At the centre of Michael Chabon’s earlier novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, was a comic book hero known as the Escapist. That book weighed in at a portly 656 pages. The Final Solution revolves around Sherlock Holmes and is a mere stripling by comparison, scarcely more than a novella illustrated with stiff little line drawings. It is a slim novel with a fat one trying in vain to get in.
In July 1944, the war is nearing its end and Holmes is teetering on the edge of dotage, a prospect that scares him far more than the Reichenbach Falls. Still keeping bees and smoking foul-smelling shag, he is tempted from retirement by a murder outside the vicarage of a nearby village on the South Downs. The vicar, the Revd Mr Panicker, an Indian with High Church tendencies and a sexually deprived wife, takes in lodgers. One of them, an improbable travelling salesman, has been bludgeoned to death, apparently while making a surreptitious departure under cover of darkness.
The household also contains the Panickers’ ne’er-do-well son and two other lodgers.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in