The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry is a new novel, a sort-of detective story come imaginative romp. It's set in a nameless rainy city, a city that has detectives - in fact, a city that has an Agency. The Agency has detectives, watchers, clerks, underclerks, assistants and an overseer. It's all very specialized. The protagonist, Unwin, is a clerk who one day strangely finds himself promoted to detective. The only problem is that he has no detective skills.

The story traces Unwin's increasingly strange adventures, eventually into dreams, as he tries to rescue a detective named Sivart. Unwin was Sivart's clerk; he wrote up Sivart's reports, editing them and sending them to the Agency's archives. Sivart has disappeared. Strange things happen in the city. People are sleepwalking. Somebody is stealing all the alarm clocks in the city. It seems it is up to Unwin to straighten things out, but a watcher is murdered and Unwin is the prime suspect, and even his own beloved Agency is after him.

The Manual of Detection is an enjoyable enough book, but I thought it had some problems too. As strange as the narrative was, it was still a straight-ahead plot-driven narrative. It reminded me of paintings by one of those surrealist painters like Magritte, whose paintings carefully decribed images juxtaposed in unusual way. Ultimately, everything was explained, everything made sense in a fairly obvious way. The writing did not transport me to Unwin's world. I watched from outside. I also found I had difficulty grabbing onto any emotional attachment with the characters. They seemed to be there to tell their part in the story, but I didn't care what happened to any of them.

Next up: Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.