It’s 1960, and Ormond Basil has mostly retired from the screen to live peacefully in Antibes, on the French Riviera, but he still enjoys an excuse to travel and indulge himself with some shopping. As so often happens among expatriate communities, his travels reunite him with an old friend, Pietro Malerba, a movie producer, and his inamorata, Najat Farjallah, a fading opera diva. The three are stranded on the small island of Utakos by a storm when a fellow guest of their hotel is found dead in a beach cabana, a probable death by suicide. There are details, however, that hint at foul play—the fact that there was only one set of footprints in the sand; a clean threshold; an anomaly with the rope—and so the proprietress and the other guests turn to Basil, who famously portrayed Sherlock Holmes in a number of earlier movies. Together with his Dr. Watson figure, a Spanish mystery writer named Francisco Foxá, Basil leans into the role, drawing on his excellent knowledge of Arthur Conan Doyle as well as his own experiences inhabiting the most famous British detective. As he deduces and observes, alludes and concludes, everyone begins to treat him more and more like a real detective—including the murderer, who not only strikes again, but leaves taunting clues to draw him in. The novel’s tone is clever and entertaining but also somewhat melancholy, poignant—a reflection on a time gone by, a generation now passed. This version of Holmes has a weary dignity, a wry sense of self-awareness—he wants to stretch out the farce as long as possible rather than “return to melancholy afternoons of tedium and fog”—but Pérez-Reverte doesn’t hesitate to comment on places Basil falls short of the legend whom he both admires and resents while cheekily dropping names like shiny coins.
