Tarazet

November 16, 2004

It's Parrot, Not Poirot!

Okay, I'm mixing up authors for a silly post title but... How about a story where Sherlock Holmes is looking for a stolen parrot? It's the plot of a new short book by author Michael Chabon titled The Final Solution and it continues the great Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series. From the New York Times:


It is 1944, and Linus Steinman, a Jewish refugee from Germany, 9 years old, has not spoken since he arrived in the English countryside. He is alone except for a remarkable parrot that, along with snatches of Goethe and Schiller, sings enigmatic sequences of numbers in German. An aid society places boy and bird in a boarding house. The other lodgers grow mesmerized by the parrot, which they suspect is harboring secret naval ciphers or codes to Swiss bank accounts.

One night a man is murdered and the parrot is stolen. Sherlock Holmes, 89 years old, is persuaded to take a break from his beekeeping to help reunite Linus with his pet, and in the process perhaps find the killer. Thus begins the conventional detective story.


You can read the whole review at the link above. Ignore the silly pretentiousness of the reviewer. I suspect (Heh, mystery indeed!) that you will enjoy the book. I plan to try to scrape together enough money to buy it myself in a few weeks.

I read mysteries like I guzzle vodka, a lot! But I've never read one of the "cat" mysteries. But this sounds "normal enough" that I think I would really enjoy it.

If any of you have already read The Final Solution then please share your "review" with us in the comments.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at November 16, 2004 07:52 PM
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