The Final Solution by Michael Chabon ****

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon: Linus Steinman is a Jewish orphan who has been placed in a British village with the vicar Mr. Panicker. Linus doesn’t speak, but his pet African grey parrot named Bruno recites poems of Goethe and Schiller. Most strange, he repeats sequences of numbers and everything in German. When a Mr. Shane is murdered while stealing Bruno, all agree that Bruno is the key to solving the crime.

Mrs. Panicker runs a boardinghouse and Mr. Panicker is jealous of Mr. Shane. Their son Reggie is an insolent teenager who thought of also stealing Bruno to sell for enough money to run away from home. Both are early suspects.

Mr. Shane was a recent arrival to the guesthouse. Mr. Parkins, a traveling salesman for milking equipment, is a longtime resident. Nearby is a dairy research center, which is revealed to be a British espionage center with any interest in Bruno.

DI Bellows is assigned to the murder case. He has an assistant DC Quint. These two think the other to be incompetent. The old man recalls working with DI Bellows’ grandfather before the old man retired during World War I. The old man ultimately solved the case.

Kr. Kalb from London runs a refugee organization that places orphans in the UK. He placed Linus.

Aside from the African grey being a valuable bird, several suspects were interested in the German numbers. If they can be decoded, they could yield valuable German intelligence. They could be Swiss bank accounts hiding Jewish treasure.

In keeping with the light tone of this mystery, the penultimate chapter is from the point of view of Bruno, the parrot. Flowery writing also reinforces this tone.

“[The Panicker vehicle’s] tiny windscreen and broken left headlamp lent it a squinting, groping aspect, like that of a drowning sinner asking an allegorical lifeline. Its steering mechanism, as was perhaps fitting, relied to a large degree on the steady application of prayer. Its brakes, though it was blasphemy to say, may have lain beyond help even of divine intercession.”

To spite the setting of World War II England, this cozy-style mystery is more about small-town boardinghouse gossip than the atrocities of the war. The people are aware of the events in Germany, but not directly involved or impacted. An enjoyable mystery.