The Manual of Detection - Hardcover

Berry, Jedediah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594202117 ISBN 13: 9781594202117

Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The, 2009

Synopsis

Unexpectedly promoted to detective when his predecessor goes missing and a supervisor is killed, agency clerk Charles Unwin struggles with inexperience, nerves, and a perpetually sleepy assistant during a case in which he encounters bizarre clues and is framed for murder. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Jedediah Berry holds an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has been published in Best New American Voices 2008 (his story was described by Kirkus Reviews as a “mordant, gripping fantasy”) as well as in literary magazines and online fiction sites. By day, he is an assistant editor at Small Beer Press in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Reviews

The comparisons used by critics in describing The Manual of Detection—Borges! Chesterton! Bradbury! Kafka! Lynch! Gilliam!—may seem overblown. But this list of literary (and cinematic) heavy hitters may not be hyperbolic praise so much as the only means available to explain how a book that initially seems to be a private eye novel can also be a work of absurdist art, “a surreal transmogrification of a genre” (Wall Street Journal). The critics might not have been able to categorize it, but they were also unable to put it down. However, as more than one reviewer pointed out, this may not be the best book for those who like their gumshoes straight, no chaser.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

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 catalogued 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 nongenre fans alike. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In a giant and rigidly bureaucratic agency, Charles Unwin is the personal clerk for legendary detective Travis Sivart. The detail-minded Unwin loves his job, but when Sivart suddenly goes missing, Unwin is unwillingly promoted to fill the vacancy. He only wants to solve one case: he wants to find Sivart so he can go back to being a clerk. In his first novel, Berry has created a wonderful and fantastic world, a vintage mystery seen through a hall of fun-house mirrors. Sivart’s cases have names like The Man Who Stole November Twelfth; a villain is the nefarious biloquist Enoch Hoffmann; chapters begin with koan-like excerpts from the Manual of Detection. Unwin’s adventures take him through rain-slicked city streets, to a dilapidated carnival run by criminals, and into the dreams of Sivart’s murdered supervisor. There are false starts and false identities, double crosses and doppelgängers—and there’s far more at stake than Unwin can imagine. Occasionally the story gets a little bit lost inside its own puzzle boxes, but this is a remarkably auspicious debut. --Keir Graff

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594202117
• ISBN 13: 9781594202117
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288