The Manual of Detection

by Jedediah Berry

Book Overview

"This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka." --The New Yorker

Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent.

Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143116517
• ISBN13: 9780143116516
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Dashiell Hammett meets Terry Gilliam

The Manual of Detection reads like the love-child of Dashiell Hammett and Terry Gilliam. First time novelist Jedediah Berry stirs all the tropes of a hard-boiled detective story with surrealistic fantasy elements to create a delightfully eccentric concoction that goes down easy despite the serious message at its core. Anyone familiar with the famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin,"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," will probably appreciate the story of Charles Unwin, a fastidious and rule-abiding office clerk, who is unwittingly thrust into a web of intrigue when the celebrated detective he works for goes missing. While investigating the sudden disappearance, Unwin stumbles on a nefarious plot to gain control over the minds of the citizens by infiltrating their dreams. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy and its origins are as surprising as they are sinister. I can't help but wonder if the Patriot Act was high on Berry's mind when the idea for this book was conceived. But despite how dire that sounds, this is hardly a heavy, preachy affair. It's full of quirky humour and unexpected twists, not to mention a host of oddball characters. Along the way, we meet the cigar-chomping detective Sivart, a pair of [formerly] conjoined twin thugs, an addled museum guard, some very sorry looking elephants, a psychic giantess, an army of sleepwalkers, a villainous ventriloquist, plus three ladies straight out of a classic noir - Emily, the plucky, can-do assistant, Cleo Greenwood, the honey-voiced femme fatale, and the mysterious "woman in the plaid coat." Throw in about ten thousand purloined alarm clocks and a "Travels-no-More" carnival and you've got a story with some seriously weird atmospherics, a unique cast, a bit of mystery and a lot of fun. This novel is a delight from start to finish. I should mention that I didn't actually read this one, but listened to the unabridged edition audio book. This was my first experience with an audio book and what a wonderful surprise! Pete Larkin did a terrific job creating voices for each of the characters - he even had me laughing out loud at some points. Plus it was broken up into short enough sections that stopping it and coming back to it later was never a problem. I enjoyed it so much in fact, that I've visited the Highbridge Audio website several times to shop their catalogue and can report that they have a varied and excellent selection.

" 'It may be a crime / But I'm sure that you're mine / In my dream of your dream of me.' "

In the cloudy, rainy, anonymous metropolis of Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection, dream spies (oneiric detectives), dream crimes, and dream dreams busily deconstruct the very existence of its strange, stiff, somnambulistic residents. Are they real people being manipulated? Are they just figments of a larger dream? When they "wake up," do they really wake up, or do they just think they do? Berry's meek, unambitious protagonist, Charles Unwin, is an experienced clerk at the Agency, a surveillance/detection octopus. One soggy day, Unwin's routine is turned upside down when he's nabbed at the train station while carrying out a little off-duty shadowing of his own. The Agency nabber tells him he's been promoted and gives him a gun and a detective badge. Poor, confused Unwin soon finds out the celebrated detective for whom he clerked, Travis T. Sivart, is missing, and he, Unwin, is to search for him. Unwin (an apt moniker for this generally hapless fellow) is also initiated into his new rank with a copy of The Manual of Detection, Fourth Edition, This is a green book with an unblinking eye stamped on the cover and the Agency's motto, "Never Sleeping," below it. "Each chapter focuse[s] on one of the finer points of the investigative arts...." But when someone instructs him to consult the eighteenth chapter, he is further confused. There are only seventeen chapters. Aren't there? Charles has to wake up (no pun intended) to certain misapprehensions he'd been sold during his long clerkship (a type of apprenticeship). Unwin undertakes his own surreal hero's journey as he searches for Sivart and answers to other puzzles in the city, particularly deep in the secret bowels of the Agency. He has to find out for himself whether his faith and trust in the Agency's operating procedures are misplaced. Is anything solid and indivisible? What should he believe about a Sivart report that declares, " 'Everything I tell you is true...and everything you see is as real as you are.' " The city itself (a "character" in its own right) doesn't function in a healthy, holistic fashion. A vital piece of itself -- the rundown, rusting Carnival at the edge of town, the piece that is intuitive and spontaneous -- is outwardly dormant. But a deadly war is nevertheless being waged between it and the behemoth bureaucratic Agency. The Carnival can be interpreted as representative of the unconscious or the subconscious, in contrast to the primarily conscious Agency. And here is the classic opposition of methodology vs. creativity. Or of order vs. chaos. Or of logic vs. imagination. Perpetual tensions grant ascendancy to one for a while, but dominance is not permanent, and when the shift begins, there is social upheaval and shocking violence. Berry's daring with dreams arguably challenges one's tolerance for suspending disbelief. The innumerable, stylized coincidences and the fantasy world in which dreams can infiltrate and be infiltrated can intermittently nudge the reader o

A Surreal and Brilliantly Written Debut Novel

For Charles Unwin, the reluctant hero in Jedediah Berry's eloquent and surreal first novel, The Manual of Detection, time is curiously stretched beyond recognition and dreams are labyrinthine and vulnerable to devious invasion. Mysterious femme fatales, surly criminals and singing somnambulants lurk around every corner, each offering more bizarre clues for Unwin who is trying to solve the murder of a famous detective so he can clear his own name and get his job back as a lowly and fastidious clerk at The Agency, a Kafka-esque organization that tracks down villains and protects the city's nocturnal secrets, for better or for worse. This is a detective story that defies genre. Many of the crimes committed in this tale happen inside people's dreams, which brings to mind a couple films, such as Brazil, The City of Lost Children, and Delicatessen. The book also resonates a little like Borges but in a much more welcoming, ironic and darkly humorous way. It is part film noir, part fabulist-fairy tale, and part page-turner mystery, written in an elegant and restrained style. I loved the world that Berry created for his readers: a mythic, rainy sleep-deprived metropolis populated by a cast of brilliantly conceived characters. I just didn't want it to end. Read the book and pass it on. And look for the secret bonus---there's a palindrome inside and who doesn't love palindromes?

a dreamcrossed twilight

This novel reminds me a lot of Terry Gilliam's movie Brazil: a lowly clerk suddenly finds his world turned upside-down. A rather humdrum life has become a nightmare where nothing is as it seems: somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, between reality and something you know is a dream, a trip on LSD. Unwin is a clerk--one of many in a huge room--on the 14th floor of the Agency. On the 29th floor is the person he clerks for, Detective Sivart. On the 36th floor is the Watcher Lamech, who oversees Sivart, and well below Unwin are the underclerks. Communications are all done through messengers. For anyone--clerk, underclerk, detective, or watcher--to be on the wrong floor of the Agency is a terrible and unthinkable breech. Everything is regimented--very regimented. Then Unwin's regimented life takes an abrupt upheaval. Unwin is told that he's been promoted to Detective, and to move to Sivart's office on the 29th floor: Sivart has gone missing. Unwin reports to Sivart's boss, Watcher Lamech, only to find that Lamech has been murdered. So Unwin sets out to find Sivart, and you find yourself sucked into the whirlpool. Unwin meets the elusive Cleopatra Greenwood, Sivart's femme fatale (for lack of a more appropriate term for this very strange woman) and Sivart's archenemy Hoffman. The further you read, the more yu feel as though you've entered a hallucination. Everything is off-kilter: you enter a world of narcolepsy and somnambulism. Unwin follows somnambulists who go to the Cat & Tonic carrying bags of alarm clocks to gamble with. There's Caligari's Circus, taken over by Hoffman (Cleopatra Greenwood used to be a performer). I don't think that there's any time in the novel where you have any idea at all what will happen next, but as things unfold they're either logically illogical or illogically logical--I think! If you like nice predictable novels, this definitely will not be your cup of LSD. This is very creative--bizarrely imaginative--and it had me turning quickly to Waitzkin's Attacking Chess and Guinn's new book on Bonnie and Clyde to try to unpretzel my mind. Think of the movie Brazil, or Jonathan Barnes' fine novel The Somnambulist, and toss in some LSD on top of those: a powerful and effective work!

From the first few lines of this novel I found myself completely...

From the first few lines of this novel I found myself completely enraptured by the provocative imagery provided. From the sopping wet rain that as the story goes on you swear you begin to feel in your own socks, to the hats and bicycles you wish were still common place, this book puts you easily into a city as gloomy and foggy as it is beautiful. With such a wonderfully detailed setting, you would almost expect the plot to lag behind, but without wasting any time, you are whisked right into a high-stakes detective mystery that soon takes on twists and narrative hooks reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and the mythical fable of Calvino. All I can say beyond that is upon finishing the final chapter, I felt a tingle up my spine and a wish for more adventures from the one of a kind file clerk Unwin. This book was on the "Staff Recommended" shelf and I am thankful for whoever selected it!