NATE: We have all the symptoms you listed: the nightmares, the bitterness, the feeling of being lost!
DUNIA: I just described any twenty-five-year-old ever, you self-centered twit! .. I'm afraid the only evil that possessed you was Generation X. [loc. 4735]
It's thirteen years since the Blyton Summer Detective Club's last case, in which they uncovered a staged haunting and sent Thomas Wickley to jail on charges of fraud, kidnapping and child endangerment. (Dressing as a giant salamander is not a federal crime.) Of course the haunting was staged. Of course the mystic symbols, the dead animals, the hanged corpses et cetera were all props. Of course the case didn't derail the lives of the four teenagers: Peter, Nate, Andrea (who prefers 'Andy') and Kerri. It's sheer coincidence that Peter committed suicide, Nate's in Arkham Asylum, Andy is on the run and Kerri's a washed up, alcoholic bartender, sharing a vile apartment with Tim the Weimaraner, descendant of the Detective Club's Sean.
This novel is a homage to Scooby Doo and H P Lovecraft. Cantero blends humour and horror, epic drama and the blank generation, neologisms and novel similes in a playful novel with dark undertones. Many elements are borrowed from the teen detective genre: chases in mining carts, books of power, ghosts, hauntings, irascible authority figures ... and a catalogue of triumphs including insurance fraud, a sheep-smuggling werewolf, and forged Indian craftwork. But did the Blyton Summer Detective Club really solve that last case? Or was there more to it than a man in a rubber suit with some awesome props? The five of them (well, only Nate can see Peter, on account of him being either a ghost or a hallucination) return to Blyton Hills to close the case -- and to achieve some closure on their own stories.
I really enjoyed this: I liked the changes of format (narrative, screenplay, script) and the self-referential voice ("All three fell silent for a second, admiring the seamless connection of that loose end"), the neologisms ('tragichuckled', 'howlretched'), the similes ('A lazy rain began to wash out the defiled streets, all casual and gleeful like a late authority figure at the end of a teen detective story.'), though I can see how these might be incredibly annoying to a different reader, or to me in a different frame of mind. I liked the diverse cast of characters, including the villain(s) and the high school bully made good, and the dog. I appreciated Cantero's treatment of mental health, gender and sexuality, and substance abuse. And the plot itself (lake monsters, Lovecraftian horrors, necromancy) hung together pretty well, though certainly wasn't the main attraction. Will definitely look out for more of Cantero's work.
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