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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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The Final
Solution: A Story of Detection by Michael Chabon |
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Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Homage I’m
pretty sure that I’ve read everything published by Michael Chabon, so when his latest book was released, I scooped
up a copy of the novella, The Final
Solution: A Story of Detection. An homage to
Sherlock Holmes, Chabon creates as his protagonist
Holmes in retirement at age 89, and structures the book as a mystery, while
retaining the literary dynamism that makes Chabon
one of today’s great writers. Unfortunately, the literary complexity and the
mystery structure didn’t blend well, and the combined result is a decent
book, but nothing close to Chabon’s best. Here’s an
excerpt, all of Chapter 3, pp. 21-28: They found him sitting on
the boot bench outside his front door, hatted and
caped in spite of the heat, sunburnt hands
clasping the head of his blackthorn stick. All ready to go. As if—though it
was impossible—he were expecting them. They must have caught him on his
doorstep, boots laced, gathering his strength for a late-morning tramp across
the “Which one are you?” he
said to Inspector Bellows. His eye was exceedingly bright. The great beak
quivered as if catching scent of them. “Speak up.” “Bellows,” said the
inspector. “Detective Inspector Michael Bellows. Sorry to bother you, sir.
But I am new on the job, down here, learning the ropes, as they say, and I
don’t at all overrate my capacities.” At this last assertion the
inspector’s companion, Detective Constable Quint,
cleared his throat and politely directed his gaze toward the middle distance. “Bellows . . . I knew your father,” the old man suggested.
Head tottering on his feeble neck. Cheeks flecked with the blood and plaster
of an old man’s hasty shave. “Surely? In the “Sandy Bellows,” the inspector said. “Grandfather,
actually. And how often did I hear him speak highly of you, sir.” Not quite so often, perhaps, the
inspector thought, as I heard him curse your name. The old man nodded, gravely. The
inspector’s sharp eye detected a fleeting sadness, a flicker of memory that
briefly seamed the old man’s face. “I have known a great many policemen,”
he said. “A great many.” He brightened, willfully. “But it is always a
pleasure to make the acquaintance of another. And Detective Constable . . . Quint, I believe?” He trained his raptor gaze now on the
constable, a dark, brooding potato-nosed fellow. DC Quint
was much attached, as he rarely neglected to let it be known, to the prior
detective inspector, sadly deceased but a proponent apparently of the old
solid methods of policework. Quint
tipped a finger to the brim of his hat. Not a talkative fellow, DC Quint. “Now, who has died, and by what means?”
the old man said. “A man named Shane, sir. Struck in the
back of the head with a blunt object.” The old man looked unimpressed. Even,
perhaps, disappointed. “Ah,” he said. “Shane struck in the
back of the head. Blunt object. I see.” Perhaps a bit batty after all, thought
the inspector. Not what he used to be, as Quint
had put it. Pity. “I am not in the least senile,
Inspector, I assure you,” the old man said. He had read the trend of the
inspector’s thoughts; no, that was impossible, too. Read his face, then;
the cant of his shoulders. “But this is a crucial moment, a crisis, if you
will, in the hives. I could not possibly abandon them for an unremarkable
crime.” Bellows glanced at his constable. The
inspector was young enough, and murder rare enough on the “And this Shane was armed, sir,” DC Quint said. “Carried a Webley
service pistol, for all that he claimed to be, and near as we can tell he were,
nothing but a commercial traveler in—” He pulled a small oilskin-covered
notepad from his pocket and consulted it. The inspector had already learned
to detest the sight of that notepad with its careful inventory of deeply
irrelevant facts. “—the dairy machine and equipment line.” “Hit from behind,” the inspector said.
“It appears. In the dead of night as he was about to get into his motor. Bags
all packed, apparently leaving town with no explanation or goodbye, though
only just a week before he prepaid two months’ lodging at the vicarage.” “The vicarage, yes, I see.” The old man
closed his eyes, heavily, as if the facts in the case were not merely unremarkable
but soporific. “And no doubt you have, quite literally unadvisedly, since
you can have received no sensible counsel in the matter, leapt to the
readiest conclusion, and placed young Mr. Panicker
under arrest for the crime.” Though aware of the silent film comedy
aspect of their behavior, Inspector Bellows found to his shame he couldn’t
prevent himself from exchanging another sheep-faced look with his constable.
Reggie Panicker had been arrested at ten that
morning, three hours after the discovery of the body of Richard Woolsey
Shane, of “For which crime,” continued the old
man, “that lamentable young man in the fullness of time will duly be hanged
by the neck, and his mother will weep, and then the world will continue to
roll blindly on its way through the void, and in the end your Mr. Shane will
still be dead. But in the meantime, Inspector, Number 4 must be re-queened.” And he waved a long-fingered starfish
hand, all warts and speckles, dismissing them. Sending them along their way.
He patted down the pockets of his wrinkled suit: looking for his pipe. “A parrot is missing!” Inspector
Michael Bellows tried, helpless, hoping this titbit
might in the old man’s unimaginable estimation add some kind of luster to
the crime. “And we found this on the person of the vicar’s son.” He drew from his breast pocket the
dog-eared calling card of Mr. Jos. Black, Dealer in Rare and Exotic Birds,
Club Row, “A parrot.” Somehow, Bellows
saw, he had managed not merely to impress but to astonish the old man. And
the old man looked delighted to so find himself. “Yes, of course. An African
gray. Belonging, perhaps, to a small boy. Aged about nine years. A German
national—of Jewish origin, I’d wager—and incapable of speech.” Now would have been the moment for the
inspector to clear his own throat. DC Quint had
argued strenuously against involving the old man in the investigation. He’s
strictly non compos sir, I can heartily assure you of that. But Inspector
Bellows was too flummoxed to gloat. He had heard the tales, the legends, the
wild, famous leaps of induction pulled off by the old man in his heyday,
assassins inferred from cigar ash, horse thieves from the absence of a
watchdog’s bark. Try as he might, the inspector could not find the way to a
mute German jewboy from a missing parrot and a
corpse named Shane with a ventilated skull. And so he missed his opportunity
to score a point off DC Quint. Now the old man had a look at Mr. Jos.
Black’s calling card, lips pursed, dragging it across a range of distances
from the tip of his nose until he settled on one that would do. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “So our Mr.
Shane came upon young Panicker as he was making off
with the poor boy’s pet, which he hoped to sell to this Mr. Black. And Shane
attempted to prevent him from doing so, and so paid dearly for his heroism.
Do I fairly summarize your view?” Though this was in short the whole of
his theory, from the first there had been something in it—something in the
circumstances of the murder itself—that troubled the inspector enough to
send him, against the advice of his constable, calling on this
half-legendary friend and adversary of his grandfather’s entire generation of
policemen. Nevertheless it had sounded a sensible enough theory, all in all.
The old man’s tone, however, rendered it as likely as the agency of fairies. “Apparently there were words between
them,” the inspector said, wincing as an ancient stammer resurfaced from the
depths of his boyhood. “They quarreled. It came to blows.” “Yes, yes. Well, I don’t doubt that you
are right.” The old man composed the seam of his
mouth into the most insincere smile Inspector Bellows had ever seen. “And, really,” he continued, “it is
most fortunate that you require so little assistance from me, since, as you
must know, I am retired. As indeed I have been since the tenth of August,
1914. At which time, you may take it from me, I was far less sunk in
decrepitude than the withered carapace you now see before you.” He tapped the
shaft of his stick juridically against the
doorstep. They were dismissed. “Good day.” And then, with an echo of the love of
theatrics that had so tried the patience and enlivened the language of the inspector’s
grandfather, the old man tilted his face up to the sun, and closed his eyes. The two policemen stood a
moment, watching this shameless simulacrum of an afternoon nap. It crossed
the inspector’s mind that perhaps the old man wished them to plead with him.
He glanced at DC Quint. No doubt abject pleading
with the mad old hermit was a step to which his late predecessor would never
have been reduced. And yet how much there was to be learned from such a man
if only one could— The eyes snapped open, and now the smile hardened into
something more sincere and cruel. “Still here?” he said. “Sir—if I may—” “Very well.” The old man chuckled
dryly, entirely to himself. “I have considered the needs of my bees. And I believe
that I can spare a few hours. Therefore I will assist you.” He held up a
long, admonishing finger. “To find the boy’s parrot.” Laboriously, and
with an air that rebuffed in advance any offers of assistance, the old man,
relying heavily on his scarred black stick, hoisted himself onto his feet.
“If we should encounter the actual murderer along the way, well, then it will
be so much the better for you.” As a mystery fan, I felt Chabon played with the genre in The Final
Solution, but didn’t do it justice. Reading it felt like the plot was following
a how-to manual. From a literary perspective, there were probably dozens of
references I missed, but some I got became more disturbing than satisfying.
Obviously the protagonist is meant to be Holmes, although Chabon
calls him the “old man.” Was the title an homage to
Holmes’ last case, The Final Problem,
by Arthur Conan Doyle? Or, is a reference to the holocaust? By the end, I
didn’t care. Chabon has addressed the mystery genre
in the way that a master violinist can pick up a cello and hammer out a tune.
It’s time for Chabon to get back to a concerto that
uses all his skills. Steve Hopkins,
February 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the March 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Final Solution.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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