On Detective Stories, or A Review of The Manual of Detection

There are several writers that I mention more than is probably healthy. James P Blaylock and Tim Powers, as mentors of mine, get a lot of publicity (if you can call it that…you can’t) around the ol’ NR. Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams, as my personal holy trinity, probably come up more than they should. All five of those writers are of the fantasy/sci-fi bent, but astute readers will also have noticed that I have a fondness for John Fowles as well. For lack of a better term, one might consider Fowles a more “literary” writer than the others…if you put any stock in terms like that which, all things being equal, you shouldn’t.

I bring this up only insofar as it is helpful to me (or you) in writing a review of Jedidiah Berry’s novel The Manual of Detection.

The New Yorker claimed that the book:

weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka.

It’s not a bad way of trying to describe the book. It is, on some level, indescribable. I think, though, that the subject matter is too serious for a Wes Anderson comparison.

I prefer my own cliched attempt at categorizing the book (surprise, surprise) by stating that if Raymond Chandler and John Fowles were to sit down and write a novel together they might have written The Manual of Detection.

What I mean by this is that the novel is the perfect blend of hard-boiled noir, post-modern meta-fictional elements, and inept protagonist in way over his head.

For those familiar with the traditional noir story (by the way, go rent The Maltese Falcon if you’ve never seen it), the standard issue “hard-boiled detective” protagonist is replaced in Berry’s novel with a clerk, Charles Unwin. Unwin is thrown, unwittingly, into the position of gumshoe when the renowned detective Sivart (the very detective that Unwin has clerked under for nearly 20 years) goes missing. Though intimately familiar with all the details from every case Sivart has ever worked, Unwin is completely incapable of acting in any meaningful way when away from a typewriter and drawer of files. Completely out of his depth Unwin decides that the only way he can get his old life back is to find Sivart. It soon becomes evident, however, that Sivart’s disappearance is more than just a coincidence as Unwin begins to learn that all of Sivart’s biggest cases were never solved correctly…except for one.

The unnamed city that the story takes place in is not one I would visit any time soon and, itself, takes on a presence in the novel that is pervasive and menacing. Berry, too, does a very good job of lacing the narrative with wholly original, yet oddly believable, characters.

The most satisfying thing about the work, though, is its cohesion. Berry clearly understands the important components of noir fiction, and pays homage to them, without falling into a cliched re-imagining of Philip Marlow or Sam Spade. And the deft use of meta-fictional elements adds a layer of reader involvement never encountered in Hammett or Chandler. Most importantly, though, is that Berry understands the use of his protagonist, Unwin. The crux of the story ultimately rests not on Unwin’s capacity (or lack thereof) to act like a “detective” but on…I hesitate to say too much so that there is no “spoiling”. Suffice it to say, the novel, though setting, characterization, and narrative are all excellently formed, is less about the world Berry creates and more about the character of Unwin finding his way in that world.

Burning Brides — Blood on the Highway