The Final Solution

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One complaint only - It's too short - Rated
Chabon's style is eclectic to say the least, and yet this has his voice stamped all over it. It's quirky, imaginative, and despite a fragile sadness which permeates the book, still has that redeeming sense of humour that makes all his books so poignant.

This is a kind of old fashioned detective story, an homage to Sherlock Holmes. Set in the Second World War it tells of the interaction of a young mute boy, his parrot and an old man, a famous, retired detective. This will clearly be his last case.

This is beautifully written and a truly wonderful story but it is disappointingly short.

Not a novel, not a short story. - Rated
Although highly recommended by a friend, this book didn't quite hit the mark for me. It seemed to lack purpose and the ending was kind of cute, but not satisfying.
The story revolves around Linus,a young Jewish refugee and his close companion, a grey parrot. When the parrot is stolen, the plight of the lonely young boy touches a spot in an old, retired, detective's heart, and he agrees to search for the bird.
I loved the idea of the parrot who spouted endless lists of apparently random numbers and the old man, an ageing Sherlock Holmes in his retirement cottage. But there didn't seem to be a lot else.
It was an easy read, but would have benefitted from being longer so we could really get involved with the characters.

excellent Holmesian pastiche - Rated
It's clever to combine the flourishing sub-genre of Holmesiamn pastiche with the Holocaust, and Chabon makes a good fist of it. The retired beekeeeper is now utterly forgotten and painfully ancient (Chabon describes the ravages of time wonderfully) but the mystery about the parrot who speaks long sequences of numbers is less satisfying. More a long short story or novella, it will leave some readers frustrated. Having said which, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Intriguing detective novel - Rated
The disappearance of a young boy's African grey parrot forms the centrepiece of this intriguingly old-fashioned detective novel by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon.

Set in 1944 war-time England, the bird, Bruno, speaks German, spouting numbers one to nine in no particular order for hours at a time. Could he be revealing a classified enemy code or revealing the number of a secret Swiss bank account?

When someone is killed and the parrot is nowhere to be found, a once famous but now elderly police detective comes out of retirement to help track him down.

Has the bird been stolen by a money-hungry bird trader? Or an analyst seeking to decipher the numbers spoken "in a soft, oddly breathy voice, with the slightest hint of a lisp".

The old man's investigation - which is inspired by his affection for the young boy, a mute escapee from Nazi Germany left bereft without his feathered friend - covers the Chalk Downs of rural Sussex to the bombed out city streets of war torn London. Along the way various clues - and dead ends - are explored until a satisfactory and delightfully elegant solution to the case is finally discovered.

This thoroughly English detective story owes much to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It is clever, witty and touching. Each sentence is beautifully crafted so that not one word is wasted or out of place. A quick, entertaining read, it will have you turning to the start again to see whether you can spot all the various clues that you might have missed. I loved it.

Beautifully written - Rated
Every sentance in this short book has been lovingly crafted - it is short but a joy to read and very clever. The references to the great detective are affectionate and in keeping with the man himself as you might imagine him to be.

If your average formulaic detective story is junk food, this deserves a couple of Michelin stars. Don't read it if you just want another vapid potboiler!