Books › The manual of detection
The manual of detection
First published 2009 · 278 pages
A rain-slicked, surreal noir where a reluctant clerk must navigate a dream-bending conspiracy armed only with an umbrella and a mysterious handbook.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into an unnamed, perpetually rain-slicked city where classic noir tropes collide with mind-expanding surrealism. The narrative moves at a brisk, tightly plotted pace, pulling you alongside an unlikely, umbrella-wielding hero who is entirely out of his depth. The mood is deeply atmospheric and dreamlike, blending the bureaucratic absurdity of an imperious detective agency with the shadowy danger of femmes fatales, goons, and stolen alarm clocks. The prose is pithy yet profound, echoing hardboiled detective fiction while spiraling into imaginative, fantastical territory. It is a perfect fit for readers who delight in genre-bending mysteries, where unraveling the truth requires stepping out of the waking world and directly into the slumbering unknown.
- Mood
- rain-slicked
- dreamlike
- noir-tinged
- shadowy
- Tone
- wry
- surreal
- pithy
- imaginative
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- unlikely heroism · the nature of dreams · bureaucratic absurdity · unraveling mysteries
- The writing
- Pithy and imaginative, blending hardboiled noir tropes with mind-expanding, surreal fantasy.
- The arc
- A reluctant, out-of-his-depth clerk is thrust into danger, gradually finding his footing in a surreal, dream-bending conspiracy.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love surreal, genre-bending mysteries that mix classic noir aesthetics with dreamlike fantasy.
Content notes
- murder
- gun violence
About the book
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 dreamsIn 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 Zafon 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.
Description from Open Library.
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