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    The Manual of Detection
    The Manual of Detection
    The Manual of Detection
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Manual of Detection

    Written by Jedediah Berry

    Narrated by Pete Larkin

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An unlikely detective-armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook-must solve a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams. In an unnamed city slick with rain, Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at an imperious detective agency. His job: writing reports on cases solved by the palindromic Detective Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing and his supervisor is murdered, Unwin is promoted to detective, a rank for which he is woefully unprepared. His only guidance comes from his sleepy new assistant and the pithy yet profound Manual of Detection. Unwin mounts his search for Sivart but soon faces impossible questions: Why does the mummy at the Municipal Museum have modern-day dental work? Where have all the city's alarm clocks gone? Can the man with the blond beard really read his thoughts? Meanwhile, Unwin is framed for murder, pursued by goons, and confounded by a femme fatale. His only choice: to enter the dreams of a murdered man.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateFeb 19, 2009
    ISBN9781598878783
    The Manual of Detection
    Author

    Jedediah Berry

    Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection, and a story in cards, The Family Arcana. He lives in Western Massachusetts. Together with his partner, writer Emily Houk, he runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction, poetry, and games in unusual shapes.

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    Reviews for The Manual of Detection

    3.5/5

    366 ratings45 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The strength of this novel is more in the quirky cast of characters than the plot itself, which is a bit overwrought and convenient for my tastes. Overall, though, it's a first book Berry should be proud of, and I'll definitely be on the lookout for future efforts of his.
    • 4/5
      Charles Unwin is an unassuming clerk working on the fourteenth floor of ‘the Agency’, a mysterious organization located in a mysterious city. One morning Charles meets up with a Detective Pith from the Agency who informs him that he’s been promoted – he’s no longer a clerk but now is also a detective. This throws Charles off and agitated, he tries to reclaim his old position all the while solving the riddle of where his predecessor has disappeared. While one might assume that Charles would be pleased with his promotion, the result is actually the opposite. He enjoys being a clerk and he’s very good at it. Clerking at the Agency involves organizing, cataloguing (and discarding what the clerk deems irrelevant) all the clues, facts, evidence and solutions gathered by the detectives. Each detective is assigned one clerk who is responsible for all cases investigated by their detective.This book is nothing like what I thought it would be. I expected something conventional in the, well, mystery/detective novel genre. Ha! It’s anything but conventional, at least plot-wise. The writing is good, sparse and to-the-point. The story takes on a surrealist, fantastical perspective and I have to confess I was somewhat lost at times. I had a bit of trouble following the plot because of the unusual method of story-telling. I don’t think, however, that it’s the author’s fault – I’m just not used to this kind of writing style. To give an example, the cases Charles’ detective (Sivart), followed were strange – one was called ‘The Man Who Stole November Twelfth” and the reader should take that title literally.There were a few plot twists (in the normal context of this book) which I found very clever. As a matter of fact given my confusion with the nature of this novel, I likely missed some plot points as I was so focused on untangling what was going on. I plan on re-reading this book soon since there were subtleties I know I didn’t catch and I believe this is one of those books I can read over and over again and likely find something new each time.This book is like nothing I’ve ever read before in this genre and I would recommend it to anyone who loves mysteries with and off-beat, quirky approach to the story.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. Effortlessly beautiful, the writing is lyrical and dreamy. The reader feels they are peering into a strange new world that is familiar yet strange. Charles Unwin is but a cog in the great machinery of a national detective agency. A diligent and well-respected clerk, Unwin finds himself thrown off his established routine when he is unceremoniously promoted to detective. Though very familiar with all of the agencies high-profile cases, Unwin is rather unwilling to take on crime fighting himself. Unfortunately, he soon finds himself in the midst of one of the greatest capers the city has ever seen. Will he catch the infamous Hoffman before he can steal another day off the calendar or maybe something even worse?
    • 3/5
      In this absurdist take on the detective genre, a clerk for a very large and slightly surreal detective agency finds himself unexpectedly promoted and thrown into events he doesn't remotely understand, events which take him through constantly rainy city streets, dreamscapes, and the grounds of a traveling carnival that doesn't travel.This type of weirdness is something I often quite enjoy, but for some reason I was left feeling pretty lukewarm towards this one. There were a few moments where I intellectually recognized that it was doing something mildly clever, but I just never really engaged with it very much, and often found myself feeling impatient when I maybe should have felt charmed or pleasantly bemused or something. I really don't know whether that's the novel's fault, though, or if I turned out to just not be in the right mood for it. Because this probably is the sort of thing you have to be in the right mood for.Rating: I'm going to call this 3/5. I'm pretty sure that's either over- or under-rating it, but I genuinely can't tell which.
    • 3/5
      Not bad, a bit weird and complicated. Reminds me of Jasper Fjorde novels.
    • 4/5
      If you enjoyed reading detective fantasy stories liked China Mieville's The City and The City, then I think you will really like Berry's The Manual of Detection. There is a wonderful noir feel to this story, and I really enjoy how atmospheric the story is, given that nighttime, dreams and perpetual rain run through this wonderful fantasy fiction read. The subtle nuances of the story are captured in fine detail, what with the dream detection, the historic case of the theft of November 12th, shady characters, and various aptly named locals like the Forthy Winks (the bar and gaming hall below the morgue), the Travels-No-More Carnival that has remained in town and my personal favorite, the casino nightclub aptly named, the "Cat & Tonic" as a play on works for the catatonic nature of its clientele. As with other stories in the noir genre, Berry has created balanced his characters and leaves the reader in suspense as he unfolds earlier unkown information in a "dream detection" sequence. I did love the way he handled that! Overall, a very smartly presented fantasy noir detective story that has me hoping this is the start of a possible series.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful, strange and immersive, The Manual of Detection is one of my favorite books in recent memory. The world Berry has invented feels like the movie Brazil crossed with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and inspired by classic noir detective stories and films, such as The Maltese Falcon. It's dark and grim yet somehow not depressing. I couldn't put it down.The surreal narrative begins with the main character, Charles Unwin, who is a clerk at an elaborate and serpentine detective agency, being unexpectedly promoted to detective and feeling convinced it is an error, which he then sets out to correct. His efforts to prevent his own promotion, and find the detective he was mysteriously promoted to replace, leads him into a twisted, multilayered conspiracy involving both the Agency, and its most notorious enemies.This is a book worth reading without even skimming the back cover...allow yourself to be surprised by all the bizarre twists and turns and odd mysteries Unwin faces. Even the climax, despite the complexity of the plot, holds together wonderfully well. I loved this. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Decent, but does not deliver on it's initial promise.
    • 5/5
      Went to see Jedediah Berry last night - he is a freaking GENIUS! Everyone should read his awesome absurdist novel: THE MANUAL OF DETECTION. You'll go places you never DREAMED of. :D
    • 3/5
      This book is written in a style of a classic noir/detective novel, but one gone awry and fantastic. I enjoyed a few lovely phrases in the beginning of the book, like "...it was the cloud of her eyes, and something on the other side of them, just out of sight." or"...with only the weather having anything to say, and the weather spoke only of itself." or"...the world is unkind to the shoeless and frolicsome."and some of the ideas and motifs, but when things kept getting more and more muddled (dream-like) I just could not keep interest. In the end I had to more or less force myself to quickly browse through the last fifty pages of the book, to see whether the end may give me something to hold on. Well, it did not. I am absolutely sure a fan of the genre can get much more out of it then I could, as I would assume there were many cross-references to other characters and books. The right audience is out there.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this because the concept is so unique. A very surreal read. However, around page 200 the concept lost its appeal. I skimmed the remainder of the book just to see how it ended, and wasn't terribly impressed with the climax but it was a fun read overall.
    • 2/5

      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. One day he is abruptly informed that he has been promoted to fill the shoes of Sivart, who has gone missing, and is given a copy of the eponymous Manual of Detection to guide him. Plucking up all his courage, he goes to see the watcher who has made this appointment, hoping to persuade him it has all been a mistake and to restore the status quo, but by the time he gets there the man has been murdered; and soon thereafter Unwin finds himself framed for that crime. He spends most of the rest of the book in quest of the elusive Sivart, discovering along the way that there were flaws in the solutions of several of Sivart's most celebrated cases, and that some of the supervillains with whom Sivart has vied are perhaps not what they've seemed.

      In particular, Unwin learns that the standard edition of The Manual of Detection is missing a chapter, the one on oneiric detection -- detection through dreams. Thus, while much of the novel's action takes place in mundane reality (or, at least, the version of it which the author presents to us as reality), there's also much that goes on within dreams, and within dreams that are themselves within dreams, and so on -- to the extent that it can be hard on occasion for the reader (or at least this reader) to work out which layer of derived reality is the one currently involved. This is the aspect of Berry's novel that I liked.

      In a way the novel's like an expanded account of a dream; while the phantasmagoric nature of the events sometimes captivated me, there were also quite a few occasions when it occurred to me that there's a very good reason why people are generally discouraged from telling others about their dreams. It also means that throughout the text there's the sense that nothing that goes on, are the people participating, are of any consequence; there's no passion in the writing, and cannot be, with the result that it's pretty hard to muster any passion for the reading, either. By the halfway mark I was finding proceedings tedious (I was also finding it hard to remember, each time I picked the book up, what had been happening when I'd broken of); by three-quarters of the way through I was, alas, beginning to keep count of the pages left to go.

      This alienation from the events of the text is unfortunately bolstered by the book's other major influence (if I can use that term loosely): surrealism, most especially the surrealism of Rene Magritte -- just to make sure we catch this, the title page bears a Magritte-style hat! It crossed my mind at one point that this book might be an exercise along the lines of "the detective novel Magritte might have written"; while I dismissed the notion immediately, it nevertheless did capture something of the feel of the text. The trouble is that the great delight of Magritte's paintings is that they portray a world that by definition we can't enter -- they're windows onto a dreamlike place of beautiful, consciousness-enflaming fantastication. If you're asked to step through the window and into that world, much of its magic ebbs because of your presence -- especially if your presence is prolonged to fill 278 pages.

      I'd been looking forward acutely to The Manual of Detection -- it sounded to be right up my street (and the book's excellent, imaginative design enhanced this expectation) -- and must confess to being very disappointed. I was impressed by much in it, not least the author's first-rate imagination, and I'll be looking out for further books by Berry; but this one just didn't do it for me.
    • 5/5
      I’m tempted to write a very brief review of this book, since all it really needs is this:
      This is a beautiful book.

      If that’s enough for you, and our notions of beauty match, you will be hooked from the first lines. If that's not enough for you, and it takes all sorts, I suppose, it’s by no means its only strength.

      In a city that has taken the bones of New York but is no city and every city, down mean streets that are in every way perfectly Raymond Chandler’s archetypal mean streets, walks (well, cycles, actually) a detective who is, as Chandler required, in no way mean, a man who should not be a detective (though not, perhaps, in the sense intended in Chandler’s famous essay on The Simple Art of Murder.

      But I don’t want to put you off if you don’t think detective stories are your thing. This is a detective story, but it is also very much its own thing, and should not be constrained by categorisation. It is shot through with perfect one-liners. It is occasionally unexpected. It is intriguing, evocative, enveloping and beguiling. And though there is violence it is never casual, but every death a scar on the world and on the heart of whoever causes it

      It also, sadly, joins the short list of books that I would love a second chance to read for the first time, this time without the spoiler, and if you can manage to read it without reading the cover blurb first I think you’ll find it more rewarding.
    • 5/5
      Okay, so this guy can write. I'm not really a mystery-head, but I love how he's playing with the genre and I love how he writes sentences. Go UMass!
    • 2/5
      Berry wants to be China Mieville when he grows up. So far he's just a pale imitation, heavy on surreal quirk and light on everything else.
    • 4/5
      Don't know why I didn't like this more than I did. I thought it was clever enough and well written, but it never really grabbed me the way I felt it should have given what I was reading. It was very quirky and had a good sense of humor... all of which I usually get all excited about. It felt a little too detached for some reason. I would still recommend it though.
    • 4/5
      Although it seems, at times, a little muddled, The Manual of Detection is an enjoyable detective story. At its best, it easily captures the surreal qualities of a waking dream, leaving the reader questioning whether the characters are awake, or merely dreaming that they are.

      I find that books like this often succeed or fail based on how willing the author is to bother coming up with an explanation for the more supernatural aspects of the story, with success usually falling on the shoulders of those who eschew providing the reader with the comfort of any specific justification. Berry teeters on this particular razor blade, but manages to pull it off, providing explanations, but not belaboring his point.

      I particularly liked the playfulness of his writing, specifically the names he comes up with: Travis Sivart, Emily Doppel, Cat & Tonic, etc., although some of the names, particularly that of the protagonist, left me wondering if I was missing a joke. I suppose if every name had some sort of a catch, it might have seemed like overkill, however, so I can't assign too much fault in this instance.
    • 4/5
      My Summary will not do this justice but here goes..The Agency is bureaucratic monolith, populated by detectives, their watchers and their clerks. Charles Unwin was one such clerk until his detective, the famous Travis Sivart, goes missing and he is instantly promoted to detective. Desperate to get his old job back he goes searching for him in the places that he has only read about, but not everything you read is true, not even his company copy of "The Manual of Detection".A highly imaginative detective novel. It starts with a touch of 'Brazil' by Terry Gilliam (think giant impersonal bureaucracy) but slowly evolves into something more surreal and much more magical. You are never quite sure where the plot is headed. With its reality constantly shifting, its more of a story of chaos versus order than a straight murder mystery. So whilst the genre conventions are all there it is not for lovers of tidy puzzle mysteries. I found the setting wonderful: from the increasingly surreal agency to the freakish decaying circus. Small evocative descriptions still stick in my head, from the sadness of the elephants to the oddity of the barge full of alarm clocks, it makes me smile as I write this review. On top of this you get a great adventure, both funny and poignant. Plus for book lovers the hardback version is gorgeous. Ok so your mileage with the ideas might vary so read some of the many many reviews on LT and then give if a try. Ok so there was a small problem, it looses its way in middle as it gears up to change the rules again but this is only a minor problem and I was soon swept back up in events.
    • 4/5
      A strange, wonderful fever dream of a story, Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection features a delightfully bizarre plot against the people of an unnamed city, which suddenly-promoted clerk Charles Unwin must try to unravel before it's too late. Berry's mysterious detective agency is a bureaucratic labyrinth to savor, and his characters are fascinating. Requires close attention, since every word matters and every detail counts for something (as it should in every good detective story!)
    • 4/5
      Read this straight through on a flight from Rome to NYC. Auster meets Borges meets Kafka meets Chandler. A lot of fun and very well written/plotted. Similar in style to another new author, Jonathan Barnes.
    • 4/5
      This book feels like it could by the archetype of the whole detective genre - It feels like the author tried to put all the detective elements into this book, and turned it into something that is completely unique, but at the same time, very recognizable as a detective story.At the same time, its a work of fantasy (without the magic), instead we get an unnamed city, a whole crew of odd suspects, an organization that has its secrets, a bumbling detective, clues, hints, premonitions, and dreams. Ultimately, this is a book about dreams.My only complaint is that I didn't like the ending - it fit, it was well done, but I wanted more explanation. Or maybe I'm just annoyed because I was over thinking the whole plot :)
    • 3/5
      This really wasn't a good book for me, it's a good book but it's not me. My sister would probably love it, or my younger brother. Charles Unwin is a file clerk who works for a detective agency and he files reported for investigator Travis Sivart. Travis goes missing and Unwin is promoted to his post. He's not suited for the job but in order to be demoted he has to find Sivart. So arnmed with the Manual of Detection he goes to investigate it.There's a lot of surreal dream-work here and even at the end I wasn't sure if it was a dream or reality for the characters and I'm still unsure what the outcome was. As I said not a bad read but not a me read.
    • 5/5
      The Manual of Detection is an imaginative little gem of a novel. I was initially hooked by the title of the story - it's got that brazen flippancy that reels you in instantly. And the rest of the novel follows in that manner. There's such a sense of quirky inevitability to the story, and a really compelling protagonist, that this book quickly jumped to the top of my ratings scale.It did take me some time to initially become invested in the story however - it moves quite slowly for the first few chapters, and I could see how the characters could be off putting at first glance. But I am certainly glad I stuck with it!
    • 4/5
      The strength of this novel is more in the quirky cast of characters than the plot itself, which is a bit overwrought and convenient for my tastes. Overall, though, it's a first book Berry should be proud of, and I'll definitely be on the lookout for future efforts of his.
    • 5/5
       A steampunk mystery about a book -- The Manual of Detection. It's the story about an accidental promotion to detective. It's sort of creepy, but kind of awesome. It's a little steampunk, a little (weird) mystery and a whole lot of intrigue.
    • 4/5
      This is a good book, don't get me wrong. I don't award 4 star (our of 5) ratings lightly. My comments may seem like I was disappointed.And I was, I suppose. This book started off as a well-written noir with a gothic backdrop. Charles Unwin works for a detective agency straight out of the black and white 40's and 50's and from almost the beginning is caught up in a mystery that takes him places he (and indeed us the readers) would never expect. Maybe my missed expectations came from being completely unaware of the novel's plot when I started and made the wrong assumptions. After a chapter or two, I assumed this was going to be a wonderfully well-written detective noir.Wonderfully well-written it is, but a wonderful detective noir... no. It changed direction somewhere after the first third. It becomes far more ethereal. These detectives delve into peoples dreams, and as such, they have the power to traverse a vast and disjointed landscape. The novel takes us there, and Berry does a fine job of it. I think I was just hoping for something else.This book reminded me of Paul Auster's City of Glass, which is a good thing. Perhaps Berry wraps things up a little neater than Auster did in his post-modern detective thriller. It's definitely worth a read, if you're looking for something a little different. Just know, going in, that it *will* be different.
    • 4/5
      This inventive mystery takes the old fashioned private eye story and recreates it with elements of fantasy. At the center is Charles Unwin, a clerk for 'the agency' who suddenly finds himself promoted to a detective. The detective that he once clerked for has gone missing and as Unwin encounters a series of bizarre occurances he becomes determined to track down the missing detective--for he may be the only one who can explain what's going one and help solve the case. I sometimes had a hard time following all the twists and turns of Unwin's journey through a bizarre landscape of sleepwalkers. The fact that so many completely unexpected things kept happening kept my interest though, and there was enough of a thread of coherency for me to follow the plot. The narrator of the audiobook captured the feel of the story well, transporting the reader back to the heyday of detective stories--the 1940's--with a masterful reading of slang and appropriate voices. Fans of noir and traditional private eye stories (like The Maltese Falcon) will enjoy the feel of this story as long as they also enjoy the fantastical direction that the author takes the genre.
    • 4/5
      Peculiar story, not sure if it's magical realism or just sci fi/mystery, but in any case, it's great fun, the sort of book that sticks in the mind.
    • 3/5
      A vaguely Kafkaesque novel about a detective in a rainy city. Mobsters, somnambulism, femme fatales, various subterranean rooms containing arcanely cataloged files. The novel exists halfway between a witty, intriguing originality and a vague hodgepodge of cliche. I ultimately found it a little murky and lumpy.
    • 4/5
      Strange book. Reminds me most of a Lemony Snicket book written for adults. Some nice and fun bits of meta stuff, like referring to chapter 18 of a mythic book and this book at the same time. Weird in the extreme, and I'm not sure the weirdness was supported by the plot.