An old man is peacefully raising bees in the southern Downs in war-time England. He was once a man of considerable reputation and fame for detection, but now he in is declining years, deliberately isolated and uninterested in the world.
A brief encounter with a mute boy, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and his incongruous number-spouting African grey parrot, piques his interest. When a murder brings the police to his door, it’s only the boy and the now-missing parrot that draws him to involve himself to track down the true murderer and thief and the source of those lists of numbers the parrot recites – a code-breaking cipher the Germans will stop at nothing to retrieve? Bank account numbers, the key to untold riches? Or something else?
Though this is more a novella or short story than a full-fleshed novel (especially compared to the scope of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), and the main mystery itself is fairly easy to work out, the eventual reveal of the source of the numbers, from the parrot’s own point of view, is poignant and elegant, and the characters are compassionately clothed with Chabon’s talent for unique backstory and personality quirks.
The portrayal of the old man – Sherlock Holmes – is particularly touching. His body is failing him, he (and everyone else) thinks his mind, too, is going, and his only true friend – as well as all his enemies – is dead. He’s still Holmes, but also a man looking his own death in the eye.
I thought it did a much better job at capturing Holmes than another novel centred around him after his retirement, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (though let’s be honest, it’s been fifteen years since I read the original stories, so my impressions are most likely way off). Though that was an enjoyable story, it relied on Holmes – at best arrogant, at worst a misanthropist – not only accepting an apprentice, but a female one, and a young female one, and then very quickly not only growing fond of her but actually treating her with a modicum of respect, which actually, I don’t think he even ever managed towards Watson, really. I think Holmes’s remotely curious attitude towards the mute boy in this book far more befits his original characterisation.
Michael Chabon has written plenty of other books and stories, and his website is here.
[...] Chabon provided me a good run this year, with The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Summerland and Gentlemen of the Road. Chabon has such a sweetly [...]