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.
