NEW STUFF: The Final Problem - Arturo Pérez-Reverte

There will always be Sherlock Holmes pastiches. It is the one type of mystery novel homage that seems to be pouring out of an eternal fountain. I tend to avoid them these days but The Final Problem (2026), from the pen of inventive Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, has an intriguing originality in that this is not only a Homes homage but also an intricately devised meta-fictional tribute to the history and development of detective fiction and also a true love letter to the Golden Age of Cinema, specifically Hollywood studio produced movies of the 1930s -1950s.The stand-in for Holmes in this well thought out and trickily plotted detective novel is an actor who clearly is meant to be Basil Rathbone. No attempt to hide his true identity is made even if Pérez-Reverte saddles him with the awful stage name of Hopalong Basil, a name Basil despises. His real first name is no better. It's Ormond and only one person ever calls him that. I think it happens twice. He's referred to by his last…