The Boy Detective Fails
Published on 1. August 2018
320 pages
978-1-936070-49-7 (ISBN)
Description
In this "charming" and melancholic novel, a former child sleuth "investigates the hard-to-crack case of Lost Innocence" (
Entertainment Weekly).
A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year
In the twilight of a mysterious 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 the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes.
Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children-one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister's case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown.
"Haunted by the mystery of his sister's death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible... The story of Billy's search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up." - Publishers Weekly
"The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel ('Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?'). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Comedic, imaginative, empathic... investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason." - Booklist
A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year
In the twilight of a mysterious 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 the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes.
Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children-one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister's case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown.
"Haunted by the mystery of his sister's death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible... The story of Billy's search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up." - Publishers Weekly
"The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel ('Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?'). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Comedic, imaginative, empathic... investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason." - Booklist
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Joe Meno
The Boy Detective Fails
Book
09/2006
Akashic Books,U.S.
€16.50
Article not available at the moment
Person
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. He is a winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and was a finalist for the Story Prize. He is the author of five novels and two short story collections including
The Great Perhaps,
The Boy Detective Fails,
Demons in the Spring, and
Hairstyles of the Damned. His short fiction has been published in
One Story,
McSweeney's,
Swink
,
LIT
,
TriQuarterly
,
Other Voices
,
Gulf Coast
, and broadcast on
NPR. His nonfiction has appeared in the
New York Times
and
Chicago
magazine. His stage plays have been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Charville, France. He is an associate professor in the fiction writing department at Columbia College Chicago.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE MYSTERIOUS IDENTITY OF THE BOY DETECTIVE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: THE CASE OF THE BROWN BUNNY
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE CASE OF THE VANISHING LADY
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE CASE OF THE GHOSTLY FIGURE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: THE CASE OF THE SECRET TREASURE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
