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.

Review:

"Michael Chabon, is, simply, the coolest writer in America."--Christian Science Monitor

"A profound pleasure."--New York magazine

"A haunting novella."--Publishers Weekly

"Brilliant and unswervingly entertaining."--The Forward

"Exuberant...the real mystery is how Chabon managed to fit so much hope and humanity into such a brief tale."--BookPage

"Watching Chabon skillfully zigzag between literary and genre is half the fun of the book...refreshing."--Miami Herald

"Chabon's writing here is elegant and limber...[The Final Solution] is a little mystery story with big ideas."--San Francisco Chronicle (Best Books of 2004)

"One of the best-written American novels published this fall . . . an experiment by a master."--The New York Sun

"Delightful...and deceptively profound...Chabon shows his greatness."--Louisville Courier Journal

"The writing is everything that Chabon's fans expect--gorgeous, muscular, mildly melancholic...wonderfully executed."--Baltimore Sun

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The Final Solution; a story of Detection

Chabon, Michael

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