Meddling Kids (Edgar Cantero)

Meddling Kids
Edgar Cantero
Blumhouse Books/Doubleday
Fiction, Horror/Humor/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: In 1977, a series of monster sightings in the small Oregon town of Blyton Hills ended with the capture of a costumed criminal exploiting old tales of a lake monster to cover a search for hidden treasure... and he would've gotten away with it, if not for four meddling kids and their dog, Sean! No strangers to solving mysteries and unmasking villains, the incident at Sleepy Lake was their biggest case, making the front page of the local paper - and it was also to be their last.
Thirteen years later, the surviving members of the Blyton Summer Detective Club have grown apart, but all are still haunted by that final case - memories of monsters and mutilated corpses and ancient grimoires far too realistic to have been thrown together by one half-baked crook in a cheap salamander costume. Brainy Kerri tries to drink away her problems, while scrawny Nate spends most of his time in sanitariums, haunted by the ghost of their former leader, Peter, who overdosed at the peak of a Hollywood career. It takes wandering tomboy Andy to round the gang up (along with Tim, a descendant of the original Sean) to finally confront their memories in Blyton Hills - only, this time, they find themselves meddling in something much bigger than a bad guy in a rubber mask, something much more deadly, much more ancient... and much further beyond the abilities of even the famed Blyton Summer Detective Club.

REVIEW: An homage to and deconstruction of old teen mystery series like Scooby-Doo and the Hardy Boys, Meddling Kids explores what happens when young detectives grow up... and when their "hauntings" turn out to be all too real, in a story with Lovecraftian overtones. Cantero creates an almost hallucinatory atmosphere, steeped in late 20th century Americana, in a story that veers between campy nods to the source inspirations (the town is in the Zoinx River valley), pulp horror references, and fourth-wall-breaking narration that acknowledges line breaks and chapter endings, sometimes breaking down dialog into script-like notation and references to camera angles and close-ups. The characters are rather caricature-like, exaggerations built on two-dimensional genre archetypes (the Scooby gang was hardly a literary study of human nature, after all), but well suited to the not-quite-reality they inhabit. It all gets woven together in a plot that moves fast, if with some intentional logic leaps and coincidences (again, this isn't quite supposed to be Earth as we know it, but a sort of gritty overlay on the kind of world in which kid detectives like the Hardy Boys exist, a cartoon sketch inspired by reality but not bound strictly to it.) For the most part, it works for what it is, and I generally enjoyed it. Ultimately, some elements didn't quite come together, and the finale felt a bit flat and forced, costing it a half-star. A very unique reading experience, and if it wasn't quite the flavor of cocoa I prefer, I don't regret the purchase.

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