4.0
The Final Solution CD: A Story of Detection
From Booklist
Following Summerland (2002), his foray into fantasy,Chabon continues to tinker with genre fiction, this time with a peculiar homage to the classical detective story. It's summer 1944: the Allies are slogging their way across France, and deep in the British countryside, a man is killed, apparently while in the act of stealing a German boy's parrot. The boy, a seemingly mute Jewish refugee living with a melancholy African minister and his English wife, captures the interest of a long-retired detective, once famous for his remarkable deductive abilities. Thus begins a slow-moving but atmospheric evocation of the mood and feel of Christie and Sayers. Once roused from his reclusive retirement, our nameless, pipe-smoking, beekeeping hero proves every bit as eccentric and outlandishly brilliant as the classical-era detectives he evokes: Holmes, Poirot, Wimsey. Although Chabon patches together a serviceable plot--the murder victim may have been some sort of spy, and the number-spouting parrot may be hoarding a secret--he is less interested in constructing a genuine puzzle than in assembling a cast of eccentrics and letting them frolic in the countryside. It's all accomplished with plenty of smart, stylistic turns, but finally the short novel feels like a lesser Coen brothers movie: all the trappings without much filling. That's the trouble with genre homages: too often they turn out be Potemkin villages. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
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.
From the Back Cover
In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with 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 gray 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 perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case -- the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot -- beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth? Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution.
This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
Performed by Michael York
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, C
Following Summerland (2002), his foray into fantasy,Chabon continues to tinker with genre fiction, this time with a peculiar homage to the classical detective story. It's summer 1944: the Allies are slogging their way across France, and deep in the British countryside, a man is killed, apparently while in the act of stealing a German boy's parrot. The boy, a seemingly mute Jewish refugee living with a melancholy African minister and his English wife, captures the interest of a long-retired detective, once famous for his remarkable deductive abilities. Thus begins a slow-moving but atmospheric evocation of the mood and feel of Christie and Sayers. Once roused from his reclusive retirement, our nameless, pipe-smoking, beekeeping hero proves every bit as eccentric and outlandishly brilliant as the classical-era detectives he evokes: Holmes, Poirot, Wimsey. Although Chabon patches together a serviceable plot--the murder victim may have been some sort of spy, and the number-spouting parrot may be hoarding a secret--he is less interested in constructing a genuine puzzle than in assembling a cast of eccentrics and letting them frolic in the countryside. It's all accomplished with plenty of smart, stylistic turns, but finally the short novel feels like a lesser Coen brothers movie: all the trappings without much filling. That's the trouble with genre homages: too often they turn out be Potemkin villages. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
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.
From the Back Cover
In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with 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 gray 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 perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case -- the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot -- beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth? Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution.
This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
Performed by Michael York
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, C
Unabridged Audio - Fiction/MysteryFictionLiteraryMystery & Detective - GeneralFiction / GeneralAudiobooks
RELEASED2004
PUBLISHERHarperAudio
LENGTH3
LANGUAGEEN
Michael Chabon is an American author. Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25. He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that John Leonard, in a 2007 review of a later novel, called Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of that same year. Chabon's most recent novel, Telegraph Avenue, published in 2012 and billed as "a twenty-first century Middlemarch," concerns the tangled lives of two families in the Bay Area of San Francisco in the year 2004. Source: Wikipedia
4.0
The Final Solution CD: A Story of Detection
From Booklist
Following Summerland (2002), his foray into fantasy,Chabon continues to tinker with genre fiction, this time with a peculiar homage to the classical detective story. It's summer 1944: the Allies are slogging their way across France, and deep in the British countryside, a man is killed, apparently while in the act of stealing a German boy's parrot. The boy, a seemingly mute Jewish refugee living with a melancholy African minister and his English wife, captures the interest of a long-retired detective, once famous for his remarkable deductive abilities. Thus begins a slow-moving but atmospheric evocation of the mood and feel of Christie and Sayers. Once roused from his reclusive retirement, our nameless, pipe-smoking, beekeeping hero proves every bit as eccentric and outlandishly brilliant as the classical-era detectives he evokes: Holmes, Poirot, Wimsey. Although Chabon patches together a serviceable plot--the murder victim may have been some sort of spy, and the number-spouting parrot may be hoarding a secret--he is less interested in constructing a genuine puzzle than in assembling a cast of eccentrics and letting them frolic in the countryside. It's all accomplished with plenty of smart, stylistic turns, but finally the short novel feels like a lesser Coen brothers movie: all the trappings without much filling. That's the trouble with genre homages: too often they turn out be Potemkin villages. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
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.
From the Back Cover
In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with 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 gray 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 perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case -- the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot -- beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth? Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution.
This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
Performed by Michael York
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, C
Following Summerland (2002), his foray into fantasy,Chabon continues to tinker with genre fiction, this time with a peculiar homage to the classical detective story. It's summer 1944: the Allies are slogging their way across France, and deep in the British countryside, a man is killed, apparently while in the act of stealing a German boy's parrot. The boy, a seemingly mute Jewish refugee living with a melancholy African minister and his English wife, captures the interest of a long-retired detective, once famous for his remarkable deductive abilities. Thus begins a slow-moving but atmospheric evocation of the mood and feel of Christie and Sayers. Once roused from his reclusive retirement, our nameless, pipe-smoking, beekeeping hero proves every bit as eccentric and outlandishly brilliant as the classical-era detectives he evokes: Holmes, Poirot, Wimsey. Although Chabon patches together a serviceable plot--the murder victim may have been some sort of spy, and the number-spouting parrot may be hoarding a secret--he is less interested in constructing a genuine puzzle than in assembling a cast of eccentrics and letting them frolic in the countryside. It's all accomplished with plenty of smart, stylistic turns, but finally the short novel feels like a lesser Coen brothers movie: all the trappings without much filling. That's the trouble with genre homages: too often they turn out be Potemkin villages. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
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.
From the Back Cover
In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon has condensed his boundless vision to craft a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with 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 gray 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 perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case -- the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot -- beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth? Subtle revelations lead the reader to a wrenching resolution.
This brilliant homage is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
Performed by Michael York
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, C
Unabridged Audio - Fiction/MysteryFictionLiteraryMystery & Detective - GeneralFiction / GeneralAudiobooks
RELEASED2004
PUBLISHERHarperAudio
LENGTH3
LANGUAGEEN
Michael Chabon is an American author. Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25. He followed it with a second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that John Leonard, in a 2007 review of a later novel, called Chabon's magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of that same year. Chabon's most recent novel, Telegraph Avenue, published in 2012 and billed as "a twenty-first century Middlemarch," concerns the tangled lives of two families in the Bay Area of San Francisco in the year 2004. Source: Wikipedia
