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·庫林（Mitch Cullin）

美國著名作傢。生於1968年，大學期間跟隨瑪麗·蓋茨基爾學習寫作，齣版過7部長篇小說和1部短篇小說集。《紐約時報》稱其作品“睿智而又美麗”。

小說《漲潮海岸》被導演特瑞·吉列姆改編成電影。《福爾摩斯先生》同名電影由比爾·康頓指執導，伊恩·麥剋萊恩主演。

目前居住在加州和東京兩地，除創作小說外，還與藝術傢彼得·張（Peter I. Chang）閤作其他藝術類型的項目，和薩爾曼·拉什迪、譚恩美等作傢同為非盈利網站“紅房間”創始作傢。