Name: The Manual of Detection
ISBN: 9781594202117

Jedediah Berry

Unexpectedly promoted to detective when his predecessor goes missing and a supervisor is killed, agency clerk Charles Unwin struggles with inexperience and nerves during a case in which he encounters bizarre clues and is framed for murder.

The Manual of Detection

Samiha Tasnim

The expert detective’s pursuit will go unnoticed, but not because he is unremarkable. Rather, like the suspect’s shadow, he will appear as though he is meant to be there.


Objects have memory, too. The doorknob remembers who turned it, the telephone who answered it. The gun remembers when it was last fired, and by whom. It is for the detective to learn the language of these things, so that he might hear them when they have something to say.


Best to proceed, therefore, with the vigilance of one who assumes that a corpse is always around the next corner. That way it is less likely to be your own.


Most everything can be divided into two categories: details and clues. Knowing one from the other is more important than knowing your left shoe from your right.


From I one could really go anywhere at all.


Imagine a desk covered with papers. That is everything you are thinking about. Now imagine a stack of file drawers behind it. That is everything you know. The trick is to keep the desk and the file drawers as close to one another as possible, and the papers stacked neatly.


Only if someone has behaved suspiciously should you allow for the possibility of his innocence.


There is no better way to understand your own motives and dispositions than by finding someone to act as your opposite.


A good detective tries to know everything. But a great detective knows just enough to see him through to the end.


A train will bring you back to the place you came from, but it will not return you home.


The unknown will always be boundless.


What frightens us about the carnival, I think, is not that it will come to town. Or that it will leave town, which it always does. What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes.

Konrad Lischka

Maxwell

Jeff James

Steven O'Toole

Ali Dane

In this tightly plotted yet mind-expanding debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed with only an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams. In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin is a humble file clerk working for a huge and imperious detective agency, and all he knows about solving mysteries comes from filing reports for the illustrious investigator 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. The Manual of Detection defies comparison; it is a brilliantly conceived, meticulously realised novel that will change what you think about how you think.

The Manual of Detection

Reviews

Highlights