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What
would happen to your favorite children's book stars if they
could grow up? Would Nancy Drew be working in the Special
Victims Unit, perkily assisting victims identify their rapists?
Would the Hardy Boys have their own P.I. firm, snapping tele-lens
photos of pudgy middle aged guys in flagrante delicto
with their secretaries? Would Encyclopedia Brown ever get
laid? Joe Meno takes on the character of the child detective
all grown up—in the form of one Billy Argo—in his
latest offering, The Boy Detective Fails.
Billy
Argo reached the peak of his career in his teens. Since then,
it's all been downhill. He's spent the last ten years in a
mental hospital after the disappearance of his sister and
partner in detection, Caroline. Plagued by visions of disappearing
buildings (something not so unbelievable in this post-9/11
world) and his old—and now senile—nemesis, Professor
von Golum, Billy tries to get his life back in order by moving
into a halfway house and getting his first non-detecting job.
But Billy is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of Caroline
and he falls back on his detection skills to figure out what
happened to his sister ten years ago.
The
Boy Detective Fails is an amazing book. Meno takes on
the conventions of the child detective novel and twists them
into an enthralling read. The mood is pitch-perfect with the
wonder of childhood and the pessimism of adulthood crashing
together in a metaphysical vision that comments on both the
constraints of genre fiction and the realities of contemporary
life; the clichéd narrative arcs that define Billy's childhood
clash with the randomness of modern existence. These ideas
are further underlined by the book's form, which is chock-full
of hidden codes and even a decoder ring that the reader has
to put together, meshing the adult and youth reading experiences
into a wholly unique reading experience.
Mysterious
and charming, The Boy Detective Fails is a surefire
hit for those who grew up on Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia
Brown. Moreover, it's a great book in general that will
appeal to any fan of literary fiction.
(November,
2007)
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