The Manual of Detection

There is a place in St. Louis where, for $12 and a willingness to put up with multitudes of loud children, you can crawl through endless disorienting cave-tunnels, drip down ten-story slides, ride a ferris-wheel 12 stories in the sky, watch trained children perform cat-in-the-hat tricks on 4-foot ba......more

Wonderful, strange and immersive, The Manual of Detection is one of my favorite books in recent memory. The world Berry has invented feels like the movie Brazil crossed with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and inspired by classic noir detective stories and films, such as The Maltese Falcon.......more

Principi di investigazione onirica “Fece un passo indietro. Quella poltrona gli sarebbe saltata addosso se lui gliene avesse dato l'occasione, l'avrebbe divorato. Se solo avesse potuto chiamarla per nome, pensò, forse l'avrebbe ammansita. Oppure avrebbe potuto aprire l'ombrello e proteggersi da quell......more

Da tempo non leggevo un libro così divertente e appassionante allo stesso tempo. E’ un mistery, ma anche un romanzo umoristico e grottesco, un onirico rompicapo con echi di Kafka, di Chandler, di Borges, del cinema di Tim Burton, di Terry Gilliam, di Orson Wells, dei freaks di Tod Browning e del mon......more

In an unnamed city which has certain resemblances to early-20th-century New York, many matters are regulated by the Agency, a large, somewhat Kafkaesque organization whose hierarchy runs, in descending order: Watchers, Detectives, Clerks, Under-Clerks. There's not much direct communication between t......more