NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Freaky pleasure…it scratches a nostalgic itch for those who grew up on Saturday morning Scooby-Doo cartoons and sugar-bombed breakfast cereal”–USA Today“Deliriously wild, funny and imaginative. Cantero is an original voice.”–Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional UniverseWith raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts … Universe
With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Meddling Kids subverts teen detective archetypes like the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, and Scooby-Doo, and delivers an exuberant and wickedly entertaining celebration of horror, love, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.
SUMMER 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster—another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.
The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.
A nostalgic and subversive trip rife with sly nods to H. P. Lovecraft and pop culture, Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids is a strikingly original and dazzling reminder of the fun and adventure we can discover at the heart of our favorite stories, no matter how old we get.
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I picked this up from the library after reading @Jill_Elizabeth’s rave review, and it did not disappoint! I have to admit, the first 20% of the book was a little hard for me to get through – I think I was expecting something fun and silly like the TV show. Maybe it’s the cover that gave that impression, or my own nostalgia, but I wanted Scooby snacks and “Zoinks!” and the Mystery Machine. Instead, I got prison breaks and darkly wry humor right out the gate, and the characters, while familiar, were certainly not the clean-cut kids I might have remembered. Still, once I got past the initial shock and the mystery really got going, I couldn’t stop reading. There were some clever allusions to the Scooby I loved as a kid, some super fun twists and turns, lots of good subplots and clues to follow, and just a really unique writing style that hit it’s stride once the gang got back together and didn’t let up.
Meddling Kids is an utterly charming paean to a squad of animated teen detectives who fought down the crime wave of early-70’s America. Amidst the homages and playfulness, it then transforms into a rip-roaring page turner. Throughout, Cantero plays with form and language in ways that are both mischievous and delightful. This would be impressive enough coming from a native of the country, decade, and language that the book operates in. As Cantero is none of the above, it’s flat-out masterful.
As a lifelong fan of Scooby Doo, I was sure this book would be right up my alley. And I wasn’t disappointed. With the premise of what might happen to a group of teen detectives when they end up screwed up twenty-somethings, the story paints an excellent portrait of the challenges of living with ghosts, real and imagined, from one’s past. The thrills are real, the bad guys are more than they appear, and the reader is left with a happy ending and the possibility of more. I trly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from Edgar Cantero.
What a GREAT and snarky-fun read this was! I grew up with Scooby and the Gang and this homage/satire of that iconic cartoon was everything I wanted it to be and then so much more. It’s dark and twisted (Edgar Cantero’s specialty) while maintaining a relatability that I find fascinating to contemplate, because by rights characters that are almost caricatures shouldn’t feel at all real, yet his somehow always do, and they always lead me to strangely intriguing insights into myself/human nature… The plot has more sides than Euclidean geometry should support (maybe that’s the Cthulhu influence?) but they all interweave and meld into and out of and back into one another in a way that is not only highly entertaining but deeply satisfying. There’s a sense of accomplishment after reading something that twists back on itself this much – and that sense is only enhanced, to my mind, by the marvelous wit and ultra-wry self-deprecation of the characters as they relate their adventures. It’s Scooby for grown-ups, and I hope like hell that there are more books to come!
I was a huge fan of Scooby-Doo as a kid, so naturally this book would be a good match for me. And for the most part it was. There were a few things that kept puling me out and distracting me from the story. And what was that story?
Just as with Scooby-Doo, there are four kids (two girls, two boys) and a dog. As teenagers, they were the Blyton Summer Detective Club, solving mysteries and catching inept crooks who (repeat along with me) would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. Now it’s thirteen years later and the kids are adults in their late 20s; adults who are still suffering and haunted by their last mystery. One that was more disturbing than it should have been. And now, the adults are teaming up again to go back to Blyton Hills and to finally end their nightmares. And maybe save the world.
Initially I had a problem that was my own doing. I was trying to map the characters in the book to the ones in Scooby-Doo. Which was Daphne? Who was Velma? As one might expect, the mapping wasn’t 100%. Sure, Kerri mapped to Daphne with the red hair but she was the smart one of the group, not Andy a.k.a. Velma. After I told myself to stop comparing to the cartoon and accept them as their own, I was good. However, the other problem that I had occurred through the whole book. I think it was always with Andy but at random times, she would break the fourth wall to point out something “as I mentioned three paragraphs ago” or something similar. Rather than finding those moments as fun or inclusive, I found them off-putting. I was instantly pulled out of the story and back to simply reading a book. A tad disappointing since I found the story and characters quite fun and enjoyable all by themselves without the need for some sort of “trick” to make it more fun. I do recommend the book and think that every fan of the cartoon will enjoy it.
Teen mystery solving group ended their outings after one particular summer. Their personal lives changed drastically after their group ended.
Years later, they gather and go back to the scene of their last mystery.
What happens to the Scooby gang when they encounter the supernatural and not just a guy in a mask? They grow up with issues but still need to find answers. I loved this book. It was fun, entertaining, and just when I thought the ending was in sight, it made another twisty turn. I was never bored and never knew exactly where some clues were leading. I enjoyed the characters so much, I hope the author has plans to write a squel.
Deliriously wild, funny and imaginative. Cantero is an original voice.
Everyone at one time or another has heard the famous line, “I would’ve gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids.” There’s not a Scooby-Doo cartoon out there where that line isn’t spoken. And behind every monster is an old man with a rubber mask. It is the hallmark of teen archetypes such as Nancy Drew, Scoody-Doo, and Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. Now, Edgar Cantero tackles teenage detectives in his new novel, Meddling Kids.
In the summer of 1977, the Blyton Summer Detective Club solved their final mystery by exposing the Sleepy Lake monster to be nothing more than Old Man Wickley in a mask. Fast forward thirteen years later, the four kids are now broken twenty somethings, and have gone their separate ways. But they find themselves still haunted by disturbing memories of encounters and events during their last case that can’t be explained away by a man in a mask. With one of the four dead from an apparent suicide, the remaining three, and their dog, return to Blyton Hills to reopen their final case. It’s their final chance to put an end to their nightmares, and perhaps, save the world.
Meddling Kids is a fun mashup of horror, humor, and detective fiction. Cantero weaves a witty, energetic tale around three kids, a dog, and a hallucination that keeps the reader turning the page. Fro the name of the town, Blyton Hills (a nod toward Enid Blyton who wrote the Famous Five book series) to the Zionism River (an obvious reference to Scooby-Doo), the book is rampant with references to Scooby-Doo, the Famous Five, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and H.P. Lovecraft.
Meddling Kids is a fast-paced read with a great deal of humor helping to support the plot during moments where the action slows down. It was an overall enjoyable read. I think, if there was one thing that I would complain about, I sometimes found Cantero’s unique writing style to throw me off occasionally throughout the book. He has an unusual way of often breaking the fourth-wall with the narration, as well as adding quirky stage direction similar to what one might find in a stage script. I found this eccentric style of writing to be a distraction from the overall story.
If you can overlook the unusual writing style, Meddling Kids is a fun book to read. Searching for the all the references I mentioned earlier alone make this book worth the effort.
Great for folks who grew up on Scooby-Doo, it hits all the right notes for a wonderful nostalgic read.
Loved it.
Overall, this is a fun spin on the child-detective-club narrative. The kids, now grown adults haunted by their last fateful night of detective-ing, revisit their most famous case no longer certain they can consider it solved. Of course, the spooks turn out to be real, and a lot of action follows.
One thing I loved was Cantero’s writing style for its vivid and unabashed use of quirky rhetoric (he might very well choose to say detective-ing instead of investigating as I just did). It adds a lot of personality to the story and creates such a fun tone. The payoff is that the story is bright and colorful even at its most quiet and eerie moments.
It’s very bizarre and fun! There are some lines that fall flat of course, but I love to see authors throw caution to the wind so-to-speak and stretch the limits of language!
The dynamic between the friends is also enjoyable, and the characters are fun nods to the Mystery Inc. gang while still being unique to their own story. The mystery is interesting, and while you very well may guess the twists and turns it takes, it holds a level of unpredictability that seasoned fans of the genre will enjoy.
Side note: at times, the narrative switches to a screenplay dialogue format, which I just could not figure out. They come out of nowhere and seem more like unfinished scenes than anything. At times I felt like I was reading an unfinished draft of the book. This might have been fixed by setting the style apart by chapters or sections or even typeface such as italics.
I’ve been watching Scooby Doo television shows and mysteries for my whole life. The early series is almost a meme in and of itself. The episodes were totally formulaic and they always ended with a mask being pulled off the monster’s head to expose the villain. Later the gang began to encounter some genuine supernatural entities, but nothing truly terrifying. All that’s going to end if you open Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, because the Scooby gang—or at least Cantero’s counterparts for the famous quintet—is about to uncover one of the ancient entities of the Cthulhu mythos and this is every bit as disturbing as such an encounter should genuinely be.
First off, let’s be clear that while Cantero has great fun playing with the Scooby formula his characters are not one-for-one knock offs of Fred, Velma, Shaggy, Daphne and Scooby Doo. So push that out of your mind and you’ll enjoy the story a lot more. Instead we get Peter, Keri, Nate, Andy, and their dog, Sean (later replaced by his grandson, Tim). Together these intrepid pre-teens formed the Blyton Summer Detective Club where year after year they protected Blyton from a lot of creepy villains wearing masks. They thought that’s what they did in their last case too, but it turns out that a lot more was happening beneath the surface. There really was some serious supernatural stuff going on that their young minds couldn’t process and thirteen years later it has driven one of them to suicide, another to alcoholism, a third to uncontrollable bursts of rage, and the fourth to commit himself to an insane asylum in the hopes that the doctors can stop him from seeing the ghost of his dead friend.
So this is not the Scooby Doo of my childhood, but that’s good because this is a much more awesome story than that cartoon was structured to tell. The surviving members of the Blyton Summer Detective Club have to pull themselves together, return to the scene of the original crime, and come to grips with the unbelievable fact that the apocalypse is about to occur and only three meddling sort-of-grown-up kids and their dog have any chance at all to save the world. Cantero knows both the Cthulu genre and the Scooby Doo classics and he brilliantly mixes both together here for a story that kept me on the edge of my seat never knowing where he was going. Every few chapters he hit me with another surprise. And now I find myself sad the story is done and desperately hoping for a sequel, even if it is just a crazy villain hiding behind a mask.
The story line was okay. My main problem with this book is the author’s inability to pick a writing style and sticking with it. Sometimes it’s your typical dialogue and descriptions, sometimes it’s written out like a script, sometimes I don’t know who’s saying way, sometimes dialogue is followed by a statement of “that was so and so”. It drove me crazy. The characters are overly simple and rather annoying because of it.
A Gen-Xer like me couldn’t resist a throwback to all the Scooby Doo cartoons I watched growing up. Cantero is wise enough to not ape the cartoon, but to drop enough tropes in to keep us engaged. This results in a book that is both original and familiar, and also funny and terrifying. A great horror-comic read.
Having grown up on Scooby Doo marathons and horror novels, I snatched up “Scooby Doo meets Lovecraftian horror” the second I saw it. It’s a fun romp, imagining an older cast of ex-teen detectives facing the traumas of their youth to uncover the REAL mysteries.
The narration does vary between a variety of styles and a mixed bag of metaphors, which might not be for everyone, but it does have moments of beautiful prose amongst the pop-culture references. I also loved the complex character relationships, and I enjoyed the queer rep even if it didn’t fit traditional labels.
Not everyone’s cup of coffee, but if you’re a fan of zany romps and wondered what would happen if Mystery Inc. ever encountered some REAL horror, check this out.
It’s like Cantero couldn’t decide what genre he wanted to write in so he went: eh, we’ll do ’em all!
And it WORKED.
This book is sometimes horror, sometimes parody, sometimes comedy, sometimes romance, sometimes mystery, sometimes action, and they all came together wonderfully. Even Cantero’s writing included several different types- he switches from 2nd to 3rd POV, then at times he uses a script format, at times he breaks the 4th wall, and I can see that being off putting for some, but it flowed really well for me and I truly enjoyed everything about this book.
My one complaint I think would be that I didn’t get a great sense of who Peter was. Peter is the one member of the gang who has died before the beginning of the book (and no spoiler cuz it’s on the book’s back cover summary) but he’s still sort of present because Nate sees his ghost as a near-constant hallucination. And, of course, the rest of the gang talks about him. But I’m not sure I could tell you much about what Peter is like as a character. That said, the rest of the characters were wonderfully fleshed out, the mayhem was at turns scary and hilarious, and the multiple twists at the end…well, some of them I saw coming, some I had an inkling of, and some just totally blew my mind.
Cantero takes a lot of tropes that he sort of purposefully uses and then goes “LOOK! I ADDED THAT TROPE TOO! ISN’T THIS FUN?” and it is!
All in all, despite the creepy horror moments, or maybe even because of them, I think that’s the one adjective I’d really use to describe this book: it is a lot of fun, and I feel like the author had fun writing it as well. This book was a perfect read for getting into the Halloween spirit, and I could not put it down once I picked it up.
I am not a big horror fan, but this book had me hooked from the beginning. Just the premise of ‘those meddling kids and their dog’ fascinated me. And this is indeed Scooby-Doo all grown up.
With an interesting writing style, Cantero offers a look at the idea of ‘What if it’s not just a man in a mask?’ The author delves into the past almost delicately, never fully but the glimpses are there, of the night the Blyton Hills Summer Detective Club that changed everything. As they go back to the town as adults, what follows proves that it definitely wasn’t a guy in a mask.
This is definitely not for kids, but the story is written is such a fascinating way that it should pull in the horror fans. Couple the plot with the depth of the various characters, and you’ve got a great book. If you’ve ever wanted to see the gang ‘all grown up’ this is your chance.
If Scooby Doo was a real thing, this could tell that story. Very original concept created for real life!
This is based closely on the Scooby-Doo TV series, although one of the characters is now a ghost (or whatever) and the others have grown up. The characters are not quite the same as the S-D characters, but close. There is some amusing writing in here. There did come a point at which it seemed just to go on and on without much letup, but the ending is satisfactory and there seems to be room for a sequel.