Get out your pipe and magnifying glass, because veteran writer Howard Engel’s Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell provides mystery buffs with more to ponder than your average whodunit.

This carefully constructed mystery surrounds the case of Alan Lambert, a man sentenced to death by hanging for the horrible slayings of a famed opera singer and her lover in the singer’s Edinburgh residence. Believing Lambert to be wrongly accused, his brother calls on Dr. Joseph Bell, a professor of anatomy known for his remarkable powers of observation and deduction, to uncover the truth about the murders. Bell agrees, and recruits one of his medical students, the young Arthur Conan Doyle, to assist him in the dangerous search for the real killer.

The case involves plenty of suspicious characters on which to pin the crime (many of these suspects are members of the British justice system, fashionably hinting at government conspiracy). The bite-sized chapters always end in anticipation, and key pieces of information are not revealed until the final scene, making this a compelling read. While the conclusion is plausible and consistent with the clues, it is unfortunate that Engel has resorted to the familiar, Colombo-esque technique of gathering all interested parties together in one room for the revelation of the real murderer sitting among them.

More intriguing than the actual plot, though, is the combination of fact with fiction that gives readers a glimpse of the real life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – his character, his influences, and the era in which he lived. Engel has obviously done careful research. The story is based on the facts surrounding the case of Oscar Slater, whose innocence Doyle proved in 1927. Many other characters are derived from actual figures in Doyle’s life, most notably Dr. Bell, whom fans of Sherlock Holmes will recognize as a model for the great detective.

While the flow of the story occasionally suffers for the sake of including unnecessary details about Doyle’s life, the formal tone and use of language, plus details about medical techniques and historical events are generally effective in transporting the reader back to 1879.

For fans of the genre, solving the crime is not the real challenge in Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell. The trick is to unravel the facts that are woven together with Engel’s fiction.