The Boy Detective Fails

by Joe Meno

Book Overview

"A delicate blend of whimsy and edginess. Meno packs his novel with delightful subtext." --Entertainment Weekly

"Comedic, imaginative, empathic, atmospheric, archetypal, and surpassingly sweet, Meno's finely calibrated fantasy investigates the precincts of grief, our longing to combat chaos with reason, and the menace and magic concealed within everyday life." --Booklist, Starred Review

In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933354100
• ISBN13: 9781933354101
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

If David Lynch wrote a Hardy boy novel...

it would probably be close to this book. This book is very bizarre, but still tragic and moving. This book is basically about a former acclaimed boy detective,Billy Argo who solved serveral mysteries as a child alongside his best friend Fenton & younger sister Caroline. After Billy goes to college Caroline kills herself. Billy can't understand why this happened and tries to kill himself, unsuccessful, his parents have him institutionalized. Billy is released 10 years later and tries to adjust to the world. Billy gets a job and befriends 2 young outcasts and gets caught up in several bizarre mysteries along the way falling in love for the first time. The book is sweet, odd, and sad sometimes all at the same time. The book is unlike anything I've ever read, I can't wait to read other books by Joe Meno.

Successful rendering of apathy, failure and meds.

I found this book via McSweeney's and was not disappointed. It was beautifully rendered. I am usually disinclined to enjoy postmodern gimmicks like footnotes (ala House of Leaves)but in this case they suited the boy detective well--they provide the reader with mysteries to sort out reminescent of decoder rings and cereal box cyphers. There is a short film on youtube that nicely protrays the first chapter of the book, if anyone is inclined to view it. It appears to be professionally made. In short, this is the book I am giving to my grad school friends this Christmas and I know it will not disappoint!

Love. Period.

Joe Meno is a tremendously versatile writer. The Boy Detective Fails is a phenomenal book. This is what it feels like to read a future classic. And this is what a true classic should feel like; immediate, heartrending, fascinating, and, perhaps most importantly, eminently readable. This is, of course, assuming that you are a human being. Mr. Meno's work intimately deals with the themes of love, and finding your footing in an uncertain world. And isn't this exactly what life is about. Love. Love is at the core of this novel, and that is what makes it so beautiful. I don't know quite how to write about this astonishing book. I'm not sure I can quite get my head around it, but I know that I like it, I know that it is perfect, and I know it makes me smile. Hey- that sounds a lot like love. Read this. Please. Read it. You can waste your time trying to learn How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Or you can learn a little bit about love. Open your heart to the Boy Detective, you won't regret it.

also, i like the cover illustration.

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.

what a strange, beautiful book

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.