The Manual of Detection - Jedediah Berry

[Zadius Sky]

From Amazon:

Review:

Set in an unnamed city, Berry's ambitious debut reverberates with echoes of Kafka and Paul Auster. Charles Unwin, a clerk who's toiled for years for the Pinkerton-like Agency, has meticulously cataloged the legendary cases of sleuth Travis Sivart. When Sivart disappears, Unwin, who's inexplicably promoted to the rank of detective, goes in search of him. While exploring the upper reaches of the Agency's labyrinthine headquarters, the paper pusher stumbles on a corpse. Aided by a narcoleptic assistant, he enters a surreal landscape where all the alarm clocks have been stolen. In the course of his inquiries, Unwin is shattered to realize that some of Sivart's greatest triumphs were empty ones, that his hero didn't always come up with the correct solution. Even if the intriguing conceit doesn't fully work, this cerebral novel, with its sly winks at traditional whodunits and inspired portrait of the bureaucratic and paranoid Agency, will appeal to mystery readers and non-genre fans alike.

Product Description:

In this tightly plotted yet mind- expanding debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people’s dreams

In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency. All he knows about solving mysteries comes from the reports he’s filed for the illustrious detective Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing and his supervisor turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective, a rank for which he lacks both the skills and the stomach. His only guidance comes from his new assistant, who would be perfect if she weren’t so sleepy, and from the pithy yet profound Manual of Detection (think The Art of War as told to Damon Runyon).

Unwin mounts his search for Sivart, but is soon framed for murder, pursued by goons and gunmen, and confounded by the infamous femme fatale Cleo Greenwood. Meanwhile, strange and troubling questions proliferate: why does the mummy at the Municipal Museum have modern-day dental work? Where have all the city’s alarm clocks gone? Why is Unwin's copy of the manual missing Chapter 18?

When he discovers that Sivart's greatest cases— including the Three Deaths of Colonel Baker and the Man Who Stole November 12th—were solved incorrectly, Unwin must enter the dreams of a murdered man and face a criminal mastermind bent on total control of a slumbering city.

The Manual of Detection will draw comparison to every work of imaginative fiction that ever blew a reader's mind—from Carlos Ruiz Zafón to Jorge Luis Borges, from The Big Sleep to The Yiddish Policeman's Union. But, ultimately, it defies comparison; it is a brilliantly conceived, meticulously realized novel that will change what you think about how you think.

I have just finished reading this "detective story" novel (288 pages) by Jedediah Berry, and it's certainly one of those "fun-to-read" novels that I couldn't put down since its writing is very well done.

I came upon this novel while browsing the used bookstore, and I was intrigued by its blurb. This début novel by Berry is a detective story with surrealistic fantasy aspects. This is a story about a clerk who's been promoted unexpectedly to the title of detective, but he sincerely believe that this was done in error, so he went out to investigate the disappearance of the detective whom he worked for. During his investigation, he discovers an insidious plot: there's a secret control over the minds of the city's citizens by invading their dreams and knowing their secrets (an "invasion of privacy" comes to mind plus the cover of the book even got that "Big Brother"-eye thing going).

While reading this novel, I had thought of the film, Inception, because of its idea of people working in dreams and using dreams to discover secrets and/or past memories as well manipulating/influencing people (the novel was published in February 2009, and the film came out in July 2010). Both seems to be inspired by the works of Jorge Luis Borges.

About the Author:

From: _http://www.writertopia.com/profiles/JedediahBerry

Jedediah Berry was raised in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. His first novel, The Manual of Detection, won the William L. Crawford Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize. His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and works as editor at Small Beer Press.