I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
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Charles Unwin rides a bicycle in the rain -- what could be more Portlandish. He works as a clerk at a mysterious Agency and is meticulously doing his job when he's promoted, against all Agency rules, to the role of detective. Unwin is convinced that an error has been made and he’ll have to correct it. Maybe it’s only happening in a dream, or perhaps several people’s dreams. And why are so many people asleep?
How he’s going to figure that out and deal with the characters from the Travels-No-More carnival is the basis of the detective story part of the book. But this book isn’t only a film-noirish detective story; it has a large component of science fiction/fantasy, more than a dash of magic and spiritualism, and a box full of puzzles and wordplay thrown in. At least one name is a palindrome and I’m sure there are many more references and allusions (as well as illusions) than I picked up.
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The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
pdxwatch, May 25, 2009
Charles Unwin rides a bicycle in the rain -- what could be more Portlandish. He works as a clerk at a mysterious Agency and is meticulously doing his job when he's promoted, against all Agency rules, to the role of detective. Unwin is convinced that an error has been made and he’ll have to correct it. Maybe it’s only happening in a dream, or perhaps several people’s dreams. And why are so many people asleep?How he’s going to figure that out and deal with the characters from the Travels-No-More carnival is the basis of the detective story part of the book. But this book isn’t only a film-noirish detective story; it has a large component of science fiction/fantasy, more than a dash of magic and spiritualism, and a box full of puzzles and wordplay thrown in. At least one name is a palindrome and I’m sure there are many more references and allusions (as well as illusions) than I picked up.
(3 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)