The Final Solution: A Story of Detection

By Michael Chabon

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured the golden age of comic books, interwining history, legend and story-telling verve. In The Final Solution, he has condensed his boundless vision to create a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic 19th-century detective story.

In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year old man, vaguely recollected by the locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his bookkeeping than his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out—a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts? Or do they hold a significance at once more prosaic and far more sinister?

Though the solution to this last case may be beyond even the reach of the once famed sleuth, the true story of the boy and his parrot is subtly revealed to the reader in a wrenching resolution to this brilliant homage. The Final Solution is a work from a master story-teller at the height of his powers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9780062319401

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.

Book preview

1

A boy with a parrot on his shoulder was walking along the railway tracks. His gait was dreamy and he swung a daisy as he went. With each step the boy dragged his toes in the rail bed, as if measuring out his journey with careful ruled marks of his shoetops in the gravel. It was midsummer, and there was something about the black hair and pale face of the boy against the green unfurling flag of the downs beyond, the rolling white eye of the daisy, the knobby knees in their short pants, the self-important air of the handsome gray parrot with its savage red tail feather, that charmed the old man as he watched them go by. Charmed him, or aroused his sense—a faculty at one time renowned throughout Europe—of promising anomaly.

The old man lowered the latest number of The British Bee Journal to the rug of Shetland wool that was spread across his own knobby but far from charming knees, and brought the long bones of his face closer to the window-pane. The tracks—a spur of the Brighton-Eastbourne line, electrified in the late twenties with the consolidation of the Southern Railway routes—ran along an embankment a hundred yards to the north of the cottage, between the concrete posts of a wire fence. It was ancient glass the old man peered through, rich with ripples and bubbles that twisted and toyed with the world outside. Yet even through this distorting pane it seemed to the old man that he had never before glimpsed two beings more intimate in their parsimonious sharing of a sunny summer afternoon than these.

He was struck, as well, by their apparent silence. It seemed probable to him that in any given grouping of an African gray parrot—a notoriously prolix species—and a boy of nine or ten, at any given moment, one or the other of them ought to be talking. Here was another anomaly. As for what it promised, this the old man—though he had once made his fortune and his reputation through a long and brilliant series of extrapolations from unlikely groupings of facts—could not, could never, have begun to foretell.

As he came nearly in line with the old man’s window, some one hundred yards away, the boy stopped. He turned his narrow back to the old man as if he could feel the latter’s gaze upon him. The parrot glanced first to the east, then to the west, with a strangely furtive air. The boy was up to something. A hunching of the shoulders, an anticipatory flexing of the knees. It was some mysterious business—distant in time but deeply familiar—yes—

—the toothless clockwork engaged; the unstrung Steinway sounded: the conductor rail.

Even on a sultry afternoon like this one, when cold and damp did not trouble the hinges of his skeleton, it could be a lengthy undertaking, done properly, to rise from his chair, negotiate the shifting piles of ancient-bachelor clutter—newspapers both cheap and of quality, trousers, bottles of salve and liver pills, learned annals and quarterlies, plates of crumbs—that made treacherous the crossing of his parlor, and open his front door to the world. Indeed the daunting prospect of the journey from armchair to doorstep was among the reasons for his lack of commerce with the world, on the rare occasions when the world, gingerly taking hold of the brass door-knocker wrought in the hostile form of a giant Apis dorsata, came calling. Nine visitors out of ten he would sit, listening to the bemused mutterings and fumblings at the door, reminding himself that there were few now living for whom he would willingly risk catching the toe of his slipper in the hearth rug and spilling the scant remainder of his life across the cold stone floor. But as the boy with the parrot on his shoulder prepared to link his own modest puddle of electrons to the torrent of them being pumped along the conductor, or third, rail from the Southern Railway power plant on the Ouse outside of Lewes, the old man hoisted himself from his chair with such unaccustomed alacrity that the bones of his left hip produced a disturbing scrape. Lap rug and journal slid to the floor.

He wavered a moment, groping already for the door latch, though he still had to cross the entire room to reach it. His failing arterial system labored to supply his suddenly skybound brain with useful blood. His ears rang and his knees ached and his feet were plagued with stinging. He lurched, with a haste that struck him as positively giddy, toward the door, and jerked it open, somehow injuring, as he did so, the nail of his right forefinger.

You, boy! he called, and even to his own ears his voice sounded querulous, wheezy, even a touch demented. Stop that at once!

The boy turned. With one hand he clutched at the fly of his trousers. With the other he cast aside the daisy. The parrot sidestepped across the boy’s shoulders to the back of his head, as if taking shelter there.

"Why, do you imagine, is there a fence? the old man said, aware that the barrier fences had not been maintained since the war began and were in poor condition for ten miles in either direction. For pity’s sake, you’d be fried like a smelt! As he hobbled across his dooryard toward the boy on the tracks, he took no note of the savage pounding of his heart. Or rather he noted it with anxiety and then covered the anxiety with a hard remark. One can only imagine the stench."

Flower discarded, valuables restored with a zip to their lodging, the boy stood motionless. He held out to the old man a face as wan and empty as the bottom of a beggar’s tin cup. The old man could hear the flatted chiming of milk cans at Satterlee’s farm a quarter mile off, the agitated rustle of the housemartins under his own eaves, and, as always, the ceaseless machination of the hives. The boy shifted from one foot to the other, as if searching for an appropriate response. He opened his mouth, and closed it again. It was the parrot who finally spoke.

"Zwei eins sieben fünf vier sieben drei, the parrot said, in a soft, oddly breathy voice, with the slightest hint of a lisp. The boy stood, as if listening to the parrot’s statement, though his expression did not deepen or complicate. Vier acht vier neun eins eins sieben."

The old man blinked. The German numbers were so unexpected, literally so outlandish, that for a moment they registered only as a series of uncanny noises, savage avian utterances devoid of any sense.

"Bist du deutscher?" the old man finally managed, a little uncertain, for a moment, of whether he was addressing the boy or the parrot. It had been thirty years since he had last spoken German, and he felt the words tumble from a high back shelf of his mind.

Cautiously, with a first flicker of emotion in his gaze, the boy nodded.

The old man stuck his injured finger into his mouth and sucked it without quite realizing that he did so, without remarking the salt flavor of his own blood. To encounter a solitary German, on the South Downs, in July 1944, and a German boy at that—here was a puzzle to kindle old appetites and energies. He felt pleased with himself for having roused his bent frame from the insidious grip of his armchair.

How did you get here? the old man said. Where are you going? Where in heaven’s name did you get that parrot? Then he offered translations into German, of varying quality, for each of his questions.

The boy stood, faintly smiling as he scratched at the back of the parrot’s head with two grimy fingers. The density of his silence suggested something more than unwillingness to speak; the old man wondered if the boy might be rather less German than mentally defective, incapable of sound or sense. An idea came to the old man. He held up a hand to the boy, signaling that he ought to wait just where he was. Then he withdrew once more to the gloom of his cottage. In a corner cabinet, behind a battered coal scuttle in which he had once kept his pipes, he found a dust-furred tin of violet pastilles, stamped with the portrait of a British general whose great victory had long since lost any relevance to the present situation of the Empire. The old man’s retinae swam with blots and paisley tad-poles of remembered summer light, and the luminous inverted ghost of a boy with a parrot on his shoulder. He had a sudden understanding of himself, from the boy’s point of view, as a kind of irascible ogre, appearing from the darkness of his thatched cottage like something out of the Brothers Grimm, with a rusted tin of suspect sweets in his clawlike, bony hand. He was surprised, and relieved as well, to find the boy still standing there when he re-emerged.

Here, he said, holding out the tin. It has been many years, but in my time sweets were widely acknowledged to be a kind of juvenile Esperanto. He grinned, doubtless a crooked and ogreish grin. Come. Have a pastille? There. Good lad.

The boy nodded, and crossed the sandy dooryard to take the confectionery from the tin. He helped himself to three or four of the little pilules, then gave a solemn nod of thanks. A mute, then; something wrong with his vocal apparatus.

"Bitte," said the old man. For the first time in a very many years, he felt the old vexation, the mingled impatience and pleasure

Reviews for The Final Solution

[amandrake_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Michael Chabon is a good writer. He may even be a great writer.That said, I just don't find any of his novels compelling. This one is quite short, the character of Holmes is well-drawn, and the plot original.

[elleceetee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As child, I was a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Equally, I have enjoyed some of the modern takes on the character of Sherlock Holmes. The Laurie R. King mysteries are good fun, and A Slight Trick of the Mind is a beautiful rendition of an aging Sherlock Holmes. This story is not nearly so good as either of the previous examples.

The prose in this story is a little clumsy and somewhat difficult to read. The characters are uniformly morose and relatively unlikable. The detective story is somewhat contrived and the solution rests on a random clue about two thirds of the way through the book - definitely not a feat of deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes, even an aged and failing Holmes.

[carissa.green · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Michael Chabon novel always is transporting. However, I found this one a little bit less transporting than the others I have read. The first two-thirds of the novel were wonderful -- especially the musings of the old man and the layered details so characteristic of a Chabon descriptive sentence. I swear I learn big chunks of encyclopedia knowledge each time I read one of his books. But I found two fundamental problems with the book. First, and probably the more egregious, was that Chabon did too much literary tinkering. This is truly a novella. A short 131 pages, with some backstory here and there for a few characters, but no subplots to speak of, meant that the point-of-view changes (which I felt to be largely unnecessary) seemed to come at breakneck speed. Just pick a narrative angle and stick with it, please. Second, I know that this novella is basically an excuse for Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, but the actually resolution of the mystery, the key clue, is one so common and see-through I had it figured out as it happened in the novel -- before the detective himself thinks back and realizes the true meaning of the scene. It's the kind of thing that would happen in an episode of Scooby-Doo, simplistic and certainly beneath even an aged Holmes. But Chabon is Chabon, and if he wrote the side panel copy on cereal boxes, I'd read that, too. So, small quibbles. -cg

Edited to add: The edition of the book I had included a few (no more than a half-dozen) drawings accompanying the text. Perhaps someone felt they were needed to add the short manuscript. But aesthetically, I was not interested; nor did they supplement the narrative for me in any significant way. So, another small quibble. -cg

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In a nutshell: a mute boy of nine or ten years old is discovered walking with a large gray parrot through the English countryside. When it is discovered the parrot speaks German (reciting poetry and rattling off strange numbers) it is determined the boy is Jewish and has escaped Nazi Germany. He is taken in by a vicar and his family and all seems well until another boarder in the vicar's home is brutally murdered. Is there a connection between the newly arrived boy with the literate parrot and the untimely death of a fellow boarder? A once famous but now virtually unknown and very elderly detective is pulled out of retirement to find out.While Final Solution is one of the shorter "detective" stories I have read thus far I enjoyed the character development immensely. The very first character you meet is the thinly veiled Sherlock Holmes. Chabon doesn't come right out and say this is the illustrious character of Conan Doyle, but savvy readers can recognize Holmes in the details. What is surprising is how decrepit Chabon makes the retired detective out to be. True, our mysterious sleuth is 89 years old and more interested in bee keeping (even though he doesn't like honey), but from description alone I expected him to fall to pieces any second. He really is a walking bag of bones!

[andreablythe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When an old once-famous detective meets a young boy and his grey African parrot, it arouses a latent curiousity, which is later amplified by a sudden murder. The old codger is one the case, that is when he isn't otherwise absorbed with his bees.Though Chabon never once gives the detective's name, it's quickly clear who he is (I'm sure you can guess). I rather love the portrayal of the old man, who though his bones creak and his heart is weak is still electric in his total absorption and analysis of the world.This main character is back up by a half dozen interesting characters. It was a lot of fun to read and Chabon's writing style is wonderful. The story if the boy and his parrot slowly unfolds chapter by chapter into a final satisfying conclusion.

[dorritt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story is fairly simply told. In a small boarding house in Sussex in 1944, the parrot owned by a mute, emotionally damaged Jewish boy is spouting strings of numbers – in German. Are the numbers significant … perhaps even the key to bank accounts stuffed with stolen money hidden away by Nazis? Suddenly, a man is dead, the parrot is missing, and a grumpy, aged retired sleuth who happens to live down the road is forcibly dragged out of dotage to investigate.Chabon is clearly having some fun here. The story is clearly about Sherlock Holmes but ostensibly NOT about Sherlock Holmes. Chabon never once employs the famous name, referring to his protagonist as “the old man” throughout. The apparent purpose of this is to de-emphasize “Holmes the legend” – his history, his methods, his life – in order to focus on the “Holmes the man,” for this is NOT a story about an investigation, but rather a story about how ordinary (and not so ordinary) people cope with the gradual unraveling of their lives (the boy), their families/loves (the wife & her husband), their health/wits (Holmes), and their dreams/desires (the villains in the tale). What’s the Final Solution? In the end it’s the parrot (not Sherlock) who "clues" us in, the only one who has understood from the beginning that our best hope surviving the inevitable ravages of life lies in the connections we make, in the love that we give and accept from others. This definitely isn’t your typical Sherlock Holmes pastiche. The “great detective” here is doing battle not with Moriarty, but with the indignities of age and obsolescence. Nor does he actually ever “solve” the case of the numbers, though clues are plentiful and some possible solutions are dangled for the reader to choose between. (For instance, is the title “Final Solution” meant to be interpreted figuratively, as I’ve done above, or literally, as in the Nazi’s “Final Solution” ... or both?) I admit the mystery fan in me would love to know if the numbers are actually … but no, I won’t spoil the fun of drawing your own conclusions by disclosing my own! It says something about Chabon’s storytelling that I’m content never to know, having derived sufficient enjoyment from the skillfully-drawn characters, the satisfying themes, the author’s sly sense of humor, and – as always – Chabon’s lovely, lyrical prose.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Michael Chabon has done a favor for all of us who can't get enough Sherlock Holmes. Chabon imagines “the old man” at the end of his life, outwardly feeble but still mentally sharp, although not as quick as he once was. The old man's routine is disturbed by a mute Jewish boy with a pet parrot and an aura of sadness. The boy, a refugee from Nazi Germany, is lodging with the local vicar. When a fellow lodger is murdered and the parrot disappears, the old man gathers his strength and his wits to tackle one last case. He's driven not so much by solving the murder as he is by his desire to reunite the forlorn boy with his beloved pet.I've noticed that young children and elderly people often have a special affinity. It's as if they recognize their limitations and join forces to do things that neither one could accomplish alone. The boy and the old man seem to have this kind of relationship, and the pair upstage the other characters in the story. I probably won't remember much about most of the characters in the book, but I'll never forget the boy or the old man.I listened to the audio version on a road trip. Michael York's narration is perfectly pitched and paced for this story. Warmly recommended!

[themulhern · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mediocre and predictable but literate and reasonably well crafted.

[souleswanderer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This read a little too over the top, especially in the lengthy drawn out descriptive passages, of which there are plenty. Overall, not a bad little story with it's nod to Arthur Conan Doyle's character long beyond retirement age, if one were to believe he could ever retire. One is never outright told the old man portrayed is Sherlock Holmes, in his twilight years, but every reference is a clear signpost to that conclusion. Rather detracting was the author's want to see just how much description could be applied to everything.

[lobotomy42 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The core of this book is an interesting idea, but it's horribly overwritten and ultimately doesn't go very far with it. The title left me waiting for a Holocaust connection -- it finally came at the end of the book, but it was fairly weak and didn't amount to much more than an allusion. Chabon seems much more interested in the fate of the Sherlock Holmes character than he does in either the boy or the parrot, and the novella suffers for it.

[mrkay_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fun tale of mystery told more through the nuances of social relationships than of the mysterious powers of deduction. Interesting play on character as the old man (a well known impressionable sleuth in his youth) comes to terms with his reasoning prowess as well as age. My favorite was the chapter presented by Bruno, an African parrot, who describes his world through his understanding of events. Chabon does powerful things with his characters as they interact with one another, often subtle their imperfections kind of wash over the reader as one reaches for the plot. This reflection of our social mores is a powerful tool and may be overlooked by the simplicity of the storytelling.

[benjclark · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The longer this story settles into my mind, the better and better it is-- both as a story, but also technically. Chabon's writing is of such a high caliber, he can outshine his own plotting, characters, etc. Not showing off, mind you-- just so very good that it can make the writing appear, instead of the story. Perfect in length, and a great read for lifelong fans of the greatest Consulting Detective. I'd recommend to Sherlock Holmes fans, bird people, World War II buffs, and Writers with a captial W.

[abookvacation · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

No point. No resolution. Chapters jump from one thing to the next, and leave out tons of information, it's like we're just supposed to know the answers. It seems to have to real line of thought, and the main question, from the book jacket about the parrot, remains unanswered. The characters aren't built up, so you don't even care what happens to them. How did this win any awards? Piece of crap.

[eleanor_eader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A short, fine - if not always entirely convincing - Sherlock Holmes pastiche in which a young, mute, Jewish boy loses his rare pet African parrot and a lodger of the family with whom he is staying is killed. I say ‘not entirely convincing’, but mean only the set-up; the writing and handling of the unnamed detective are wonderful, and there is, towards the end, the most marvellous passage written from the point of view of the parrot itself that absolutely astounded me, it was so evocative. Chabon draws mystery, character and motives in masterful strokes, and tackles this post-career case with profound respect.I enjoyed the story, but for its brevity, was surprised to see it published alone. I don’t think I’d have paid full price, had I not found it in a charity shop (with full apology to Mr. Chabon for this conclusion).

[saroz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here's the problem with "The Final Solution": it purports to be a detective story, right there in the subtitle. And, quite frankly, it's not. It's a mystery, to be sure, but the mystery (or really, *mysteries*) rate secondary in importance. What Chabon seems to really be going for - and, to my mind, succeeding with aplomb - is a character study. Thisl becomes implicit the moment anyone opens the book and meets that character, identified only as "the old man.""The old man" is none other than the great Sherlock Holmes, who at eighty-nine is now retired to the South Downs to keep bees. Anyone who has read the Conan Doyle stories will recognize him instantly from the details we are given, but this is a changed Holmes: old, misanthropic, his era having passed him by but not willing to die just yet. He decides to take on this one last case, not so much to assist the police or the British empire but to restore to a small, displaced boy his beloved parrot. It's a touch of humanity that you glimpse very, very occasionally in the original Conan Doyle stories, and Chabon is absolutely right to call it into play.In fact, all of Chabon's best writing in the book focuses on "the old man," taking some aspect of what we already know of Holmes and twisting it slightly, or giving it a little alteration to take into account thirty-odd years alone and slowly growing frailty. Perhaps the most affecting sequence is when Holmes visits London, the city he once commanded, for the first time in twenty-three years, and is rejuvenated by the city's strength after the Blitz. "I expected nothing but ash," he says; the parallel between the unconquerable city and the hero who won't die is just moving enough. Not sentimental, not maudlin, but just right. With these fine qualities, it's perhaps forgivable that the book is *very* slight, and that one of the two big mysteries is annoyingly never solved - Chabon seems to be holding it out to us, like a carrot to a horse, to see if we can come up with the right answer. That's a little frustrating. There also happens to be a rather regrettable chapter told from the perspective of an African grey parrot, which stretches the tone of the book a little too far into the fantastic. Taken as a "story of detection," then, the novella doesn't work; it's neither wholly satisfying nor consistent in approach. But as a window into the last years of the life of Sherlock Holmes, it succeeds marvelously. One for the fans, I think.

[jeanned_14 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unnamed, retired, pipe-smoking, beekeeper is engaged by local police to investigate a murder at a Sussex Downs vicarage.   The murder coincides with the theft of an African grey parrot from a young Jewish orphan, and it is this crime on which the beekeeper agrees  to apply his formidable, yet failing, powers of observation and deduction.  Chabon's descriptions of the old man's episodes of blankness are horrific:"The conquest of his mind by age was not a mere blunting or slowing but an erasure, as of a desert capital by a drifting millennium of sand.  Time had bleached away the ornate pattern of his intellect, leaving a blank white scrap."Yet there is also humor, particularly in the single chapter told from the point of view of Bruno the parrot, driving his kidnapper mad through the application of sleep deprivation techniques.While some questions are answered for the characters of this book, greater mysteries are left for the reader to ponder, unpunished crimes reduced to numbers whispered by a young boy and his parrot.  I rate this novella, filled with exceptional descriptive narrative, at 8 out of 10 stars.[Aside:  The author helped me put a name to a phobia of mine, or at least its cousin:  gephyrophobia is the morbid fear of crossing bridges; I am afraid of those roller-coaster-like, curving overpasses at the apex of which, hood of car pointed toward the sky, the horizon is no longer visible.]

[pokarekareana · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The beekeeper is eighty-nine, and deep into retirement from his career as a detective. War rages in Europe, but his corner of southern England remains sleepily isolated from it, until Linus Steinman and his African grey parrot arrive. The parrot recites numbers in German. Linus himself is unable or unwilling to speak. When someone is killed, the beekeeper finds himself drawn in.I found this disappointing. I was expecting something more, but this seems to be one of those books that never quite lives up to its potential. Chabon has a beautiful way with words, but overall I think the book probably needed to be a bit longer to develop the story and the characters more fully – this plot didn’t work well as a novella, for me.

[jasonlf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novella is a slight effort, not as good as any of the other Michael Chabon I've read, but on a less demanding scale one would still say it's excellent.It takes place in 1944 and centers around an elderly amateur sleuth who is not named but clearly meant to be Sherlock Holmes. The crime the sleuth is focused on is the disappearance of a mute Jewish refugee boy's parrot, although there is also a murder. The twin mysteries have a reasonably obvious solution, which is not really the point of the book. Instead, lurking behind everything, is the horror of the Holocaust and the parrot's recital of strings of German numbers that everyone wants to get their hands on, from British codebreakers to would-be thieves of numbered bank accounts.

[kalky_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A much shorter Michael Chabon book, but still wonderfully written with a nice story. Many people try to do the "Sherlock Holmes as an old guy" thing, but I think few have done it better.A caution; if you don't want to think of Sherlock as a very old man, with all that comes with aging, then don't read this book.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Chabon takes a stab at adding to the Sherlock Holmes canon, by giving us the great sleuth in advanced retirement, lured out of his self-imposed bee-keeping isolation to help solve a murder and the disappearance of an intriguing parrot. The detection required would have been no challenge at all to Holmes in his prime, and presents very little to the failing octagenarian he has become by 1944, but Chabon is a fine story-teller, and this was fun to read. In an NPR interview, Chabon stated that he would hope people who picked this up to read it because he wrote it would be moved to read or re-read Conan Doyle's stories and discover what a good writer Doyle really was. "He was in touch with powerful, painful, deep stuff, and it comes through even within this rather tidy framework of the Victorian detective story." Hear, hear.

[adrianburke_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

No. Some of the writing reminds me of Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policemen' but I think this is pretty wilful whimsy. Wilful inasmuch as I ask myself, "How could he?" As in how could the author chain himself to his desk long enough to commit this?

[fyrefly98 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Summary: In this slim little novella Chabon gives us a Sherlock Holmes story - but not a story of the great detective in his prime. Rather, he paints a picture of Holmes as an old man during the height of World War II. He has long since abandoned Baker Street and now lives alone in a small country village, where the villagers want little to do with the cantankerous beekeeper they think of simply as "the old man." However, into his life wanders nine-year-old Linus Steinman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who is mute and nearly illiterate, but who has a beautiful African gray parrot that recites long strings of seemingly random numbers. Linus and his parrot fascinate the old man, who wonders what the numbers could be - coded German intelligence or bank account numbers? - but when the parrot goes missing, the old man must resurrect his once-famous powers of deduction in order to reunite the orphan with his only friend.Review: While I've read and seen any number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations and spin-offs, I've yet to read any of the real thing. Nevertheless, I feel like I know enough about the mythos in order to identify when it's done well, and Chabon does pull out a neat little story here. It's true that the solution to the mystery of the bird's location didn't require a whole lot of detailed deducing, but came in a single flash of insight, hingeing on a single clue. It's also true that the solution to the mystery of the numbers is presented to us pretty baldly, without any deducing at all (and was also pretty easy to guess.) But, as I expected from Chabon, the writing is so lovely that the rest of it didn't matter so much. This book is full of these long, winding sentences that in anyone else's hands would be tortuous, but Chabon turns them into something lyrical and round and lovely. He does a fine job with the character sketches as well, showing up personalities with the tiniest of details, and his depiction of the 89-year-old Holmes is perfect, and perfectly heartbreaking. Admittedly, this novella is short enough that there's not much "there" there, but what is there is masterfully crafted. 3.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Short enough to be easily read, I'd suggest this to fans of Sherlock Holmes stories, Michael Chabon, and World War II stories that take place somewhere other than the front, although maybe not to people who are looking for a really meaty mystery.

[the_awesome_opossum · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Final Solution is Michael Chabon's postmodern answer to Sherlock Holmes. "Mysteries" are not so nearly as neatly laid out and the narrative doesn't clearly define every ambiguity. Circumstances extend beyond what is said, and even the most astute detective can't know everything. The once-famous detective is now merely "the old man," a generally anti-social man who has found himself with a mute German boy, and the boy's parrot, to care for. The parrot captures everyone's interest with a string of German numbers it rattles off: a cipher, Swiss bank accounts, a secret code? That's one mystery of the novel; the other is a classic whodunnit murder. Yet the ambiguities that Chabon allows to remain unresolved, or barely hinted at, put the detective genre to rest, even as the novel serves as an homage. Life, its complexities and messiness, exists beyond what's on paper, and any reductivity otherwise simply isn't workable.

[billypan_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm a huge MC fan (Kavalier & Clay will always be on my top 10 all-time favorites list), but this title required a serious effort from me to finish it. A "mystery" for the lit-crit crowd or writing program grads, it struck me as lifeless and simply something the writer took on as a self-imposed assignment to cover one more genre. Strong writing alone cannot save this "writerly" exercise. Tedious (especially noteworthy for such a short book) and dulldulldull from beginning to end.

[loriephillips · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novella is a Sherlock Holmes spin-off. I read all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories last year as well as several of the spin-off mystery series by Laurie King, both of which I loved, so I was looking forward to this one by Michael Chabon. I was a little disappointed in it, however. Chabon's 89 year old crochety Sherlock Holmes was hardly recognizable as the original, plus the story is so short that the plot is hardly developed before the book ends. Having said that, I still recognized that Chabon has a way with words and his excellent writing style was apparent. Even though I thought this book was only OK, I'm still looking forward to reading the Pulitzer Prize winning Kavalier and Clay.

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An 89 year old former DC from London solves a murder mystery involving a young, mute Jewish boy and a parrot.

[mikemillertime · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Needlessly dense and obtuse prose cannot pretty up this very boring story, which also strives to complicate its paper thin plot with distracting subplots and useless details. But this mystery's worst crime is an entirely predictable ending to the whodunnit.

[pokylittlepuppy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book when it was new in 2004 and I'd just read Kavalier & Clay, but I didn't read it til two days ago. Funny how it goes.It was a satisfactory little story, but not a lot of bang. The mystery didn't amount to much, and that would've been nice. The best part is the chapter where the two men go to London and react to the effects of the Blitz. It's great. I'd have squeezed every drop of the story into that setting if it were up to me.The characters were all right, but have the problem that bugs me in a lot of contemporary fiction. What interesting and quirky and touching attributes can I put into this person? And how many can I fit into one place? A mute orphan boy with a talking parrot! A senile sleuth with a smelly house and incredible powers! And oh look, a chapter from the perspective of the bird. Is this a talented man or what.Can't seem to manage to put a woman in his book though. Parrots, no problem!Perhaps that's what they call being overwritten. But I find it grating when there's more traits than character.Something about the zesty little title kind of bugs me too. Cut your darlings, Chabon.But that's just my cranky.

[laurierking · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant, intense, poetic exploration of a mind beset by great age. Oh yes-the mind is that of Sherlock Holmes.

[parelle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A short mystery story with two questions - one which is fully answered. Not a complicated one and easy to decipher, but quietly intriguing nevertheless.