2010 Hammett Prize Finalist
A Strand Critics Award Nominee
Winner of the 2010 Crawford Award
“From the classic tropes of the detective procedural, this début 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 with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency’s most illustrious detective, goes missing, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship, as taut as it is mind-blowing, drawing readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.
“[Berry] defies many mystery novel conventions, but adventurous readers who stay with his strange and fabulous debut work will be handsomely rewarded…. There is nothing mysterious about the appeal of this inventive, outrageous and often amusing dream-within-a-dream.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“The plot’s bursting with as many twists and surprises as you could hope for…. It steams along the smooth rails of Berry’s neatly constructed sentences, barreling round each well-cambered turn with barely a judder.”
—London Review of Books
“Jedediah Berry has an ear well-tuned to the styles of the detective story from Holmes to Spade and can reproduce atmosphere with loving skill.”
—Michael Moorcock
“Inventive, atmospheric, and fiendishly delightful. If you’ve ever fallen under the spell of Borges, Ray Bradbury, or Angela Carter, I urge you to acquire your own copy of The Manual of Detection.”
—Kelly Link
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Jedediah Berry is the author of The Manual of Detection and this is his archive.