novella

\”The Final Solution: A Story of Detection\” by Michael Chabon (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, $16.95).

Depending on their authors\’ predilections, so-called \”literary\” novels are often unsettling, disturbing, enlightening or tragicomic. They are not, in the main, much fun. Fun is left to hacks, those genre writers who churn out the chick-lit blockbusters, weepy romances, thrillers, sci-fi fantasies and blood-and-guts horrors that dominate the best-seller lists.