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The Final Solution CD

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Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, A Story of Detection is an exquisite book. Chabon, who reexamined the golden age of comics in the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, takes up the detective novel.

Final Solution is set in the Sussex Downs, in Southern England in the summer of 1944. The Allies have just invaded Normandy but the war is far from over. An 89-year old man, retired to a life of quiet bee-keeping, sits looking out his window and spies a young boy strolling along some railroad tracks with a large gray parrot on his shoulder. The old man deduces that the young boy is about to do himself in and drags himself out of his chair and makes his way to the boy. The boy, Linus Steinman, turns out to be a young Jewish-German refugee, recently escaped from the horrors of occupied and resettled in England by a refugee agency. He is mute and generally uncommunicative. The only sounds emanating from the direction of the boy come from the extraordinarily loquacious parrot who comes out with an apparently never-ending stream of numbers, spoken in flawless German.

It is the talking parrot and the meaning of the random numbers that form the heart of the mystery of the Final Solution. Chabon then introduces us to the rest of his cast of characters. The mute Linus lives in a small boarding house owned by the Reverend and Mrs. Panicker. Mr. Panicker, of Malayan origin, seems to have lost his faith and seems merely to be treading water. Mrs. Panicker seems unloved and unwanted except for the meal she provides her boarders, until the mysterious Mr. Shane intervenes in an argument between Mrs. Panicker and her ne'er do well son. Mr. Shane, despite claiming to be in the dairy equipment business seems far more intriguing than his occupation suggests. The parrot incites interest and speculation on all concerned. What do those numbers mean?

Speculation and the possibility of untold wealth at the end of the random number mystery invariably lead to the murder of one of the characters. Additionally, the mysterious parrot has been stolen. Of course, the bumbling local constabulary immediately focuses on the wrong party. Into the breech steps the old man. It turns out the 89 year old bee-keeper was once a world famous detective. Still smoking a pipe and still mocking constables, the old man goes about seeking a solution to the crime.

Chabon does not provide the name of this old man but it seems clear that he could be none other than the great Sherlock Holmes. Readers of Sherlock Holmes know that Holmes retired to Sussex Downs to spend his remaining years as a bee keeper. The title of the book, Final Solution, provides another clue. Although clearly relevant to the as yet undiscovered horrors of the Holocaust implicit in Linus profound silence, it also calls to mind A.C. Doyle's The Final Problem, the famous Holmes tale where Holmes was thought to have died after falling at the Reichenbach Falls.

Although short, only 131 pages, Chabon has invested his characters with depth and nuance. His portrayals of both the old detective, Linus, and Mrs. Panicker are compelling. He even manages to invest Bruno the parrot with insight into the `human drama' unfolding before him.

This is an excellent book. Be prepared to read it in one sitting. It is that good.

Exquisite is the best word I can come up with to describe The Final Solution, in the sense of something whose reward is so much larger than its size- a gem, or one of those delicate hors d'oeuvres whose taste lingers so finely in your mouth you don't want to eat or drink for a while.
It might be best to describe what The Final Solution is not. It isn't "Sherlockian" in the sense of an attempt to write another Conan Doyle story. It isn't a mystery in the sense that solving the "crime" is the focus of the story. Anyone looking for those will probably be disappointed.
It is, however, a beautifully written, often melancholy or elegiac work, with a love of character and language and atmosphere.
The story takes place in 1944. Holmes is a retired 89-year-old beekeeper, the war still drags on in horrific fashion, Hitler's greatest crimes are becoming known. In the midst of Holmes' solitary life drops a mute nine-year-old Jewish boy and his numbers-spouting parrot, both refugees from Germany. When a local man is killed and the parrot taken, Holmes is asked by the local police to assist. He does, but not for possibly great matters involved (the parrot's recitations might be codes, might be bank numbers, etc.) but to reunite the boy and his sole friend. Along the way we see Holmes' fabled mind at work, but also see the slow rebellion of his aging body. We begin to wonder too, with Holmes, if in this world of war and genocide if there remains a place for such order and reason as he symbolizes, if lines can still be traced through application of cause and effect, reason and sense.
The book is just over a hundred pages long, so Chabon doesn't delve heavily into such things for pages and pages, but it is enough to cast a sort of sepia, sad light over the work as a whole. The language is beautiful throughout, and the characterization of Holmes sharply poignant and loving. It is a quick read in its brevity and relative simplicity of plot, but the tone and atmosphere slow you down a bit (in a good way) and the language and characterization make you want to linger even more. Highly recommended.

It takes an immense amount of either skill or arrogance to attempt a Sherlock Holmes "final case." And of the two, it seems that Pulitzer-winning Michael Chabon has the former. "The Final Solution" is a smaller, more intimate story about Holmes' waning years.

The time is around World War II. An old man, once a famous detective, now sits on his porch and contemplates his beekeeping -- when he sees a young boy with a parrot walk nearby. The boy, Linus, is intelligent but mute; his parrot Bruno just rattles off numbers in German. The boy is placed with the local clergyman, Mr. Panicker, who is struggling with his faith, and his unhappy wife.

Then Bruno goes missing and the lodger Mr. Shane is found dead. Since it's unlikely that the parrot killed him, the police zone in on the Panickers' ne'er-do-well son. Then they call on the elderly detective -- not just to solve the murder, but to find the parrot, which they believe is reciting secret German codes.

"The Final Solution" is more a story about people than a mystery, although the whole subplot about the parrots is very intriguing. But Chabon focuses on the story of Holmes -- who is never specifically named -- as he ponders his twilight years, and the changes in the world around him. It's a bit saddening to read about the legendary Victorian detective in WW II, out of sync with the rest of the world.

Chabon also changes his usual writing style. In most of this book, he adjusts his style to be more like Arthur Conan Doyle's -- much more erudite, intelligent and mellow. There's one chapter that is pure Chabon (from the POV of Bruno the parrot), but the rest of the time, it feels like a much older book than it is, complete with vicarages, WW II spies and relics of the nineteenth century.

The old man is clearly Sherlock Holmes, even though Chabon never mentions him by name. Perhaps it's to keep from treading on literary holy ground. But he brings the right mixture of warmth and crabbiness to "the old man." He also gives depth to the supporting characters like Mr. Panicker (who is having a crisis of faith) and his wife (who has a crush on their lodger). Even Bruno gets well developed.

While "Final Solution" isn't too great as a mystery, it's an excellent novel, and a poignant tale of Sherlock Holmes' final case. Definitely worth checking out.

What a joy it has been of late for us Sherlockians. Not only has there been a batch of new scholarly Holmes-related books to digest and debate--among them THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES--but we've also been blessed with three very interesting and top-notch pastiches. What makes this trio of recent novels so unique is that they come from unlikely writers, individuals who fall more into the literary category than the mystery genre. I am, of course, referring to the three-headed prong that is Caleb Carr (THE ITALIAN SECRETARY), Michael Chabon (THE FINAL SOLUTION), and Mitch Cullin (A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND).

As I decided to read all three books back to back, I shall comment on them in the order in which they were read. For better or worse, I started with the one that I believed would be the most satisfying of the trio: Caleb Carr's THE ITALIAN SECRETARY. However, while I found Carr's book engaging and fun for the most part, I was somewhat disappointed with it. In hindsight, my feelings might have more to do with my high regard for Carr's previous novels--such as THE ALIENIST--than it does with the actual quality of his Sherlock novel. In other words, had THE ITALIAN SECRETARY been written by someone else, I might not have found myself feeling it lacked the strength and depth of story that I've come to expect from, yes, a Caleb Carr novel. So putting those thoughts aside, I will say that Carr's book is mostly well written and he has done a good job at capturing the spirit, intrigue, and style of Doyle. However, it fell a little flat toward the end, giving me the sense of a rushed job. Even so, both his Holmes and Watson are vivid and quite enjoyable, and I do hope he tries his hand at another Sherlock pastiche, taking his time to draw the story out rather than move it so swiftly to its conclusion. A somewhat slight but worthy read nevertheless.

Next up was Michael Chabon's THE FINAL SOLUTION, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer's look at an unnamed Sherlock in retirement, set with World War II as the backdrop. This novella--not novel--is actually quite wonderful and the writing is fluid, lyrical, and overall rather excellent. To be frank, I wasn't expecting much from such a slim volume that offered us Sherlock as an elderly gentleman. But I was mistaken. It is an intelligent diversion, and, like Mitch Cullin's novel, brings the character into a modern age that somewhat confounds him. If I have any complaints, though, it is that Chabon made a point of never mentioning Sherlock by name (he is simply The Old Man), and, by doing so, skirted the character's history and much of his background, making him a bit one dimensional. The shortness of the book, too, didn't leave much room for the plot (which is, by the way, very interesting) or other characters to be developed at any great length. Still, there was enough here to hold my interest, and, in its own way, THE FINAL SOLUTION not only compliments Mitch Cullin's longer work but its themes and story also function as a kind of extended prologue to the last book in the threesome. A wonderfully written, thoughtful addition to Holmes literature that manages to pack a decent punch in too few pages.

Poor Mitch Cullin, I thought when I finally got around to his A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND. Besides holding the distinction of being "the best American novelist you`ve probably never heard of," his attempt to capture Sherlock followed in the shadows of both Carr and Chabon's efforts (although, by comparison, I'm willing to bet Cullin toiled on his book much longer than either of his contemporaries). And yet, of the three, his vision of Holmes is the most interesting and the best realized. The writing is superb, if not downright poetic at times. Most important to me, however, was that the elderly Sherlock of this novel has been humanized in a very realistic manner but yet, without question, still reads and sounds like Doyle's creation. That is no easy achievement, and one that should be applauded. In the hands of a lesser writer, this feeble version of Sherlock could easily be considered a bad joke, or, worse, a fraud. But Cullin has rendered him with such attention and, dare I say it, loving detail that I held no doubts about the character by the book`s end. It also helped considerably that this writer had clearly researched the Canon in order to keep his facts accurate. However, to say this is a mystery novel would be misleading, because it is actually something more than that. Yes, there is a mystery here--mysteries, in fact--but they are of the grand human scale (Hiroshima, war, memory, isolation, loss of loved ones) rather than the parlor room variety, and as such they are much harder to solve. The best of the batch, and a masterful literary effort that is also a worthy addition to the Canon Pastiche.

--Beth Halloway

This is an intriguing mystery story written as a tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It is filled with strange and dramatic elements; a murder and a talking animal, a mute child and government intrigue. The protagonist is Sherlock Holmes himself, retired in old age and drawn out, in the summer of 1944, for one last investigation. And the protagonist is also a parrot, lately owned by a German Jew whose small son is the only family member to have escaped to Britain.

The parrot recites strings of numbers. Over and over again. As a modern reader, you know exactly what those numbers are from the very beginning, and when we learn that the British government is seeking out the parrot because they think it knows the keys to the German naval cipher it is almost enough to make you despair. Doesn't anybody know what's going on, what's happening at that very moment in Buchanwald and dozens of other camps?

It seems that nobody does, but Holmes, from the first, is intrigued by the numbers the parrot recites. We are reminded that this is the man who is fond of saying "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." If anyone is capable of penetrating to the improbable truth of the concentration camps it would be Sherlock Holmes.

But in the end even the greatest mind in the history of detection can't unravel this particular mystery. The cruelty involved is so large that even Holmes' jaded and cynical expectations are exceeded. The motivation is so incomprehensible that even his logic cannot deduce it. By the end he knows that something has gone undiscovered, but he cannot quite make the leap into madness needed to make the final prediction.

I am not, in general, a subtle person, and I don't enjoy books that are as much subtext as story. It is a very rare book that can tell two stories: one within the plot and the other created by the reactions of the reader to the book. But in this case Michael Chabon has produced a subtle and worthwhile book that twists what I expected from a mystery story to produce rage and despair at things missed and deeds done.

Sherlock Holmes is a character so versatile that many brilliant writers cannot help but add to his story. Chabon here places Holmes very late in his life, a fact of which Holmes is very conscious, during the end of the Second World War. Holmes is absolutely isolated tending his beehives until a refugee child with a parrot catch his interest. A crime and the disappearance of the parrot lay claim to his old habits of detection one last time, and although he is not called to any of the extraordinary deductions which marked his earlier career, it is some of his lesser publicized qualities which come on display in this story. His introversion and rejection of status, based around a romantic and surprisingly poetic nature, are here, as well as his now completely outdated sense of rectitude. There is a portion of the book where Holmes visits London for the first time in years that may move you, as it did me, near to tears. The pain and affection that Chabon places in Holmes in that scene is a direct challenge to our own desires that Holmes be more than human, more impervious to emotion and frailty.
Despite this, Holmes is not the main character, nor in fact, is anybody. Chabon writes his characters right where they should be, each of them thinking they are the center of the story. The commonplace landscape of the book, and the brooding background of ruthless warfare, give the entire book a sense of enormous fragility and erosion, as though the meaning were slipping away from you after you finish each new sentence. The end of the book is told from the character of the parrot, and it is one of the finest, most mature pieces of prose around an animal I have read.
I titled this review Age and Sadness because those are the near-permanent states of the boy, the parrot, and the detective. It is not a sadness of melancholy or hysteria, it is a sadness of a thousand doors crashing shut, both within and without, and your own past dissolving before your eyes. These three can only find a new connection to the world and its virtues through their shared acts of bittersweet mercy towards each other's pain. Holmes, the boy, and the parrot each defeat the call to live only by necessity, by straightforward and easy moral decisions. There are threads of understanding in this book for anyone who feels imperfect and ill-made. Try to find them.

I must preface my opinion with a caveat- I experienced neither the print nor audio edition of this book, but rather heard it on Wisconsin Public Radio's excellent "Chapter A Day" program. Therefore my experience may reflect whatever condensing and editing WPR felt was necessary to fit the story into half-hour segments.
That said- this was a very engrossing story. The Old Man is always implied but never stated to be Sherlock Holmes at the twilight of his life, and he has a characteristically enigmatic mystery to solve. The rest of the characters are not as well fleshed out but nevertheless are not the cardboard cutouts one might expect, and I think this reflects well on the author- elsewhere he is faithful to his source, but here he improves.
Disconcerting? Yes, and here is why: Chabon's crabby old beekeeper adds a dimension to Holmes which Arthur Conan Doyle never showed us, and perhaps with good reason, because it is not altogether pleasant to see the once-mighty detective burdened with a decayed body and a failing mind. This is absolutely necessary to the story, but nevertheless adds a slightly unpleasant air to an engrossing story.
Side note: Mr. Chabon is no beekeeper. He gets nearly every detail correct except one- no beekeeper opens his hives before the day gets hot. The feistiest bees will be out of the hive gathering nectar only when the day is warm enough. Molesting hives in cool weather is a wonderful way to collect bee stings. Such a minor slip is forgivable, nevertheless, in light of the rest of the story.

Rural England during WWII; an old, old man who keeps bees; a mute nine-year-old Jewish orphan with an African Grey parrot that spouts strings of numbers. The old man meets the pair on the railroad tracks and finds them intriguing. Author Michael Chabon takes these elements and mixes up a short tale that's more than meets the eye.

The boy, Linus, is in the care of the Reverend and Mrs. Panicker. A lodger in their home is killed and the bird disappears; the boy is bereft. The old man (who is not named in the story) is revealed to be a long-retired detective, and becomes involved in the investigation; though his body is decrepit, his deductive powers are intact and the murderer is discovered, the bird returned to the boy. Along the way the "mad old beekeeper" wrestles with his fear of dying in an embarrassing fashion; his point of view on life at the age of 89 is one of the little treasures of the story.

This novella is Chabon's homage to the Sherlock Holmes canon -- for the old beekeeper is indeed Holmes. The title "The Final Solution" plays on the Conan Doyle title "The Final Problem". The language, though, is pure Chabon, with his complex ironical style. The mystery's not much, the story's too short, and the connection with the Holmes canon is only lightly drawn. But if you enjoy Chabon's style, then this little book will delight you; five stars for the prose but I am taking a star off for the thinness of the plotting.

I listened to the Audiobook CD edition, read by Michael York with the perfect wry emphasis. This presentation is indexed at long intervals which is a nuisance for listeners wanting to savor a passage again; and there are, I hear, illustrations in the print version that the listener does not have. It was still a highly enjoyable listening experience.

Linda Bulger, 2008

The Final Solution finds Sherlock Holmes (never named, but always referred to as "the old man") an 89-year-old recluse who lives in the country and cares for nothing anymore except bee-keeping. Then, one day, a young boy with a parrot on his shoulder strolls into his life.

This is a very modest story: the safety of the free world does not rest on the outcome. It does not rely on previous Sherlock Holmes literature: Dr. Watson and Lestrade are not here; we do not find out what happened to the old man since his retirement. Chabon's style is so distinctive, we always are aware that we are reading him and not Arthur Conan Doyle; but, as Chabon is one of my favourite writers, that is not a bad thing. However, he is true to the character: I am sure that he must have read all of the real Holmes stories and gives us valuable insight into his mind at the end of his life. This is an entertaining read and would interest any fan of Sherlock Holmes or Michael Chabon.

Chabon is one of my favorite contemporary writers--his word choice and descriptive prose regularly blow me away. The Final Solution is no exception--the novella contains a number of beautifully written scenes (the opening, the beekeeping section--in fact, all of the scenes where both Linus Steinman and the old man are present). However, I did not find this novel as engrossing as the mighty Kavalier & Clay, or even as engaging as Chabon's short stories. In fact, (slight spoiler) by the time of the resolution, I had to go back and reread the section where the murderer is introduced. I had forgotten who he was. This novel is well worth reading, but I, personally, would have been happier if I had waited to purchase the paperback edition.