Can you guess who did it?

RON FRIEDMAN

If you know anybody who likes detective novels, they'll probably enjoy The Final Solution, A Story of Detection, by Michael Chabon.

Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, puts together a detective thriller in the traditon of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie – a classic "Who done it?" Although the book takes place in England during the Second World War and the title is the name of Hitler's racist plot to exterminate the Jews, this book doesn't deal with the Holocaust, or at least not directly.

The title actually refers to the solution of a mystery – the case of the stolen parrot. The main character of the book is an aged detective. Picture Sherlock Holmes, 40 years older, in retirement, his senses not what they used to be and exhausted from dealing with troublesome humans. The detective, who is never given a name and is only referred to as "the old man," much prefers tending his beehives than coming into contact with the residents of the small village in the outskirts of London in which most of the story takes place.

However even the retired misanthrope is moved into action after a murder takes place in the local lodging house and a unique, talking, African gray parrot is stolen. The parrot, which belongs to a young, mute orphan named Linus Steinman, described as "a quiet nine-year-old boy whose face was like a blank back page from the book of human sorrows," has a habit of singing out series of numbers in German, whose meaning is a mystery to all. Are they numbers of secret bank accounts? Are they a cipher for breaking a Nazi code? It seems that many people would like to know. The question the detective has to answer, is who would go as far as to murder in order to gain possession of the mysterious bird?

Out of compassion for the young boy, who lost his sole remaining companion and perhaps out of a desire to solve one final mystery, the old man takes his dusty magnifying glass out for one more case and puts his amazing skills to their final test.

The story, which is told from the perspective of several of the characters, including that of the bird, is extremely well written, employing all of the author's fine-tuned tools of literary fiction. Like all great detective stories, the readers try to plug along with the detective, using their own deductive abilities to try to solve the mystery and wait for the final scene in which everything is revealed and all becomes clear.

But the happy ending, the moment of revelation is also a moment of sorrow, because we know that the old detective has no more mysteries to solve: "It would please him well enough to amount to no more in the end than a single great organ of detection, reaching into blankness for a clue."

Although a bit too short, at 130 pages there is not really enough time to get to know or deeply care about the characters, the story is very engaging and the prose a pleasure to read. It's also having Holmes, or rather, "the old man," back on the bookshelf in a new adventure.

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