The Boy Detective Fails [Paperback]

Encyclopedia Brown. The Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew. The Bobbsey Twins. And... Billy Argo?

You probably don't remember Billy from your pre-teen reading days. That's because he makes his literary debut in The Boy Detective Fails, at the age of 30. Ordinarily, one would think that being 30 years of age would make it unlikely for Billy Argo to be a "boy detective," but this isn't an ordinary book about some ordinary boy. This one is "special," if you catch my drift. The author manages to take on a genre while remaining somewhat outside of it, and brought about clichéd characters while keeping them decidedly original.

As a child, Billy Argo (along with his sister Caroline and neighbour friend Fenton) spearheaded many investigations which had baffled local authorities, much to the chagrin of the sheepish mayor - counterfeiting rings, serial arson, the occasional brutal murder, etc. Rare was the week which passed by without an appearance of the trio on the front page of the newspaper, pantomiming just how the bust went down. Yes, Billy was a criminal genius, with his child's detective kit and the unfaltering support of his two peers.

And of course, there wouldn't be much of a story if there didn't come a day when all that changes. And it does. Billy grows up and goes to college, leaving Caroline and Fenton alone in this little town to realize just how much they had relied upon the Boy Detective's brilliance. They try to solve one final case on their own...

Thus, their lives are changed forever.

With all the potential to become yet another "shocking" modern-day morality tale, author Joe Meno takes this simple tale and deliberately twists the internal logic of the book. While no fourth walls are broken, the laws of physics frequently are (when local buildings begin to vanish without a trace, and ethereal spirits haunt the psyhcologically tormented Boy Detective, for example), leading the reader into a surreal world where nothing really makes much sense - and yet familiar, as if living in a fog of metaphor.

Written in the style of a classic "child detective" story with a decidedly grown-up spin, The Boy Detective Fails will have the reader not so much trying to solve the cases as they arise, but trying to figure out what's going on below the surface of Billy's madness, and within his small world. There is a bleakness to the Boy Detective's world, a darkness which can't be avoided, however there are also little treasures to be found within. All hope is not abandoned, but instead hidden in several undisclosed locations.

Honestly, this is ultimately more satisfying than the childhood whodunnits of our youth, where the characters never age, past lessons never really remembered, and good always triumphs over bad. The world is never like that. And while the world is certainly not at all as it appears in The Boy Detective Fails, it makes no attempt to mask its absurdity from the reader.

And does "the Boy Detective" fail? That part's subjective. In the traditional sense, and to himself, he surely does. To the rest of us, though... I'm not so convinced that he has. The oft-quoted H.L. Menckin (with a line reprinted in this novel) said that genius is "the ability to prolong one's childhood." As far as that goes, it would be impossible to say that Boy Detective Billy Argo has failed in anything.

I'm not sure I've ever read anything like "the boy detective fails". When I read the first few pages I was unsure, but it quickly pulled me in. But its lure is through its charm, its creativity, its emotionality. It feels dreamlike, without being over the top. It's soft, but creepy, but warm. The world seems fuzzy, full of strangeness . The characters are lovable, interesting, intriguing and draw you through the books mysteries. It works on some serious issues, and in ways that you don't usually hear these issues approached, they kind of creep up on you, but in a good way.

I tried to describe it to a friend. I said something like "Well, if you took The Tick, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lenore, X-Files, Hardy Boys, Girl Interupted, and Catcher in the Rye and mixed it up, this book is what you get." Just go read it.

first off, i think understanding puzzles is highly necessary to understand this book. however! that does not mean you have to DECODE the puzzles. my copy is library-borrowed, so the decoder ring was a no-no, as damaging public property is bad. and yet i still followed the book very well. i also didn't find caroline's journal-entry messages until the last one; again, i still followed the book. so i'm not sure why people are pissing & moaning over the excess of puzzles.

however, you do need to have a sense of the way a puzzle works. personally, i'm very steeped in them! i love mark z danielewski's novels, i follow alternate-reality games. i have a pretty good understanding of the arc of a puzzle, the way it's set up, the timeline a solution takes. i think this is the sort of thing that makes the novel excellent. you take away from it what you put into it; your own experiences bring the characters to life. your pop-culture knowledge makes this book satirical.

the characters do come to life. they play off stereotypes without being blatant. the constant shoplifter has a heart, but she is also addicted to shoplifting. she doesn't reform overnight. the supervillains have feelings (but sometimes they're just kind of evil.) it's fun, it's sad. i liked it. i think that is all you need in a book, sometimes. this one just chooses to push it a little harder.