Synopses & Reviews
When Sam Kornbergs wife, Lala, walks out on him, hes an unemployed used-book store clerk and failed experimental novelist with a broken heart. Desperate to win her back, he takes a job as assistant detective to the enigmatic Solar Lonsky, a private eye who might be an eccentric and morbid genius or just a morbidly obese madman.
Its a simple tail job, following a beautiful and mysterious lady around L.A., but Sam soon finds himself helplessly falling for his quarry and hopelessly entangled in a murder case involving Satanists, succubi, underground filmmakers, Hollywood bigshots, Mexican shootouts, video-store geekery, and sexy doppelgangers from beyond the grave. A case that highlights the risks of hardcore reading and mourns the death of the novel—or perhaps just the decline of Western Civilization.
Mystery Girl is a thriller about the dangers of marriage and a detective story about the unsolvable mysteries of love, art, and other people.
Review
"This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka." The New Yorker
Review
"Looking at the stacks of mystery titles in the airport, a friend of mine said, 'I think they've solved 'em all.' I couldn’t help but think that he was right, in some visceral way; no matter how convoluted the crime, no matter how unlikely the twist, few readers will be genuinely surprised by the mystery's solution. Mystery writers, understanding this, seem to adopt one of three approaches. First: rely on the pleasure of formula and familiarity, presenting a heroic detective doggedly searching for the novel's final page. Second: displace the genre's conventions, placing the sleuth in unusual settings or situations. Third: treat the genre as literature of exhaustion, the detective's drive for truth being no match for the problem of existence. In his debut novel, The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry deftly samples all three of these approaches to a charming, if slightly cartoonish, effect." Nick Bredie, Rain Taxi (read the entire Rain Taxi review)
Synopsis
Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original,
The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent.
Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency's most illustrious detective, is murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship, as taut as it is mind-blowing, that draws readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.
Synopsis
In this tightly plotted 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.
Synopsis
"This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka." - -The New Yorker Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent. Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency's most illustrious detective, is murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship, as taut as it is mind- blowing, that draws readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.
Synopsis
"This debut novel weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka." - -The New Yorker Reminiscent of imaginative fiction from Jorge Luis Borges to Jasper Fforde yet dazzlingly original, The Manual of Detection marks the debut of a prodigious young talent. Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency located in an unnamed city always slick with rain. When Travis Sivart, the agency's most illustrious detective, is murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted and must embark on an utterly bizarre quest for the missing investigator that leads him into the darkest corners of his soaking, somnolent city. What ensues is a noir fantasy of exquisite craftsmanship, as taut as it is mind- blowing, that draws readers into a dream world that will change what they think about how they think.
Synopsis
For fans of Vertigo and Pulp Fiction, a funny, smart literary thriller by the author of Edgar finalist THE SERIALIST. A failed experimental novelist becomes the assistant to a corpulent, brilliant detective. What starts as a simple surveillance job becomes a hair-raising case involving cult-movies and mistaken identity.
About the Author
David Gordon was born in New York City. He attended Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University, and has worked in film, fashion, publishing, and pornography. His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Purple, and Fence, among other publications.