Articles liés à Meddling Kids: A Novel
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It starts when you pull the lamp chain and light doesn’t come. Then you know you will never wake up in time, you will not make it to the end of this paragraph alive. Desperate reassuring thoughts try to rise over the panic in your head: it’s okay, you don’t need lights, you are practically awake already. You are lying on your bed, you can guess the familiar shape of the side lamp in the morning twilight and hear the old radiator clunking in the night; you are safe. It’s just that the lamp doesn’t work. But you want it to work; you need to dispel the darkness and let certainty outline the room so the things outside know you’re awake and won’t dare enter, and you pull the chain again and again, and you recall the lamp switch has failed before (has it?), and look, the lightbulb really is trying, though it barely manages to seep a wan glow, and it’s not enough to flash the room out of the shadows, but who needs more, the lamp says, you’re here, this is your room, I am your lamp, that’s your radiator going clunk in the night, that’s the same old closed door beyond which things might lurk and breathe skinless and eyeless, but you can rest, we promise we don’t exist really, lie down. Or are you lying down? Because you think you’re up on your elbows, but your arms aren’t feeling the weight now that you focus on them; in fact, your eyeballs are not moving, and then you try to say “hey” but your throat isn’t responding either, so you cling to the sheets (Do you? Are your fingernails truly scratching the linen?) and you struggle to emit a sound, make your vocal cords vibrate, push some air through your windpipe, just feel your fucking windpipe, for God’s sake, shout and wake up the slumbering blob that is you on your bed, sleeping, dreaming, at the mercy of drooling things outside the closed door, and you pull pull pull pull pull the chain and the lamp insists, I can’t, it’s a technical fault, but I promise you you’re awake, look at me, I’m your good old lamp, I’ve never lied to you, the chain has failed before, you know this, you should install a real switch you can snap on and off, and that’s when you realize your bedside lamp never had a chain. Furthermore, there’s no radiator in the room that can go clunk. It’s their footsteps (clunk), and the door is already open—try to shout—they’re in your room—try to shout—they’re creeping up your bed (clunk), stretching toward you (clunk), squamous ice-cold webbed fingers aiming for your spine—try to SHOUT!
Her own scream woke her up. It probably woke the whole block, really. She could still hear it resonating in the shoebox width of the room while her racing heart geared down from sprint to marathon and senses swept her surroundings, checking up on reality (of course this is your room, you dimwit, look at how cold and smelly and dampened by bureaucratic rain-pattering and faraway sirens it is). It had not been a bad scream, Kerri judged by the echoes of it. Not so much an eeek, a mouse kind of shrill as a strong, hard-boiled holy mother of fuck.
Tim’s grave, silent stare seemed to confirm it: On really bad nights she would wake up to the dog on the bed, barking away the nightmares. Today he was just sitting by, eyes level and fixed on her, an At ease, soldier expression on his face.
She sat up in her unheated room, lit by the TV static sky, and touched the ice-cold window glass. Real sensations, all of them. She wondered how dreams managed to deceive her every time; they were so blatantly dreams in retrospect, the fake stimuli so dim and shallow. She caressed Tim’s head: his short fur, his wet nose, his whiskers. It was all too complex to be fabricated.
“How do you stay sane, Tim?” she asked him.
Tim whimpered, olivertwisting his pale blue eyes.
Kerri gave him a flirt-acknowledging smirk and allowed him to hop inside the spartan cast-iron-framed bed. She sat against the wall, flipped through the dozen books on the solitary shelf, opened one paperback, and retrieved the newspaper clip.
The teen sleuths grinned back at her across thirteen years, from the sunny grayscale shores of Sleepy Lake, 1977.
“Do you still see them?” asked the shrink.
Nate, crash-landed on the armchair opposite, threw back a dehydrated stare.
“Your friends, I mean,” Dr. Willett clarified. “Are you still in contact with them?”
Nate took a drag of his cigarette clutched between Band-Aid-wrapped fingertips, stalling for the end of the session.
“My cousin Kerri calls from time to time. She went to study biology in New York, and she stayed there. I see her once or twice a year. Her mom still breeds Weimaraners back in Portland.
“Andy just left. At sixteen or so, she threw a backpack over her shoulder, left home, and jumped on a train to . . . I don’t know, find herself or whatever. She was always the complex one. I think she calls Kerri sometimes, or sends her postcards.
“Peter was the golden boy. He stayed in California to finish high school; he planned to attend the Air Force Academy, follow Captain Al’s steps . . . and then at sixteen he got discovered by a casting agent. He did movies, became a big star.”
He snorted, put out the cigarette, and dropped the tone of his voice.
“Then he overdosed on pills and died in a hotel room in L.A.”
In another city in another state, Kerri stroked the pulp-quality paper on which the Pennaquick Telegraph was printed, its pores, the jagged edges of the page. Real sensations, like this cold room and the coarse army blanket and Tim’s ears brushing her thighs. This did happen. This piece of paper says it. “Teen Sleuths Unmask Sleepy Lake Monster.” “Uncover Criminal Plot.” “Haunting Debunked.” We did it.
“Do you miss them?” Dr. Willett prompted.
Nate gazed at the window. It was March, but still winter. That’s what the last thirteen years had been: a very long winter.
“Nah,” he said. “We were kids. Childhood friends don’t last forever. I mean, who holds on to the past for that long?”
Thomas X. Wickley’s own thirteen-year-old copy of the Pennaquick Telegraph, stained with blood and urine, burned inside his breast pocket during the parole hearing.
“You were charged with fraud, attempted burglary, kidnapping, and child endangerment. And you pleaded guilty to all four. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
Thirteen years.
“Now, you know kidnapping is the most serious of these charges. And yet it’s also the one for which you could have more easily pleaded innocence. You were aware that this crime in itself, kidnapping a minor, added ten years to your sentence?”
Thirteen fucking years.
“I was,” he answered.
His hands on the table didn’t even shudder at the number. They stayed still and gnarled like ancient trees, mumbling in grumpy voices, Thirteen years, you say, boy? That’s nothing!
It was true. He never had any plans for those thirteen years anyway. Not since things went awry in Blyton Hills.
“Mr. Wickley? I was asking, would you mind retelling for us the circumstances of that charge?”
“Not at all,” he said, in the tone both weary and secretly glad to be asked of every old man who has a chance to tell a story, no matter how embarrassing. “My . . . perceived rivals at the time were teenagers. Children. During that night at the house on the lake, they split up to cover more ground. I saw the chance to seize one and I did. She’d accidentally fallen through a trapdoor and I found her in the basement. I gagged her and tied her up. I didn’t even consider she was only a little girl. I was blinded by greed. I am no danger to those children anymore. I don’t hate children.”
He stopped well before being carried away into saying he liked children. Words must be picked carefully in a parole hearing.
“You are aware, of course,” the commissioner said, “that those kids are no longer children.”
They giggled. The kids in the picture did, with their shiny hair and bucktoothed smiles. He heard them through the breast pocket of his orange jumpsuit.
He scoffed out of the gaffe: “I am sure I am not a danger to them, whatever their age.”
It burned him. The newspaper was scorching through his breast pocket.
“They were doing the right thing,” he said. “They weren’t meddling. They were the good guys.”
The commissioner leaned back in his chair just as the quietest, meanest member of the board saw it fit to intervene. “Still, the circumstances are aggravating. Here you are, doing fifteen years on account of being captured by four teenagers.”
“And a dog,” Wickley added.
“Yes, and a dog. That must have been a blow to your ego. You had problems with other inmates because of it. Some resentment would be altogether reasonable.”
Wickley looked down at his hands again, admired them upon finding them perfectly calm. Dry and undaunted, like tree trunks in the gentle breeze that carried the giggles of four teenagers. And a dog.
“What we mean to say is that there was, so to speak, some insult added to injury in the way you were apprehended. Actually, the word in the police report is ‘snared,’ ” the commissioner read. “By means of a contraption involving . . . ‘a high-speeding serving cart, two flights of stairs, and a fishing net’?”
Wickley watched him frown, briefly striving to pry an image out of the type, while the giggling in his own breast pocket grew into a television laughtrack.
“So, whatever—what we mean to say,” the man resumed, “is that some extra concern about you taking revenge is not unjustified.”
The prisoner drove his right hand to his heart. Violently. Slapping the picture silent.
“Gentlemen. I staged a haunting in an old mansion and dressed myself as a giant salamander to scare people away. I was captured by four teenagers and a Weimaraner. And I am sixty. Do you seriously believe I pose a threat to anyone?”
The board members chortled. The commissioner started putting away his papers.
Five days and nineteen hours later, he made parole.
The riveted iron doors opened the following Monday and sun shone on Wickley’s arid face, on the sentinel turrets, on a reservoir-sized puddle on the cobblestone road.
He put his box of belongings at his feet, took out the crumpled pack of Raleighs and lit one with the second-to-last match from his Sambo’s giveaway matchbook. The first drag tasted rancid, and yet periorgasmically good. The legendary afterjail cigarette.
Smoke curled away in the sun like a flower out of the animated film Yellow Submarine.
He unfolded the newspaper page he’d transferred from his orange jumpsuit to his civilian jacket pocket, next to a movie ticket stub for The Eiger Sanction. The grinning children in the picture met sunlight again.
The names in the second paragraph were highlighted in faded yellow: Peter Manner, Kerri Hollis, Andrea “Andy” Rodriguez, Nate Rogers, Sean. Peter Manner’s name was struck out in pen. That had been a recent addition; he’d overheard the news in the library two years ago. “Peter Manner, the kid in that flick with Lisa Bonet, he OD’d,” some convict had said, followed by the usual condescending platitudes on the rough lives of child stars and whatever. If bad fortune had struck out the other three names too, their deaths never made it to the prison grapevine. Not everyone stars in a Christmas blockbuster movie after all. The dog would most likely be a strike-out too, but lacking any official confirmation, Wickley would rather wait.
He further browsed the box for his father’s wristwatch and strapped it on. He was due to check in with his parole officer in two hours.
He picked up his box and crossed the street to a nearby pub.
—
They’d changed the label of his favorite beer. Also that of Coca-Cola bottles, the red background now shattered in the furiously sharp-angled pattern of the new decade. Two men by the window table were talking baseball, and Wickley, sitting at the bar, didn’t recognize a single name. He was going to light himself another cigarette when the barman approached and said, “Sir, you can’t smoke in here.”
He stared at the guy’s afterimage for a while before he tipped the cigarette back into the package and continued drinking. At least he’d called him “sir.”
The Pennaquick Telegraph clip lay unfolded on the counter while he enjoyed his beer. The verb is not an overstatement—he was really enjoying it. Now and then he side-glanced at the picture for no reason in particular. Perhaps because it was one of the few familiar things he could turn to: the panting dog, the smiling children. Even the dead one was smiling. Christ, even the deputy sheriff was smiling. The only one not smiling in that photo was him.
He glanced at the mirror across the counter. The old man there looked remarkably weary for someone who had spent thirteen years shelved in a cold, dry place, but not thirteen years older than the one in the newspaper. He had been blessed with one of those faces that age rapidly through the first three decades, but later remain relatively unchanged throughout adulthood. He continued not to smile now, but he somehow looked better than the detainee in the picture. Having lost the salamander costume helped.
The highlighted names stared up at the ceiling fan. He looked down at his hands and gnarled fingers slumbering on the counter, as unfazed as they were during the interview. They really didn’t give a damn.
He stayed on his stool, drinking in little sips, listening to a new but not bad song playing on the radio. One of the men by the window loudly rejected the idea of a player Wickley had never heard of being a better pitcher than one he remembered perfectly well.
Delicately, Wickley grabbed the newspaper clip, held it up, crumpled it into his hand, lit the last match in the book and burned it. The barman grunted at this act of arson not covered by the nonsmoking sign.
Wickley sprinkled the ashes on the floor and left for the restroom.
Life out of prison is full of easily overlooked luxuries, such as using a public urinal without having to check your back. He smiled at that adage as it shaped in his mind, and took pleasure in reading the ageless poetry scribbled on the tiles and trying to aim at the little pink spongey cube near the drain.
Thirteen goddamn years.
He was free.
Without the warning of a toilet flush, the door to the stall behind him slammed open.
“Good morning, Mr. Wickley.”
He knew then, by the sudden suspension of all lower bodily functions, that his subconscious mind had recognized the voice. Even thirteen years and a puberty later.
He spun on his feet and corrected his visual line upward and choked at the face of the bully confronting him—the dark-browed figure filling and brimming over the ghostly contour of a smiling memory.
“Andrea ‘Andy’ Rodriguez!” he blurted out.
The woman blew a bang of black hair off her face. “Andy. My name’s Andy.”
“I am not allowed to talk to you,” he protested. “I just got outta jail.”
“Really? ...
Revue de presse :
Her own scream woke her up. It probably woke the whole block, really. She could still hear it resonating in the shoebox width of the room while her racing heart geared down from sprint to marathon and senses swept her surroundings, checking up on reality (of course this is your room, you dimwit, look at how cold and smelly and dampened by bureaucratic rain-pattering and faraway sirens it is). It had not been a bad scream, Kerri judged by the echoes of it. Not so much an eeek, a mouse kind of shrill as a strong, hard-boiled holy mother of fuck.
Tim’s grave, silent stare seemed to confirm it: On really bad nights she would wake up to the dog on the bed, barking away the nightmares. Today he was just sitting by, eyes level and fixed on her, an At ease, soldier expression on his face.
She sat up in her unheated room, lit by the TV static sky, and touched the ice-cold window glass. Real sensations, all of them. She wondered how dreams managed to deceive her every time; they were so blatantly dreams in retrospect, the fake stimuli so dim and shallow. She caressed Tim’s head: his short fur, his wet nose, his whiskers. It was all too complex to be fabricated.
“How do you stay sane, Tim?” she asked him.
Tim whimpered, olivertwisting his pale blue eyes.
Kerri gave him a flirt-acknowledging smirk and allowed him to hop inside the spartan cast-iron-framed bed. She sat against the wall, flipped through the dozen books on the solitary shelf, opened one paperback, and retrieved the newspaper clip.
The teen sleuths grinned back at her across thirteen years, from the sunny grayscale shores of Sleepy Lake, 1977.
“Do you still see them?” asked the shrink.
Nate, crash-landed on the armchair opposite, threw back a dehydrated stare.
“Your friends, I mean,” Dr. Willett clarified. “Are you still in contact with them?”
Nate took a drag of his cigarette clutched between Band-Aid-wrapped fingertips, stalling for the end of the session.
“My cousin Kerri calls from time to time. She went to study biology in New York, and she stayed there. I see her once or twice a year. Her mom still breeds Weimaraners back in Portland.
“Andy just left. At sixteen or so, she threw a backpack over her shoulder, left home, and jumped on a train to . . . I don’t know, find herself or whatever. She was always the complex one. I think she calls Kerri sometimes, or sends her postcards.
“Peter was the golden boy. He stayed in California to finish high school; he planned to attend the Air Force Academy, follow Captain Al’s steps . . . and then at sixteen he got discovered by a casting agent. He did movies, became a big star.”
He snorted, put out the cigarette, and dropped the tone of his voice.
“Then he overdosed on pills and died in a hotel room in L.A.”
In another city in another state, Kerri stroked the pulp-quality paper on which the Pennaquick Telegraph was printed, its pores, the jagged edges of the page. Real sensations, like this cold room and the coarse army blanket and Tim’s ears brushing her thighs. This did happen. This piece of paper says it. “Teen Sleuths Unmask Sleepy Lake Monster.” “Uncover Criminal Plot.” “Haunting Debunked.” We did it.
“Do you miss them?” Dr. Willett prompted.
Nate gazed at the window. It was March, but still winter. That’s what the last thirteen years had been: a very long winter.
“Nah,” he said. “We were kids. Childhood friends don’t last forever. I mean, who holds on to the past for that long?”
Thomas X. Wickley’s own thirteen-year-old copy of the Pennaquick Telegraph, stained with blood and urine, burned inside his breast pocket during the parole hearing.
“You were charged with fraud, attempted burglary, kidnapping, and child endangerment. And you pleaded guilty to all four. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
Thirteen years.
“Now, you know kidnapping is the most serious of these charges. And yet it’s also the one for which you could have more easily pleaded innocence. You were aware that this crime in itself, kidnapping a minor, added ten years to your sentence?”
Thirteen fucking years.
“I was,” he answered.
His hands on the table didn’t even shudder at the number. They stayed still and gnarled like ancient trees, mumbling in grumpy voices, Thirteen years, you say, boy? That’s nothing!
It was true. He never had any plans for those thirteen years anyway. Not since things went awry in Blyton Hills.
“Mr. Wickley? I was asking, would you mind retelling for us the circumstances of that charge?”
“Not at all,” he said, in the tone both weary and secretly glad to be asked of every old man who has a chance to tell a story, no matter how embarrassing. “My . . . perceived rivals at the time were teenagers. Children. During that night at the house on the lake, they split up to cover more ground. I saw the chance to seize one and I did. She’d accidentally fallen through a trapdoor and I found her in the basement. I gagged her and tied her up. I didn’t even consider she was only a little girl. I was blinded by greed. I am no danger to those children anymore. I don’t hate children.”
He stopped well before being carried away into saying he liked children. Words must be picked carefully in a parole hearing.
“You are aware, of course,” the commissioner said, “that those kids are no longer children.”
They giggled. The kids in the picture did, with their shiny hair and bucktoothed smiles. He heard them through the breast pocket of his orange jumpsuit.
He scoffed out of the gaffe: “I am sure I am not a danger to them, whatever their age.”
It burned him. The newspaper was scorching through his breast pocket.
“They were doing the right thing,” he said. “They weren’t meddling. They were the good guys.”
The commissioner leaned back in his chair just as the quietest, meanest member of the board saw it fit to intervene. “Still, the circumstances are aggravating. Here you are, doing fifteen years on account of being captured by four teenagers.”
“And a dog,” Wickley added.
“Yes, and a dog. That must have been a blow to your ego. You had problems with other inmates because of it. Some resentment would be altogether reasonable.”
Wickley looked down at his hands again, admired them upon finding them perfectly calm. Dry and undaunted, like tree trunks in the gentle breeze that carried the giggles of four teenagers. And a dog.
“What we mean to say is that there was, so to speak, some insult added to injury in the way you were apprehended. Actually, the word in the police report is ‘snared,’ ” the commissioner read. “By means of a contraption involving . . . ‘a high-speeding serving cart, two flights of stairs, and a fishing net’?”
Wickley watched him frown, briefly striving to pry an image out of the type, while the giggling in his own breast pocket grew into a television laughtrack.
“So, whatever—what we mean to say,” the man resumed, “is that some extra concern about you taking revenge is not unjustified.”
The prisoner drove his right hand to his heart. Violently. Slapping the picture silent.
“Gentlemen. I staged a haunting in an old mansion and dressed myself as a giant salamander to scare people away. I was captured by four teenagers and a Weimaraner. And I am sixty. Do you seriously believe I pose a threat to anyone?”
The board members chortled. The commissioner started putting away his papers.
Five days and nineteen hours later, he made parole.
The riveted iron doors opened the following Monday and sun shone on Wickley’s arid face, on the sentinel turrets, on a reservoir-sized puddle on the cobblestone road.
He put his box of belongings at his feet, took out the crumpled pack of Raleighs and lit one with the second-to-last match from his Sambo’s giveaway matchbook. The first drag tasted rancid, and yet periorgasmically good. The legendary afterjail cigarette.
Smoke curled away in the sun like a flower out of the animated film Yellow Submarine.
He unfolded the newspaper page he’d transferred from his orange jumpsuit to his civilian jacket pocket, next to a movie ticket stub for The Eiger Sanction. The grinning children in the picture met sunlight again.
The names in the second paragraph were highlighted in faded yellow: Peter Manner, Kerri Hollis, Andrea “Andy” Rodriguez, Nate Rogers, Sean. Peter Manner’s name was struck out in pen. That had been a recent addition; he’d overheard the news in the library two years ago. “Peter Manner, the kid in that flick with Lisa Bonet, he OD’d,” some convict had said, followed by the usual condescending platitudes on the rough lives of child stars and whatever. If bad fortune had struck out the other three names too, their deaths never made it to the prison grapevine. Not everyone stars in a Christmas blockbuster movie after all. The dog would most likely be a strike-out too, but lacking any official confirmation, Wickley would rather wait.
He further browsed the box for his father’s wristwatch and strapped it on. He was due to check in with his parole officer in two hours.
He picked up his box and crossed the street to a nearby pub.
—
They’d changed the label of his favorite beer. Also that of Coca-Cola bottles, the red background now shattered in the furiously sharp-angled pattern of the new decade. Two men by the window table were talking baseball, and Wickley, sitting at the bar, didn’t recognize a single name. He was going to light himself another cigarette when the barman approached and said, “Sir, you can’t smoke in here.”
He stared at the guy’s afterimage for a while before he tipped the cigarette back into the package and continued drinking. At least he’d called him “sir.”
The Pennaquick Telegraph clip lay unfolded on the counter while he enjoyed his beer. The verb is not an overstatement—he was really enjoying it. Now and then he side-glanced at the picture for no reason in particular. Perhaps because it was one of the few familiar things he could turn to: the panting dog, the smiling children. Even the dead one was smiling. Christ, even the deputy sheriff was smiling. The only one not smiling in that photo was him.
He glanced at the mirror across the counter. The old man there looked remarkably weary for someone who had spent thirteen years shelved in a cold, dry place, but not thirteen years older than the one in the newspaper. He had been blessed with one of those faces that age rapidly through the first three decades, but later remain relatively unchanged throughout adulthood. He continued not to smile now, but he somehow looked better than the detainee in the picture. Having lost the salamander costume helped.
The highlighted names stared up at the ceiling fan. He looked down at his hands and gnarled fingers slumbering on the counter, as unfazed as they were during the interview. They really didn’t give a damn.
He stayed on his stool, drinking in little sips, listening to a new but not bad song playing on the radio. One of the men by the window loudly rejected the idea of a player Wickley had never heard of being a better pitcher than one he remembered perfectly well.
Delicately, Wickley grabbed the newspaper clip, held it up, crumpled it into his hand, lit the last match in the book and burned it. The barman grunted at this act of arson not covered by the nonsmoking sign.
Wickley sprinkled the ashes on the floor and left for the restroom.
Life out of prison is full of easily overlooked luxuries, such as using a public urinal without having to check your back. He smiled at that adage as it shaped in his mind, and took pleasure in reading the ageless poetry scribbled on the tiles and trying to aim at the little pink spongey cube near the drain.
Thirteen goddamn years.
He was free.
Without the warning of a toilet flush, the door to the stall behind him slammed open.
“Good morning, Mr. Wickley.”
He knew then, by the sudden suspension of all lower bodily functions, that his subconscious mind had recognized the voice. Even thirteen years and a puberty later.
He spun on his feet and corrected his visual line upward and choked at the face of the bully confronting him—the dark-browed figure filling and brimming over the ghostly contour of a smiling memory.
“Andrea ‘Andy’ Rodriguez!” he blurted out.
The woman blew a bang of black hair off her face. “Andy. My name’s Andy.”
“I am not allowed to talk to you,” he protested. “I just got outta jail.”
“Really? ...
"Edgar Cantero’s enjoyably batty Meddling Kids unleashes enough freaky pleasure for
horror fiends. Even more impressively, it scratches a nostalgic itch for those who grew up on Saturday morning Scooby-Doo cartoons and sugar-bombed breakfast cereal . . . The story proves as cleverly witty as its title. It's filled with high jinks both terrorizing and hilarious, and it goes down as smoothly as an old-school Scooby Snack."
--USA Today (***½ out of four stars)
"Why You'll Like It: While this is obviously an ode to Scooby Doo, Supernatural fans will love the idea of a group of mystery hunters coming back together after leaving the business, and grappling with the realities of both."
--Bustle
"A pop-culture gem, a hipster cartoon with surprising depths."
--Toronto Star
“This is a novel to read for style and for Cantero's clever allusions to other stories and media....Anyone who finds the triangle formed by Scooby-Doo, Lovecraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a cozy place to be, here's your beach book.”
-- Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Deliriously wild, funny and imaginative. Cantero is an original voice."
--Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe
"If you loved Scooby-Doo as a kid (or as an adult — no judgment), you’ll love this sly take on the genre."
--New York Post
"MEDDLING KIDS is a fun romp of horror, humor, adventure, and a surprising amount of heart. If you’re looking for something that feels both comfortably familiar and exciting and new, add this book to your summer reading list."
--Aintitcool.com
"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.”
—Rob Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Year Zero
"A crackerjack story which is pure gold for fans of the great Saturday morning cartoons of the seventies and eighties...Prepare to read through this fun novel with a grin and hands gripping the pages."
--Cemetery Dance
"Zoinks! For Scooby-Doo fans, Spanish writer Edgar Cantero’s novel “Meddling Kids” is Scooby-meets-H.P. Lovecraft — either humor-laced horror or horror-laced humor. Cantero does justice to both sides of that equation...For anyone who finds the triangle formed by Scooby-Doo, Lovecraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a cozy place to be, here’s your beach book."
--San Antonio Express-News
"For any adult who grew up with "Scooby Doo," but also for those who love horror stories. There are real monsters in this book, not just bad guys in costumes."
--The News-Gazette
"Here is the mash-up fans of Scooby Doo and H.P. Lovecraft have been waiting for...Childhood pop culture references, witty banter and an unpredictable plot make this a compelling mystery/horror story."
--Shelf Awareness (Starred review)
"Cantero’s imagination is vivid, and the story, once it gains speed, continues at a breakneck, roller-coaster pace. He plays with form and style, which makes for an enjoyable romp. Fans of modern takes on Lovecraft and those that are nostalgic for the cartoons of their childhood will like this novel, which is also a sure bet for your Stranger Things-themed display."
--Booklist (Starred review)
"Cantero (The Supernatural Enhancements) will win readers’ hearts with this goofy, smart love letter to childhood adventure and enduring friendship...The prose is fast and funny, and the quirky, lovable characters are absolutely irresistible."
--Publishers Weekly
"The Scooby-Doo Gang all grown up—but more diverse—and taking on real Lovecraftian horror. It's laugh out loud. Truly scary. And full of great characters. Cantero hits the sweet spot by unfolding the action in a beautifully cinematic fashion."
--The Times
"An adventure that meshes Lovecraft-like elements with an eco-catastrophe thriller, providing chills and chuckles in equal measure."
--Financial Times
horror fiends. Even more impressively, it scratches a nostalgic itch for those who grew up on Saturday morning Scooby-Doo cartoons and sugar-bombed breakfast cereal . . . The story proves as cleverly witty as its title. It's filled with high jinks both terrorizing and hilarious, and it goes down as smoothly as an old-school Scooby Snack."
--USA Today (***½ out of four stars)
"Why You'll Like It: While this is obviously an ode to Scooby Doo, Supernatural fans will love the idea of a group of mystery hunters coming back together after leaving the business, and grappling with the realities of both."
--Bustle
"A pop-culture gem, a hipster cartoon with surprising depths."
--Toronto Star
“This is a novel to read for style and for Cantero's clever allusions to other stories and media....Anyone who finds the triangle formed by Scooby-Doo, Lovecraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a cozy place to be, here's your beach book.”
-- Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"Deliriously wild, funny and imaginative. Cantero is an original voice."
--Charles Yu, author of How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe
"If you loved Scooby-Doo as a kid (or as an adult — no judgment), you’ll love this sly take on the genre."
--New York Post
"MEDDLING KIDS is a fun romp of horror, humor, adventure, and a surprising amount of heart. If you’re looking for something that feels both comfortably familiar and exciting and new, add this book to your summer reading list."
--Aintitcool.com
"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.”
—Rob Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Year Zero
"A crackerjack story which is pure gold for fans of the great Saturday morning cartoons of the seventies and eighties...Prepare to read through this fun novel with a grin and hands gripping the pages."
--Cemetery Dance
"Zoinks! For Scooby-Doo fans, Spanish writer Edgar Cantero’s novel “Meddling Kids” is Scooby-meets-H.P. Lovecraft — either humor-laced horror or horror-laced humor. Cantero does justice to both sides of that equation...For anyone who finds the triangle formed by Scooby-Doo, Lovecraft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a cozy place to be, here’s your beach book."
--San Antonio Express-News
"For any adult who grew up with "Scooby Doo," but also for those who love horror stories. There are real monsters in this book, not just bad guys in costumes."
--The News-Gazette
"Here is the mash-up fans of Scooby Doo and H.P. Lovecraft have been waiting for...Childhood pop culture references, witty banter and an unpredictable plot make this a compelling mystery/horror story."
--Shelf Awareness (Starred review)
"Cantero’s imagination is vivid, and the story, once it gains speed, continues at a breakneck, roller-coaster pace. He plays with form and style, which makes for an enjoyable romp. Fans of modern takes on Lovecraft and those that are nostalgic for the cartoons of their childhood will like this novel, which is also a sure bet for your Stranger Things-themed display."
--Booklist (Starred review)
"Cantero (The Supernatural Enhancements) will win readers’ hearts with this goofy, smart love letter to childhood adventure and enduring friendship...The prose is fast and funny, and the quirky, lovable characters are absolutely irresistible."
--Publishers Weekly
"The Scooby-Doo Gang all grown up—but more diverse—and taking on real Lovecraftian horror. It's laugh out loud. Truly scary. And full of great characters. Cantero hits the sweet spot by unfolding the action in a beautifully cinematic fashion."
--The Times
"An adventure that meshes Lovecraft-like elements with an eco-catastrophe thriller, providing chills and chuckles in equal measure."
--Financial Times
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- ÉditeurDoubleday
- Date d'édition2017
- ISBN 10 0385541996
- ISBN 13 9780385541992
- ReliureRelié
- Nombre de pages336
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Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : New. First Edition. 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 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 Oregons 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 Debon Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it werent 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. Its 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 Canteros 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. N° de réf. du vendeur DADAX0385541996
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Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New. N° de réf. du vendeur Wizard0385541996
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Description du livre Hardcover. Etat : new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. N° de réf. du vendeur think0385541996
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Description du livre Etat : New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published 1.65. N° de réf. du vendeur 353-0385541996-new
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