The Final Problem [spoilerish]

 The Final Problem (2026) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

From the book flap: ...a locked-room mystery set in 1960 at an isolated Greek island resort following a group of strangers, a suspicious death, and a washed-up actor ready to put his on-camera detective skills to the test.

June, 1960. Rough weather at sea leaves a group of strangers stranded on the idyllic Greek island of Utakos, all guests of the only local hotel. Nothing could prepare them for what happens. Edith Mander, a quiet British tourist, is found dead inside the beach cabana. What appears at first glance to be a clear suicide reveals possible signs of foul play to Ormond Basil, an out-of-work but still well-known actor who in his glory days portrayed the most celebrated detective of all times. Accustomed to seeing him display Sherlock Holmes' amazing powers of deduction on the big screen, the other guests believe that the actor is the best quipped to uncover the truth behind this classic closed-room mystery.

Ormond Basil has pretty much retired from the silver screen. He's retired to a lovely home in the Antibes on the French Riviera but also loves to travel and treat himself to a shopping trip or two. On his lates trip, he runs into the movie producer, Pietro Malerba, and his current lady love, Najat Farjallah. The couple are traveling on Malerba's yacht and they invite Basil to join them. Malerba is cooking up a scheme for a tv series focusing on great villains and he wants to convince Basil to agree to play a new villain every week. They stop for the night on the small island of Utakos and find themselves stranded when a sudden, intense storm crops up. Then the murders begin and instead of preparing to play villains, Basil finds himself stepping into the shoes of the world's first consulting detective for real. At his side, as Dr. Watson, we find not Malerba, but a Spanish mystery writer by the name of Francisco Foxá. Does the "great detective" get his man/woman in the end? Well...that would be telling. [which I might do...so read my comments below at your own risk.

Okay...first question. How many times is Foxá going to fawn all over Basil and tell him how he's "just like Holmes"??? Which leads to...How many times is Basil going to say "Elementary"--apparently just to be saying it? Not because something really is. But because we want to say it again. How many times is Basil going to say he's just an actor and then proceed to reel off Holmes-like observations like a boss? 

This is both the most frustratingly meta mystery I've read in a very long time as well as a tremendously interesting one. We have Ormund Basil (an obvious play on Ormund Sacker--Watson's initial name--and Basil Rathbone, who in some fans' minds is the Sherlock Holmes) who I could not not imagine as Basil Rathbone in my mind. It's like we have an actor pretending to be Rathbone pretending to be Holmes. It was an interesting concept to have someone who'd played Holmes actually try to use the Holmes technique to solve a mystery. Though, I have to say, Pérez-Reverte isn't the first author to come up with that idea (see Julian Symon's Three-Pipe Problem, for instance). But Pérez-Reverte is the first (to my knowledge) to play it so meta. And that is part of the problem. The number of times that Basil & Foxá have long, drawn-out conversations about how this is all a mystery novel really took me out of the story. If we had played it straight--just had Basil take up the mantle of Holmes and solve the murders--then I would have found it much more satisfying. But all the navel-gazing focus on "look at us being Holmes & Watson in this murder mystery" really was a bit much. 

And don't get me started on the non-ending. I might have bought into Basil's handling of the situation if we had stuck with one of the motives (the one for which I had the most sympathy)--but when we gave the same person multiple motives of varying sympathetic value and they were all true...well that kind of lost me. I do see what Pérez-Reverte was going for there. And that makes the writing and construction interesting. But a solid mystery plot? Not nearly as much. If you like your murders all neatly solved and your murderers handed over to justice all tied up with a bow, then this isn't the book for you. I'm going to give this one a nice, middle-of-the-road ★★★ , primarily for concept and the interesting writing & construction.

First line: It was June of 1960 and I had traveled to Genoa to purchase a hat.

Last line: "Then possibly," she said, "my answer has crossed yours."
*******************

Deaths =  4 (one natural, one hanged; one stabbed; one hit on head)