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The Boy Detective Fails

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 1,961 ratings · 342 reviews

"In the twilight of a childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St Vitus' Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover a world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish with...more

Paperback, Punk Planet Books, 320 pages

Published September 1st 2006 by Akashic Books (first published 2006)

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Mar 22, 2013 David Katzman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. I loved this book. The Boy Detective Fails is one of those books that makes a writer go, “Dang, I wish I’d written that.” Or even thought of the premise.

Call it fantastical allegory, magical realism, a fairytale…the core premise of this mythical work is: What happens when real tragedy is injected into the cartoony world of a “boy detective”? When innocence meets evil, can it grow up or does it remain stunted and childish?

I was reminded of Chris Ware while reading TBDF. Ware has a character...more Wow. I loved this book. The Boy Detective Fails is one of those books that makes a writer go, “Dang, I wish I’d written that.” Or even thought of the premise.

Call it fantastical allegory, magical realism, a fairytale…the core premise of this mythical work is: What happens when real tragedy is injected into the cartoony world of a “boy detective”? When innocence meets evil, can it grow up or does it remain stunted and childish?

I was reminded of Chris Ware while reading TBDF. Ware has a character who is a fat, stupid Superman who does selfish ignorant things. A failed Superman. In Ware’s case, the hero fails because he’s an asshole. In Meno’s case, our hero is still a good guy…but what difference does it make when evil still overwhelms all good intentions?

I love the technique at work here of applying realistic flaws to a cartoon world. It punctures myths of purity, often with humor, allows for social commentary, and provides tremendous imaginative potential. The writing in TBDF is clean, precise and detailed, much as you would expect from a book influenced by Encyclopedia Brown, Scooby Doo, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and comic book TV shows like the original Batman from the sixties.

The given for cartoon worlds is that when bad things happen, they’re always temporary. Everything will return back to normal. Bad guys are caught. Property is returned. The injured parties are healed. And nothing ever changes our heroes. Little kids are kept happy because they love repetition, but at a certain age they grow out of these shows when they realize how boring the format is—because nothing changes. (Or else they just start watching sitcoms instead.) Meno decides to examine what happens when unalterably grim things do happen, and the characters are permanently affected. A boy detective leaves his crime-fighting cohorts (his sister Caroline and their friend Fenton) to go off to college and study criminology. While he’s away, Caroline commits suicide and Fenton over-eats until he becomes dangerously obese. Because he can’t deal with Caroline’s suicide, the boy detective spends ten years drugged up in a mental hospital. Upon his release, he moves into a group home and takes a telemarketing job selling artificial wigs and mustaches. His experience working the graveyard shift reminds me of the brilliant novella Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West, with our protagonist speaking to the most hopeless, loneliest people on Earth and finding no way to console them…except to sell them mustaches. The boy detective frequently pops Ativan because he can’t keep his shit together. Villains make buildings in his small town vanish, and no one can do anything about it.

Despite the grim realities in the boy detective’s world, one of the advantages of using an allegorical style is that a dark reality doesn’t have to be dreary. TBDF is written with the spunk and verve of a cheery, childhood favorite. And that ironic technique also provides a lot of humor—like meeting the Hardy Boys, who are now working at a movie theater and trolling for prescription drugs.

So in the end, what does the book tell us about evil? Well, as you might imagine, I was a little put-off by the non-ambiguity of this term at first. Are we talking about evil as in, mmmhhh…I don’t know…Satan? No, not really. It seems to stand for ”the bad stuff.” Cruelty. Pain. Meanness. I’m okay with that. Within the context of this allegorical story, I was able to accept the directness of that term because it’s right for the genre. Within cartoon worlds, good and evil are white and black. And evil is usually inexplicable. There is no explanation for Skeletor. So Meno is caught in a bit of a conundrum here—how to stay true to his genre and still provide an honest answer. In the real world, I believe power (the desire for it, to sustain it, to prevent its loss, or to experience some modicum of it briefly) is usually the reason for evil. And Meno demonstrated in the story of a secondary character, the young Gus Mumford, how being an ignored and powerless kid often turns you into a powerful bully. But really, The Boy Detective Fails isn’t so much about what causes evil after all. Let that be a black box for now. Evil happens, and we need to move on, and make the best lives we can for ourselves despite cruel intentions. This book is actually about what happens after shit happens. The recovery. Accept the way life is and keep going. Evil may be inexplicable, but an explanation isn’t necessary. It is what it is. Best not to get yourself jacked up on pharmaceuticals because you can’t deal with it. Be yourself. Find someone else as like-minded as you can, and be in love for a while. And if that doesn’t work out…keep trying. In a cartoon world, evil exists because the hero needs someone to make him look heroic. He needs a yang to his yin. In the end, the boy detective learns he doesn’t need a villain to be a good guy. He just needs to care about someone.

On a final note, I had the pleasure of seeing a theatrical adaption of this novel several years ago performed by The House Theatre Company, one of the best troupes in Chicago. I love most House shows, and yet I thought this was one of their best. Meno’s story gave them impeccable details from which they created a rich visual fantasy.

If you were thinking about trying a book by Meno, this would be a great first choice.(less)

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Dec 26, 2010 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to oriana by: Jason Pettus's sensational review

Shelves: read-2008, phenomenal, the-new-new-new-new-thing

I...I...I have to admit that I don't exactly know what to say here. This book was so good. So...so haunting and lush and aching and gorgeous and atmospheric and devastating and suddenly, at times, shockingly sweet and wonderful and redemptive and pure. It was.

I don't want to tell you about the plot, except to say that it provided the perfect shadowy structure on which to hang these beautiful, amazing outsider characters. And I don't want to tell you about the characters, because they're too lov...more

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Mar 27, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, dark, weird, hipster, smart-nerdy, personal-favorite

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So for today's review to make sense, I need to explain something to those who are reading it from outside of Chicago; that although our literary community here is a large and thriving one, with hundreds of published writers and hundreds of others who perform live on stages each week, there are perhaps...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Matt rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The painfully self-conscious

Shelves: abandoned

I gave up on this one after encountering this on page 30: 'Chapter 32.' I suppose I envisioned a story about Enyclopedia Brown in adulthood, but instead was beaten back by the prospect of 300-odd pages of arch, hollow quirkiness, one-sentence chapters, affected post-modern formatting for the sake of being cool, etc.

I should have known: on the acknowledgments page, under 'What I Listened to While Writing This Book' is listed Belle and Sebastian. Back to the library with thee!

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Aug 23, 2007 Sam rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: flat earth believers

I've given The Boy Detective Fails three stars. All three of them are for the characters and incidental events. None of them are for the book's main plot line.

I completely identified with Billy Argo, especially when he explained his fear of not knowing the right answer when it counts. I developed little fiction-crushes on Caroline and Penny. But for brevity, I'll focus mostly on the Mumford children. Their personalities and foibles are excellent, excellent writing. Effie's science projects take...more I've given The Boy Detective Fails three stars. All three of them are for the characters and incidental events. None of them are for the book's main plot line.

I completely identified with Billy Argo, especially when he explained his fear of not knowing the right answer when it counts. I developed little fiction-crushes on Caroline and Penny. But for brevity, I'll focus mostly on the Mumford children. Their personalities and foibles are excellent, excellent writing. Effie's science projects take the poster-board and macaroni tools of elementary school science and use them to probe deeply into the human experience. It's really amazing writing. Her model rocketry experiment is the best. The idea of lonely little children shooting message-in-a-bottle model rockets into the blackness of the night and waiting for someone, anyone, to respond... Upon reading that passage I kind of just mulled over it in awe little while.

Unfortunately, for me anyway, the insight of this book, taken as a whole, is a good deal less than the sum of its parts. I don't agree with the author's decision to actually ramp up the amount of inexplicable supernatural events seen by adult Billy. It is related through the story that Child-Genius Billy unmasked lots of bogus phantoms, very much in the tradition of Scooby-Doo. I was totally hooked on the story during the first chapter. Billy, triumphant, gave me both nostalgia for all the Hardy Boys and Bobbsey Twins source material (of which I used to consume enormous quantities) and for my own childhood. (I was hardly a Billy-Argo-level genius, but I had a Billy-Argo-level ego.) Ah, child geniuses -- there seem to be so many more of them than there are adult geniuses. Billy's fall is basically inevitable, and I relished the dread of it.

But next, thirty year old Billy Argo emerges into a world that includes a cabal of supervillains more suited to The Tick than to Nancy Drew or even Tom Swift. Buildings mysteriously vanish, real ghosts and a sort of headless horseman make appearances. A gang of assassins uses something which is described as acid, but which leaves behind limbs that are invisible but somehow still functional. I understand what the author is trying to do. He's trying to depict the unsatisfactorily indecipherable complexity of adult life. Young Billy always unmasked the phantom. Adult Billy accosts the phantom only to find he really and truly doesn't have a face. Kid problems are easy. Adult problems are not. Okay, I get it. I just don't like the implementation. People use the supernatural when describing phenomena for which they do not understand the physics, or the immediate cause. Relying on supernatural explanations seems less common with adults than with children, not more common. Adults are usually very good at rationalizing mundane causes for odd events. Adults, more jaded, are less likely to be surprised. Magic leaves our consciousness as we grow, and that is part of our nostalgia for childhood, in my estimation. The author asserts at one point that adults fear magic, and I don't really agree with that. They sort of just become "disenchanted" (agh! bad pun). The problem for adults is another level back. We find that we can explain the "how" of something all day long, and are usually still paranoid that there is some deeper "why" floating out there beyond our understanding. I think Joe Meno chopped off his assessment of the adult thought process at least one stage too early.

If you used to be a science whiz kid, and you now lost your ability to explain the most rudimentary physics, you in the real world might be as perplexed as Billy Argo in his fictional disappearing city. You might really identify with The Boy Detective Fails. But that's not the way it works for me or anybody I know. For me the Boy Detective really did fail to identify the truth of the matter.(less)

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Jan 12, 2009 Imogen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe I never wrote a review of this! This book haunts me, I swear to god. Before I read this one, Joe Meno was just this guy who wrote some sweet short stories and a popcorn book about being a teenage punker. The Boy Detective Fails, though, is some next level. Y'know? It shouldn't work- it should be precious and cloying and teenage writing excercisey, instead of maybe the best book since 2000. Which I guess probably it is.

It's a cultural moment, for starters: do kids in 2009 read Ha...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Melee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

I really hoped this book would be wonderful. The cover and a quote I had read promised much, but I try not to raise my hopes to high. Turns out, I could have let the vague expectations I squelched roam free!

I don't know what to say about this book; my thoughts are all in a tumult. All I know is that I enjoyed it a lot. Here are some things I noted while reading:

The boy detective, Billy Argo, reminded me of Adrian Monk in parts, since things like untied shoes bothered him and he was so out of tou...more

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Nov 21, 2007 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the Literary Lackadaisical

Shelves: fiction, trophy-shelf

I loved everything about this book. From the characters, to the surreal plot, to the very manner of writing.

The characters are absurd portrayals of mystery clichés, but rundown from the weight of the real world. Unable to cope with their surroundings, they're constantly trying to reclaim their former glory. Their attempts are short lived, feeble, and ultimately tragic.

Depending on your point of view, the plot is either beautifully integrated or maddeningly splintered. So much of the Boy Detectiv...more

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Nov 05, 2007 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Royal Tenenbaums and whispering detective fans

Shelves: desert-island-stash, guiltypleasure, mystery

I loved this book. It was very different from any book with which I'd ever spent time. (Making reviews intimidate me.)It had the tone of The Royal Tenenbaums, quirky Belle and Sebastian songs, and a bit of Scooby Doo mysteries. I couldn't help but have Alec Baldwin narrate the story to me in my mind. I loved how I had to abandon any norms of "standard" mystery books. The characters were endearing and lovable head cases. When the book was taking me around corners that I wasn't sure I'd like, I wa...more

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Jan 16, 2009 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who remember childhood and its darker sides

Recommended to Julia by: my daughter

Shelves: fantasy

This book has caused such a range of reviews--but I read it in one day and loved all the little elements that other reviewers found "gimmicky"--like the decoder ring that you assemble to figure out "clues" for the protagonist, the "boy detective".

Meno's concept is that Billy Argo, now 30, is the grown-up Encyclopedia Brown. He's been in a mental institution for 10 years after his beloved sister takes her own life. Released into a halfway house, he meets 11 year old Effie Mumford and her brother...more This book has caused such a range of reviews--but I read it in one day and loved all the little elements that other reviewers found "gimmicky"--like the decoder ring that you assemble to figure out "clues" for the protagonist, the "boy detective".

Meno's concept is that Billy Argo, now 30, is the grown-up Encyclopedia Brown. He's been in a mental institution for 10 years after his beloved sister takes her own life. Released into a halfway house, he meets 11 year old Effie Mumford and her brother Gus--and from that point on, my brain made 30 year old Billy a child like those two brilliant but broken children.

The plot twists and turns like any detective story--but for me (and this is almost a first) the THEME touched me more than either the characters or plot. Whatever else Meno is doing, he's dealing with Death in ways I've not read or felt before. He had me with the first strange quotation (these are often tucked in small print in the bottom right hand corner of the page).

"It is no parlor trick: There is a skull and, in the dark, it is glowing. Somehow it is now floating above us all. Listen: The skull is speaking. It is saying your name. It knows about you and your favorite flower and all about your tenth birthday. But it does not matter. You are not convinced. For some reason, you are still full of doubt. You stare into the dark, looking for wires. Grasping for strings, you hold your hands out."

And so Billy's therapist says, "I want you to consider why you're afraid of death. I think it is because you consider it a form of failure, a mistake, something that can somehow be avoided. And yet it remains as the one mystery that unites us all: Rich and poor, young and old--all of us, one day, will die eventually." And Billy answers, softly that he doesn't want to think about it, "Because there's no answer to that mystery."

And, of course, it's the loss of his sister that haunts Billy, all the way to the end of the book. Yet Meno ends on a note of hope, as Billy says to his new girlfriend Penny "It's all over now. I'm not young anymore. No more adventures, no more mysteries, no more secrets." And Penny replies, "We'll make our own secrets now, maybe."

What Meno has done is frame the existential question of death and loneliness in a story of childhood nightmares and fantasy. It's a unique book--but requires the reader to face his or her own fears of death and being alone.

I won't forget it--and I'm keeping my decoder ring.

(less)

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Feb 08, 2009 Trin rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Louis

Shelves: american-lit, fiction

Ten years after entering a mental institution in the wake of his beloved sister’s suicide, the Boy Detective attempts, reluctantly, to reenter the world. While not the magical landscape of his childhood—which played out like the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mysteries Meno is winking at—it’s still an odd place he finds himself in, full of child geniuses and past-their-prime criminal masterminds and buildings that simply vanish.

It’s a universe that may take the reader some getting used to, too—at firs...more

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Sep 05, 2012 J added it

Let me start by saying this: Perhaps the whitest book I've ever read in my life.

An interesting concept: What happens to all these childhood charcters, these boy detectives, when they grow up? How do they go about growing up and realizing that the world contains mysteries that just cannot be solved? And how do they live wit that knowledge?

One of my favorite aspects of this book was taking mimicky, cliche, Hardy Boys type characters and dressing them up in real life clothes (not literally, oh defi...more

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Apr 22, 2008 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

Wow, this was great. It is kind of like a darker companion to "Confessions of a Teen Sleuth" by Chelsea Cain, which was a humorous account of Nancy Drew's life story, as told by her. This one is a thirty-year-old Encyclopedia Brown type named Billy Argo, just released from a decade stint in a psychiatric hospital following a breakdown after his younger sister's suicide. The tone is melancholy and surreal, almost like the comic and violent Edward Gorey, and uses subtly outdated 1950's-era languag...more

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Jan 29, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

I heard this book inspired the show "The Venture Brothers" so I picked it up because of that. Yes, I know..."Nerd!" I ended up loving it from the first word. It's darker and more bittersweet than VB, but also funny and a fantastic parody of the old tv shows and mystery books we used to love as kids.

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Jun 24, 2007 Jae rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this! Whimsical and surreal, but never less than real, this book was still tender and heartbreaking. The Boy Detective, an Encyclopedia-Brown-like character, returns to society after a decade in a mental institution, where he went as a young man after the suicide of his assistant detective/sister. Living in a halfway house also occupied by his greatest nemesis, who's now aging and inept in his attempts to kill the Boy Detective, and working as a wig salesman by telephone, the Boy Detecti...more

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Oct 29, 2007 Lesley rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: um...

I just couldn't deal with this book and I only made it about half way through. It's just too self-conscious, too cute, too gimmicky. It's got, you know, chapters containing only one sentence, and pages with all the text squeezed into the bottom righthand corner. Yeah, it comes with a decoder ring, but the content of the decoded messages, well, sucks. Boring.

This is the kind of book you might expect to end mid-sentence. I looked and it doesn't, but the final chapter is followed by an angel food c...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery

An excellent riff on the "boy detective" genre (Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, Danny Dunn, etc) with an indie/emo flavor.

In a way, I wish I could give The Boy Detective Fails 3 and a half stars... it's a fun book for fans of those old YA novels, and there's a level of wistfulness that Meno invests in his characters that's a joy to read.

I don't know if this sounds ridiculous or not, but despite enjoying the novel, I didn't feel like it was very respectful toward it's source material, and tha...more

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Jul 10, 2007 Katie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: folks who loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

- Oh my gosh, WONDERFUL. Simultaneously really dark and twisted (really dark and twisted) AND innocent and lighthearted... wonderful. Also simultaneously feels like something pulled out of the 1950s and the present and the far future. Also takes place in NEW JERSEY. Love it. I couldn't put it down. The author's style is playful and interesting, the characters are gorgeous, there's mystery, love, loss, mental illness... *sigh* Things all of us can relate to, right?
- There were like a dozen typos....more

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May 17, 2012 Megan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-but-unowned

I have to preface this review by saying that I absolutely loved Hairstyles of the Damned, and I am well aware that Joe Meno is a very capable writer. Unfortunately, I just did not get into this book. I have a feeling that we, as readers, are supposed to be unattached from the novel in a way, but I like to really be immersed in the experience of a novel. I originally read this book as a teenager and actually quite liked it then. I think it was because I found some parts to be a bit creepy in thei...more

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Dec 16, 2009 Bren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

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...more 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.

(*"Like watching baby birds fall out of the nest," says one friend who has read the book. Hard to argue with that sentiment.) (less)

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Jun 10, 2009 Danny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-book

I've checked out another of Meno's books, Hairstyles of the Damned, but never got around to reading it. This one was on another librarian's GoodReads list so I decided to check it out. It takes a stereotypical boy detective, though I'm not sure where the stereotype is taken from. Maybe it's just presented in an overly proper style with a brilliantly clever boy detective, accompanied by his sister and one of his friends as assistants, and it seems stereotypical. I guess it's a mix between the Har...more

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Oct 03, 2007 Joshua rated it 5 of 5 stars

Best Meno yet, no doubt in my mind. Meno's got a great knack for combining the subtle and the outrageous. I can definitely relate to the Tenenbaums comparisons--it has that same feel, only creepier. I also kept thinking of Kelly Link's story The Girl Detective (also excellent), an obvious connection maybe, but one that I'd say goes far beyond the titles.

Pssst! There's also a decoder ring you can cut out and assemble... AND a secret adventure hidden within the book!

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Feb 21, 2013 Daveski rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's impossible for me to talk about this novel without drawing comparisons to The Venture Brothers, which also happens to be one of my favorite shows. Both the show and this book concern a boy who grew up in a fantasy world of villains and adventure, and who became rather miserable failures as adults. Of course, The Venture Brothers uses this failure as the basis for humor, where here it is a source of shame and depression.

That's not to say that this is an altogether bleak book - in fact, there...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Becky was right - this is a hard book to describe or review. It was weird and magical, but somehow also really heartfelt and sincere. I found myself feeling really connected to the characters even though they were all odd and damaged in some way. It feels like the kind of book that the guys who made The Royal Tenenbaums would make into a movie. It is the story of a boy who, along with his sister and best friend, was an expert detective as a child, solving all of these Scooby-Doo type mysteries....more

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Jun 13, 2009 Lloyd rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was recommended to me because I'm a fan of "The Venture Bros." TV show, and I can see why. However, while the novel's world is one where stand-ins for Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Scooby Doo style villains exist, it doesn't exhibit the same kind of humor. It is, at turns, a dark and introspective book, while also exhibiting a less graphic absurdism found in a Chuck Palahniuk story. Not being familiar with Joe Meno I don't know if his fairly simplistic use of language is just his typical...more

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Nov 27, 2008 Brandy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008reads, experimental, mystery, adult, realistic

When Encyclopedia Brown grows up, what kind of damage is he going to have? Particularly if he was able to solve every case he came across, except the mystery of why his sister killed herself? Boy Detective Billy is in that exact position: while he was in college, his partner-in-crime-solving sister Caroline committed suicide, his parents won't talk about it, and Billy has no idea what to do. Ten years later, he's fresh out of the psychiatric hospital and his life is still awash in mysteries--bui...more

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Dec 26, 2011 Anika rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a sweet, sad, peculiar little book. I was going to give it only three stars, because it's so melancholy and dreamlike it doesn't quite endear you right away, but I'm pretty sure that I will still be thinking about it in the weeks to come, so I gave it another star. It packs a wallop, this one, and I'm not really sure how to even begin to describe it. The ostensible plot, about an ex-boy detective who comes back to his town as an adult after spending years in a mental institution following...more

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Sep 26, 2008 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-favorites

This book is beautifully heartbreaking. Conjurs nostalgia that may not exist. The reader is faced with the realities of growing up; be it gracefully, or wistful for those moments that we wish we could carefully place in a shoebox, hiding it in our bedroom closets, only taking it out secretly when alone. This, by far, is Meno's best work. Inventive and original, will make any adult pine for long summer days and the vanishing shadows of childhood.

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Jul 20, 2007 Lewis rated it 3 of 5 stars

What I loved about the book was the actual book....the size, heft, and look of it was wonderful. Anyone else ever fall in love with an actual book and not the writing?
The story, all about a boy detective who grows to be an adult, was so so....It did deal convincingly with the uncertainty and fear that engulfs us as we age. I certainly don't have the derring do of childhood anymore. But the story was a bit too weird at times for me....

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Dec 26, 2010 Kyle rated it 4 of 5 stars

It is introduced like a simply Hardy boys or Encyclopedia Brown novel with simple characters, but quickly takes a turn for the dark, quirky and somehow humorous novel. We follow around a 30 year old, used-to-be boy detective in a world where all the evil doers have grown up. He is struggling with the past, trying to make sense of the present. It’s a cruel world and the boy detective is alone.

What do people think of the boy detective?

The mailman: very polite.
The police chief: an uncanny eye fo...more

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About Joe Meno

Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright that lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Society of Midland Author's Fiction Prize, he is the author of four novels, The Boy Detective Fails (Akashic 2006), Hairstyles of the Damned (Akashic 2004), Tender as Hellfire (St. Martin's 1999), and How the Hula Girl Sings (HarperCollins 2001). His short story collection is Blu...more

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Quotes from The Boy Detective Fails

“What I've learned is that there is nothing in this life that does not fail to disappoint us, even our own deaths.” — 28 people liked it

“The most important things in your life are almost always impossible to predict.” — 18 people liked it

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