It's hard to write about this book without giving away the fun (and some not fun) things you learn when reading it. The summary is that an old, once-famous detective encounters a mute young Jewish boy with a parrot on his shoulder that appears to be reciting a German cryptographic code. The story is set in England during WWII, so their is much interest from various parties in this parrot.

As with many mysteries, there is soon a murder, and then a search for the culprit. The main character is the old detective, and it's interesting to read this sort of story from the perspective of a positively ancient man.

The writing is fairly stylized, featuring some of the most amazingly long run-on descriptive sentences I've ever seen. It's obviously intentional, and pretty amusing too.

Side note: Sorry for the lack of updates. We've been in the midst of house-hunting & -buying, which is quite draining. I haven't been up to reading so much during this time. But I just bought a bunch of new books for my upcoming trip to NYC, so I expect to be writing more entries soon.