Magritte's Sherlock Holmes: Jebediah Berry's The Manual of Detection

Certainly one of the more unheralded books published this year. Perhaps it is the large publisher (Penguin) or the cloak of being a "detective story" that hid this book so well, but whatever the case it is certainly one of the best published this year.

Not top 5. But close.


The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. Fiction. Penguin Books. $25.95. Click the book's image above to purchase.

Charles Unwin, most respected of clerks, works for a vast, labyrinthine detective agency. The agency exists in an official capacity, protecting the streets, as well as secrets. Unwin, like all agency clerks, is assigned to a single detective and in Unwin’s case it is the illustrious, and certainlly Holmesian influenced Detective Travis Sivart. No detective is allowed to know his clerk, and in turn neither clerk nor detective are allowed to know their “Watcher” or supervisor. Protocol aside, the lucky assignment of Sivart’s famous cases coupled with Unwin’s bureaucratic brilliance meld to create the reason why he is the most respected of clerks.

One thing though: Sivart has gone missing and in a mysterious series of events the unlikely Unwin is promoted to rank of Detective. Unwin refuses to believe the promotion is accurate, believing some clerical error has led to his promotion. Unwin, in all fastidiousness, begins to prepare a report that searches out the origin of the error and corrects all problems concerning the misappropriated promotion. It doesn’t take long for Charles Unwin, newly made detective, to stumble upon a body, get framed and begin a descent into the noir world of the detective. His only assistance is an incomplete copy of the agency’s most essential tool, a book titled… Yes. You got it: The Manual of Detection.

Berry’s debut novel is a wonderfully entertaining and certainly inventive type of detective story. From the surreal institution of the detective agency and its Kafkaesque bureaucracy to the phantasmagorical elements involving dream-crimes, Berry’s novel deftly walks traditional as well as quite unconventional lines.

In the character of Charles Unwin we find a classic archetypical antihero of the seemingly incompetent sort. Unwin, like LeCarre’s George Smiley or television’s “Columbo” (Peter Faulk), seems to be too frail or without any savvy to make a good detective. The LeCarre comparison is the most apt. Like that consummate spy of LeCarre’s invention, Unwin is a meticulous individual. He is the type of person that detail never escapes notice.

Unlike the realism found in John LeCarre’s celebrated novels, Berry is willing to leave in the vague and fantastical. The entirety of The Manual of Detection, right down to the text within the text – the manual itself – is willing to give in to fanciful humor and imaginative wandering. This has led to comparisons to such writers as Jorge Luis Borges or Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I am certainly not willing to compare this book to any of Borges’ writing. Too often when confronted with a “type” of book, people grasp at others who have written similar “types.”

This is a good book. One of the better books left unheralded this year. It is not great in the Borgesian sense. It merely borrows some of the Argentinian’s smoke and mirrors, which may be compliment enough.

The Manual of Detection isn’t concerned with high literature, even as it's increasingly absurdist and surreal plot push it higher into the literary stratosphere. Of course this is exactly why it is so good. It is a debut novel that is very comfortable in its skin, fully willing to indulge itself with an increasingly inventive plot and pamper the reader with fantasy and humor.

Then there is the matter of the plotting, which calls to mind G.K. Chesterton or Borges' prodigy (who perhaps is the author whose work is closest to this work) Adolpho Bioy Casares. Too few books are plotted as well as Jedediah Berry’s first book.

This makes him an author to watch and his book one to read.