such minute detail in an effort to show just how George was railroaded in the first place or how cleverly Arthur has tracked down evidence to exonerate him. Though 'Arthur & George' is smoothly written and professionally assembled, it's a ponderous performance - crammed full of historical research and re-creations of period details and overstuffed with evidence relating to George's legal case. Barnes has decided to write a straight-ahead historical novel - a task he completes in a clumsy and lugubrious fashion.

Barnes's earlier work - his sly, fictional improvisation on the life of Gustave Flaubert ('Flaubert's Parrot') or his highly subjective, collage-like history of the world ('A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters') - might have expected him to use the story of Arthur and George as an armature for some sophisticated, postmodernist games or as the jumping-off point for philosophical musings about, say, the gaps between life and art or the difficulty of understanding the past. Barnes recounts is the real-life-inspired story of how Arthur took up George's case and by playing detective tried to restore George's good name. The George in the novel is one George Edalji, a half-Indian solicitor who was convicted in 1903 of mutilating farm animals in his rural parish.

The Arthur in Julian Barnes's new novel is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur & George By Julian Barnes 386 pages.

Barnes julian arthur & george