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A review by sistermagpie
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
5.0
Um, wow. What a book unlike any other. It definitely lived up to the recommendation I first read for it, which pointed out that in the Internet/cell phone age, a lot of the things that made up a certain kind of detective fiction fell away. You no longer really had the lone detective meeting up with mysterious people.
MoD is one of those worlds that blends fantasy and reality in surprising ways. The caper being solved has details that are almost whimsical, but they're always grounded in a grim, plodding world. "Plodding" there doesn't refer to the writing--the language is efficient and evocative and the story moves at a good pace--but the world itself is a grey one full of beaurocrats and red tape, "fill this out and triplicate" types and conformity. It's hard to really talk about what it's about so I'll just say this: Charles Unwin, clerk to the famous detective Travis Sivart, has been making unofficial trips for coffee for unofficial reasons. When Sivart disappears and he's promoted to detective, is it a technical error or something more sinister?
MoD is one of those worlds that blends fantasy and reality in surprising ways. The caper being solved has details that are almost whimsical, but they're always grounded in a grim, plodding world. "Plodding" there doesn't refer to the writing--the language is efficient and evocative and the story moves at a good pace--but the world itself is a grey one full of beaurocrats and red tape, "fill this out and triplicate" types and conformity. It's hard to really talk about what it's about so I'll just say this: Charles Unwin, clerk to the famous detective Travis Sivart, has been making unofficial trips for coffee for unofficial reasons. When Sivart disappears and he's promoted to detective, is it a technical error or something more sinister?