The Final Solution

by Michael Chabon

It’s 1944, and Sherlock Holmes (never named as such) has retired to Sussex to keep bees. A boy comes walking along with a large, gray parrot on his shoulder. The boy is mute, but the parrot speaks, mostly in German, and sometimes strings of numbers.

There’s a murder, and the bird goes missing, and Holmes has to solve it. I would have enjoyed more of Holmes, but he’s kept someone at arm’s length throughout the book. There is a chapter near the end, from the point of view of the parrot, which is really well written.

The mystery of the numbers is not fully explained, but close enough. The entire book is about 130 pages, and I needed to finish something, so this was a win.