TELLER OF TALES: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. By Daniel Stashower. Henry Holt. 412 pp. $32.50
On a summer night in 1930, some 6,000 well-dressed Londoners crowded into Royal Albert Hall. They had come to see and hear the renowned Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for whom a chair waited on the stage. One technicality set this hastily arranged public appearance apart from countless others: Conan Doyle had died five days before. Seeing no sign of their man, skeptics began stealing out of the hall.