Review: "The Manual of Detection" by Jedediah Berry

When a book is forgettable, you have to forgive it sometimes. Not to brag, but I think I read more than even the average book lover, and I have come across only five books that are truly bad, as well as many that are really good. Most end up being in the middle, where they are just good or bland at best, and The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry is one of those. It has great ambition and you know just by the intricate plot description at the front of the book that it is from someone with a great imaginative mind, but it mostly falls flat, especially once it gets past page 200 when things start going off the rails, and not in a good, Breaking Bad or The Shield type way. Our main character, Charles Unwin, is a clerk at a detective agency in a weird alternate universe where it is raining so much all the time, one must have an umbrella handy at all times. His main job is to file the cases of a detective Travis Sivart, who once solved a case involving a criminal mastermind who stole a whole day from the city and found the oldest mummy, which had been stolen. He is content with his lack of responsibilities, and once he is unwittingly promoted to a detective spot and when someone he was supposed to meet ends up dead, his only goal is to eliminate his new found need to care. The journey is a relatively smooth one, where he meets a lonely museum worker who has clues to mistakes that may have been made in the Sivart cases, as well as a pair of twin thugs who are frightening in how professional they are at torture and intimidation. But once they start going into dreams, it becomes a mess, where for a Sci-Fi novice like me is lost and could care less about the climax. Even with the cool chapter titles which mirror the manual of the title, this book is only passable, which is not a very harsh crime.

Rating: 3/5