The Manual of Detection
Ratings13
Average rating3.8
The expert detective's pursuit will go unnoticed, but not because he is unremarkable. Rather, like the suspect's shadow, he will appear as though he is meant to be there.
Objects have memory, too. The doorknob remembers who turned it, the telephone who answered it. The gun remembers when it was last fired, and by whom. It is for the detective to learn the language of these things, so that he might hear them when they have something to say.
Best to proceed, therefore, with the vigilance of one who assumes that a corpse is always around the next corner. That way it is less likely to be your own.
Most everything can be divided into two categories: details and clues. Knowing one from the other is more important than knowing your left shoe from your right.
From I one could really go anywhere at all.
Imagine a desk covered with papers. That is everything you are thinking about. Now imagine a stack of file drawers behind it. That is everything you know. The trick is to keep the desk and the file drawers as close to one another as possible, and the papers stacked neatly.
Only if someone has behaved suspiciously should you allow for the possibility of his innocence.
There is no better way to understand your own motives and dispositions than by finding someone to act as your opposite.
A good detective tries to know everything. But a great detective knows just enough to see him through to the end.
A train will bring you back to the place you came from, but it will not return you home.
The unknown will always be boundless.
What frightens us about the carnival, I think, is not that it will come to town. Or that it will leave town, which it always does. What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes.
Thoroughly enjoyable, in fact so much that after I finished it on Sunday morning I spent most of the rest of the day being sorry that it was over. Although I snobbishly prefer literary over mainstream novels, Berry managed to balance on the line between the two very well – although it doesn't read as literary, there is a lot to be found here.
I picked this up from the bookstore at random because the cover looked nice. I've been into the mystery/crime genre lately, and the first page was intriguing. This book makes up for all those times I bought books under the same impulse but ended up regretting it.
Also, I could not help imagining the book as a film. It would be an amazing cross between Dark City, City of Lost Children, and Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe.
