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.
Reviews
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If Kafka had a sense of humor, he might have written THE MANUAL OF DETECTION. Pete Larkin's performance takes Jedediah Berry's absurd and fantastical situations and his tightly controlled, intelligent, and downright funny writing, and turns the plight of hapless Charles Unwin into a rollicking audio romp through surreal chaos. Unwin is a simple clerk in an ultrasecretive detective agency who is mysteriously (possibly erroneously) promoted to detective. As Unwin deals with cases like "The Man Who Stole November 12th" and "The World's Oldest Murdered Man," Larkin wisely keeps things low-key yet unmistakably sardonic, especially his tongue-in-cheek handling of separated conjoined twins, a mountain of missing alarm clocks, a criminal mastermind dream thief, and the seductress Cleopatra Greenwood. High marks for a spectacular narration of Berry's unadulterated nuttiness. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief...
Jedediah Berry knows magic. The Manual of Detection combines the intricacy and thoughtfulness of Borges and Kafka with the page-turning excitement of a detective thriller. . . . It made me laugh, thrill, think, and wonder.'
About the Author
JEDEDIAH BERRY holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has been published in Best New American Voices 2008 (his story was described by KirkusReviews as a “mordant, gripping fantasy”) as well as in literary magazines and online fiction sites. By day, he is an assistant editor at Small Beer Press in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
Digital Rights Information
OverDrive Audiobook
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Collaborative play of this title is not allowed
This title can be burned to CD during the lending period (for personal use only; no other duplication/distribution of material is permitted under the terms of the license)
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