Baskerville

British journalist O’Connell (For the Love of Letters) fails to make the most of his first novel’s central conflict: the up-and-down relationship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who shared in the creation of what many consider the greatest Holmes adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In 1900, aboard a troop ship about to leave South Africa, Doyle, who’s been serving as a doctor in the Boer War, encounters Robinson, a journalist and sports writer returning home to England. During the voyage, the two become friends and collaborators. In an afterword, the author explains how he elaborated on the skimpy historical record. For example, Doyle claimed in later years that Robinson supplied only the idea for the plot, while in this retelling, Robinson composes a draft of what he calls The Wolf of the Baskervilles, which has a solution that Doyle ridicules. Serious Sherlockians will best appreciate this uneven mix of fact and fiction. Agent: Antony Topping, Greene & Heaton (U.K.) (June)