The Boy Detective Fails

The Boy Detective Fails

By Joe Meno

My friend and fellow PhD student, Amber, handed me this book and said, “Read this book, I think you’ll love it.”

I guess I am easy to peg, literarily.

The Boy Detective Fails is unlike anything I have ever read before. It is the story of Billy, an incredible child/adult/man-child detective who solves the fantastic mysteries and crimes in his local town. As an adult, he struggles to adjust to the harsh reality that people have such capacity for evil and cannot solve the greatest mystery of all: why his sister committed suicide and whether or not it was his fault.

That is the world’s worst summary, but this book is far too complicated to sum up so easily. It would take me pages of explanation and analysis and gushing about how incredible and strange and haunting and touching this book was.

It reminded me of The Royal Tenenbaums: I could practically hear Alec Baldwin narrating. Amber describes it as: “Imagine that The Decemberists (a band) wrote a novel.” 

I found myself intentionally reading as slowly as possible, savoring every word and every moment. Had the book been mine and not something that I needed to return, I probably would still be reading it--- taking in nothing more than a page a day just so that I would never be done.

Even when I did finish, it wasn’t really over yet! Meno includes a decoder ring and a puzzle that goes throughout the entire book, adding to the plot. There is even a maze and a couple other puzzles to solve, not to mention a recipe.

This book is an experience, and I loved every single second of it! I highly recommend it to anyone with a brain and a love of literature that is playful and different.