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Title	:	The Manual of Detection
Author	:	Jedediah Berry
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 288 pages
Published	:	February 19th 2009 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published 2009)
Categories	:	Mystery. Fiction. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Steampunk. Crime

The Manual of Detection

Jedediah Berry

Hardcover | Pages: 288 pages

Rating: 3.57 | 4398 Users | 766 Reviews

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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.

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Original Title:	The Manual of Detection
ISBN:	1594202117 (ISBN13: 9781594202117)
Edition Language:	English
Literary Awards:	New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award Nominee (2010), Hammett Prize (2009), IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award (2010)

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Ratings: 3.57 From 4398 Users | 766 Reviews

Evaluation Epithetical Books The Manual of Detection

Jedediah Berry uses the stock images of the detective novel to create a Kafkaesque fable. Set in a quasi-victorian(where the steampunk label comes from)/quasi-30s atmosphere this is an atmospheric, baroque, and endlessly readable fantasy where it could have been a dry run through of genre cleverness. The sum of the parts doesnt quite bring it in for a totally satisfying ending but the ride is terrific. Great debut. On influences, well digested for the most part,though maybe a bit of an obvious

The Manual of Detection is a brainy confection of a detective fantasy. Its core mystery is less of the whodunnit crime thriller variety and more of the grand conspiracy variety woven with the cloth of high fantasy (there are flavors of everything in the sauce here from Swift and Peake and Lewis Carroll and Chesterton all the way through to Gaiman and Gilliam). Charles Unwin is the novel's dubious hero - a hyper-meticulous clerk (some of the most wry parts of the novel describe Unwin's

There is a place in St. Louis where, for $12 and a willingness to put up with multitudes of loud children, you can crawl through endless disorienting cave-tunnels, drip down ten-story slides, ride a ferris-wheel 12 stories in the sky, watch trained children perform cat-in-the-hat tricks on 4-foot balls juggling knives, pet a shark, and drink a beer. It is the City Museum, and whatever I say, I cannot accurately describe it for you. It is a child's dream made manifest. Inside the skateboard-less

In an unnamed city which has certain resemblances to early-20th-century New York, many matters are regulated by the Agency, a large, somewhat Kafkaesque organization whose hierarchy runs, in descending order: Watchers, Detectives, Clerks, Under-Clerks. There's not much direct communication between the members of these four strata. Charles Unwin is the clerk whose responsibility it is to formalize, index and file the case reports of Detective Travis Sivart, the city's most prominent detective.

There is a place in St. Louis where, for $12 and a willingness to put up with multitudes of loud children, you can crawl through endless disorienting cave-tunnels, drip down ten-story slides, ride a ferris-wheel 12 stories in the sky, watch trained children perform cat-in-the-hat tricks on 4-foot balls juggling knives, pet a shark, and drink a beer. It is the City Museum, and whatever I say, I cannot accurately describe it for you. It is a child's dream made manifest. Inside the skateboard-less

Full disclosure: I've never written a review of a book by someone I know (hi Jeb!)I hate reading reviews of analogy ("If Voxtrot teamed up with Paul Simon, they'd have formed Vampire Weekend!") but have a weakness for writing them. So if I was asked to write a short blurb for the back of the paper-back edition, I might say that if Kafka wrote the movie Chinatown, replacing J.J. Gittes with Sam Lowrie from "Brazil," it might read like "The Manual of Detection." Of course, the problem with those

Not as much fun as I wanted it to be. I think I liked the idea far more than the execution. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that main character Unwin is so incredibly passive for so much of the book. He does little on his own initiative, and is just pushed from one thing to the next. At least he isn't obnoxious, even if he is a bit boring. The supporting characters have all the quirks and interest in the story, but they feel a bit flat, too. This may be partially intentional. It feels like