Mitch Cullin’s absorbing A Slight Trick of the Mind is an original portrait of literature’s most beloved detective, Sherlock Holmes, in the twilight of his illustrious life.

Holmes—“a genius in whom scientific curiosity is raised to the status of heroic passion”—is famous for his powers of deduction. His world is made up of hard evidence and uncontestable facts, his observations and conclusions unsullied by personal feelings, until novelist Cullin goes behind the cold, unsentimental surface to reveal for the first time the inner world of an obsessively private man.

It is 1947, and the long-retired Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse, where his memories and intellect begin to go adrift. He lives with a housekeeper and her young son, Roger, whose patient, respectful demeanor stirs paternal affection in Holmes. Holmes has settled into the routine of tending his apiary, writing in journals, and grappling with the diminishing powers of his razor-sharp mind, when Roger comes upon a case hitherto unknown. It is that of a Mrs. Keller, the long-ago object of Holmes’s deep—and never acknowledged—infatuation.

As Mitch Cullin weaves together Holmes’s hidden past, his poignant struggle to retain mental acuity, and his unlikely relationship with Roger, Holmes is transformed from the machine-like, mythic figure into an ordinary man, confronting and acquiescing to emotions he has resisted his entire life. This subtle and wise work is more than just a reimagining of a classic character. It is a profound meditation on faultiness of memory and how, as we grow older, the way we see the world is inevitably altered.

米奇·库林（Mitch Cullin）

美国著名作家。生于1968年，大学期间跟随玛丽·盖茨基尔学习写作，出版过7部长篇小说和1部短篇小说集。《纽约时报》称其作品“睿智而又美丽”。

小说《涨潮海岸》被导演特瑞·吉列姆改编成电影。《福尔摩斯先生》同名电影由比尔·康顿指执导，伊恩·麦克莱恩主演。

目前居住在加州和东京两地，除创作小说外，还与艺术家彼得·张（Peter I. Chang）合作其他艺术类型的项目，和萨尔曼·拉什迪、谭恩美等作家同为非盈利网站“红房间”创始作家。