"novel attempt" is correct and usable in written English.
You could use it to describe an attempt at something new, different, or original. For example: "Their novel attempt at solving the problem was successful."
Not much success was expected from this novel attempt, but finally news came in from the Grand Duchy of Baden that the suspect had been recognized in the village where he had lived.
In the red zones, which cover two-thirds of the state, permits for water and rules against disturbing fragile species would be more closely enforced in a novel attempt to bring environmental regulations to bear on wider land use.
The ground-breaking initiative, publicly endorsed by the government in 2007, was widely praised by green and human rights groups and had been seen around the world as a novel attempt to protect forest and people.
Their novel attempt to reach into the psyche of Justice Scalia and other members of the Supreme Court is part of a growing interest in a long-neglected and cryptic subject: the psychology of judicial decision-making.
A novel attempt to use New York State's sex trafficking law against a father and son from Pennsylvania ended with mixed results on Wednesday, as the men were convicted in Manhattan of promoting prostitution and of money laundering, but were acquitted of the more serious charges of sex trafficking.
May 7, 1812 Shrewsbury, England December 14 , 1885Bray, Ireland Sir Arthur Purves Phayre, (born May 7 , 1812 Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Eng. died Dec. 14, 1885, Bray, County Wicklow, Ire)., British commissioner in Burma (Myanmar), who made a novel attempt to spread European education through traditional Burmese institutions.
Only one sentence in the novel attempts description - something anatomical.
Fiona Maazel's debut novel attempts a doubled apocalyptic vision of our American times.
Similarly, the realist novel attempted to dissolve whatever smacked of literariness.
The hero of Hutchins's clever and entertaining first novel attempts to give a computer a truly human intelligence.
He spends the rest of the novel attempting to find things that might not only consume but devour him.
