The Manual of Detection

In this tightly plotted yet mind-expanding debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed only with an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams. In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin is a humble file clerk working for a huge and imperious detective agency, and all he knows about solving mysteries comes from filing reports for the illustrious investigator Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing, and his supervisor turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective, a rank for which he lacks both the skills and the stomach. His only guidance comes from his new assistant, who would be perfect if she weren't so sleepy, and from the pithy yet profound MANUAL OF DETECTION. Unwin mounts his search for Sivart, but is soon framed for murder, pursued by goons and gunmen, and confounded by the infamous femme fatale Cleo Greenwood. Meanwhile, strange and troubling questions proliferate: why does the mummy at the Municipal Museum have modern-day dental work? Where have all the city's alarm clocks gone? Why is Unwin's copy of the Manual missing Chapter 18? When he discovers that the greatest of Sivart's cases uaincluding 'The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker' and 'The Man who Stole the Twelfth of November' uawere never solved correctly, he must enter the dreams of a murdered man and face a criminal mastermind bent on total control of a slumbering city. THE MANUAL OF DETECTION will draw comparison to every work of imaginative fiction that ever blew a reader's mind uafrom Carlos Ruiz Zafon to Jorge Luis Borges, from THE BIG SLEEP to THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION. But, ultimately, it defies comparison; it is a brilliantly conceived, meticulously realized novel that will change what you think about how you think.