Gavin Grant writes that Small Beer Press is giving away five signed copies of Jedediah Berry‘s debut novel, The Manual of Detection, which Penguin published Thursday. To win a copy, and in keeping with the book, Grant is asking readers to “leave a comment on this post with a mystery in need of solving. Personal or historical, major or quotidian, real to everyone or just to you. We’ll choose five of the most strange and intriguing mysteries and those folks will get a copy of The Manual of Detection. They may even get their mysteries solved.” Deadline is “within a week or so.”
Berry was hired as Small Beer’s first Assistant Editor about two years ago, which explains their glee with his success. And to give you a better feel for the book, we find this description from the publisher via Powells: “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 toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency. All he knows about solving mysteries comes from the reports he’s filed for the illustrious detective 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 (think The Art of War as told to Damon Runyon).
“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 Sivart’s greatest cases—including the Three Deaths of Colonel Baker and the Man Who Stole November 12th—were solved incorrectly, Unwin must enter the dreams of a murdered man and face a criminal mastermind bent on total control of a slumbering city.”