Imagine that I have just snapped my fingers and demanded, “Quick. Without thinking first, name the greatest magician who ever lived; then tell me who was the world’s greatest writer of detective fiction.”

I would be willing to bet that 99 percent of you would blurt out the same two names: For magician, the legendary escape artist: Houdini. For writer, the creator of Sherlock Holmes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

So. We are in agreement on that.

Both men have always fascinated me, and two books about their lives are so good that I would love to chain you to a chair and make your read them: Houdini by Kenneth Silverman, and Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle by Daniel Stashower. These books detail how different their public images were from the lives that they actually led. What I learned about Houdini thrilled me. What I learned about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left me embarrassed and a little sad.

Let’s look at Houdini first: He was billed as: World’s Hand-cuff King and Prison Breaker; Manacled Bridge Jumper; and Originator of the Milk Can and Suspended Straitjacket Escapes. He vanished elephants; swallowed needles; pulled rabbits out of hats, and was buried alive. His posters proclaimed that he was “The Greatest Necromancer of the age – Perhaps of all Times.” And he probably was.

Also not a secret were Houdini’s devotion to his mother; his veneration for forgotten magicians – many of whom he helped financially; his authorship of books on magic; his presidency of the Society of American Magicians; and the movies he starred in and produced. All of which are consistent with his history and myth.

Now, let’s look at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, justifiably enshrined in our hearts for giving us Sherlock Holmes.

When we think of that brilliant Baker Street detective, certain attributes come to mind: Reverence for reality. Meticulous research. Logic. Deduction. Evidence. Details. And facts. Facts. Facts. In his mysteries, Conan Doyle reproaches slovenly thinking and often has Holmes snapping at Dr. Watson, his long-suffering friend: “How dangerous it is to reason from insufficient data.” “You see, but you do not observe.” “There is nothing like first-hand evidence.” “Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay.”

The short-lived friendship between the magician and the writer began when Houdini was 46 years old and Sir Arthur was 61. Houdini had heard of Conan Doyle’s interest in the Davenport Brothers, mediums that Houdini exposed as frauds in his book, The Unmasking of Roubert-Houdin. He sent a copy to the writer, who not only rejected Houdini’s conclusions, but went on to attribute supernatural skills to the magician as well: “Some of our people,” Conan Doyle wrote, “think that you have yourself some psychic power.”