Brian McKenzie

One of my favourite comedy bits is Robin Williams pretending to be Elmer Fudd singing Bruce Springsteen's "Fire". In a similar vein, I imagine that, in sitting down to write The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry asked himself "what if Terry Gilliam channeled David Lynch pretending to be Franz Kafka writing a Sam Spade novel?" You can almost sense him smirking and glancing over at you as you read along, as if to say "you get it?"

This is a fun novel. It's not exactly weird, it's more unsettling, like a strange noise in the upstairs bathroom when you're home alone and the cat's curled up in your lap. Everything is just . . . off: the endless rain. The retro-futuristic setting. The rigidly bureaucratic, hierarchical Agency. The preoccupation with umbrellas, wet socks and squeaky shoes. It's hard to get a handle on where and when it's taking place, and even harder to pin down the mood. 20 pages in I checked to see if I had missed an opening chapter or prologue; I felt like I was missing some key piece of information that would establish context. Like I said: unsettling.

But then I just surrendered to it and let the story carry me along like a lazy river. The protagonist, Charles Unwin, is a clerk in some kind of monolithic corporate detective agency reminiscent of Pinkerton's. His job is to write the official case reports of his assigned detective, Travis Sivart, based on Sivart's narrative notes. It is a job at which he apparently excels and takes great pride in doing. As the story opens, he finds himself unexpectedly promoted against his will to detective, replacing Sivart who is mysteriously absent. Completely unprepared and unqualified, he sets out to obtain an explanation for, and reversal of, this decision and stumbles upon the murder of Sivart's Watcher (i.e. supervisor) for which he is framed. This sets everything in motion.

All the 1940s detective story tropes are there: the beautiful femme fatale, the mysterious woman in distress, the hardboiled detective(s), the sassy secretary, the frame-job murder, the hapless patsy. But again, things are off. For one, what exactly is the nature of this detective agency? For another, why are people so strangely somnambulant? Why does Unwin's choice of hat matter to his job? What are we to make of the clipped, Edwardian prose, so curiously flat and detached?

The mysteries include the mummy with modern dental work at the Municipal Museum, the theft of the 12th of November (you read that correctly), the 7:27 a.m. train that always runs a minute late, a defunct carnival, dream infiltration, a casino where sleepwalkers gamble with alarm clocks, and a man who has died 3 times. How they are related to the missing Travis Sivart, the murdered Watcher, a recently-resurfaced magician, the menacing, formerly-conjoined twins who drive the steam-powered carriage, and the museum cleaner who wrote the titular "Manual of Detection" makes up the meat of the story.

And what a story. Again, lots of fun, but I confess at times I allowed my attention to wander largely, I think, because of the flat prose style. It's necessary for the key plot point, the dream infiltration reminiscent of Inception, but until you understand that, keep the background music off and eliminate external distractions so that you can focus on the narrative.

Once the pieces start falling into place, the pace accelerates and, again like in a classic detective novel, the good, the bad and the ambiguous all meet their various rewards. Plot twists, big reveals, character reversals, and comeuppances abound. It seems like we're back on traditional ground, but it's all clever parody, subversion, and (God help me) deconstruction. The book leaves us with a number of questions about the nature of surveillance and control, the illusions we trade for reality, and what it means to be "awake". It's not for everyone, and, judging by some other reviews, a lot of readers couldn't/didn't finish it. But if you are looking for something subversive, original, a little confusing, and, yes, fun, give it a go. You might just enjoy yourself.