Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be happy to hear that a new book about his life will soon be published. Masters of Mystery: The Strange Friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini tells about the friendship and conflict between Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

People unfamiliar with Conan Doyle’s life may be surprised to learn that he was a proponent of Spiritualism.  He firmly believed that it was possible to communicate with those who had passed over to the other side.

Houdini, who was hit hard by the death of his beloved mother, was outraged at the tricks mediums used during their seances.  He used his experience as a magician and illusionist to expose the fraudulent spiritualists.

Amazon says this about the book:

Renowned mystery author Arthur Conan Doyle and famous illusionist Harry Houdini first met in 1920, during the magician’s tour of England. At the time, Conan Doyle had given up his lucrative writing career, killing off Sherlock Holmes in the process, in order to concentrate on his increasingly manic interest in Spiritualism. Houdini, who regularly conducted séances in an attempt to reach his late mother, was also infatuated with the idea of what he called a “living afterlife,” though his enthusiasm came to be tempered by his ability to expose fraudulent mediums, many of whom employed crude variations of his own well-known illusions. Using previously unpublished material on the murky relationship between Houdini and Conan Doyle, this sometimes macabre, sometimes comic tale tells the fascinating story of the relationship between two of the most loved figures of the 20th century and their pursuit of magic and lost loved ones.

Learn More:

• Conan Doyle and Spiritualism – Article on Conan Doyle’s belief in Spiritualism from our partner site, The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Conan Doyle Quotes