Just Finished Reading: Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (FP: 2018) [442pp]

Thirteen years ago, that summer 1977, the Blyton Summer Detective Club hit their high point with the capture and arrest of the Sleepy Lake ‘Monster’ – actually a low-life fortune hunter who had been terrorising the local area. But that was then, this is now – 1990. What the papers didn’t report (after all why would they?) were the local animal mutilations as well as what they didn’t know so couldn’t report. For thirteen years the surviving members of the Detective Club had kept a secret - the pretend ‘monster’ they captured that night wasn’t the only beast prowling the dark. That night they had encountered something real, something both ancient and malevolent. For thirteen years they had all been having nightmares about the night they stayed in the spooky house on the lake, trapped in the basement while real monsters tried their best to get inside. For thirteen years they had been hiding, each in their own way. But Andy (don’t call her Andrea!) has had enough of this shit. Just out of prison (not exactly with permission) she has decided to get the band back together again and go back to Sleepy Lake. The plan is a simple one. She’ll pick up genius biologist Kerri (hiding as a waitress with a drinking habit), Tim the grandson of their trusty Weimaraner from that summer and Nate the horror nerd presently in a mental institution. Luckily Nate is still in touch with Peter, the jock and ex-movie star. Unfortunately he can’t really tell anyone that fact as Peter has been dead for years. Once everyone is together they’re going to find the REAL monster of Sleepy Lake and kick its knobbly ass all the way back to whatever realm is came from. Or die trying – so probably that.

OK, as a fan of the original Scooby-Do cartoon (don’t even get me STARTED on the Scrappy-Do abomination!) this just jumped out at me. Just imagine, a homage to said classic cartoon but written for adults (and don’t get me STARTED on the 2002/2004 movies!) by someone who obviously loved the series as much as I did. Despite its repetitive format the thing I really liked/loved about Scooby-Do – OK, apart from Scooby himself whom I loved dearly! – was the fact that EVERY WEEK these meddling kids both outwitted adult bad guys and at the same time proved EVERY WEEK that there was a rational explanation to all of the supposed ‘spooky’ events going on that regularly fooled the adults around them. Every week rationality won over superstition. That message really got pounded into my young brain (along with my hero of the day Spock on Star Trek:OS). So here we have something different. The Scooby-Do motif has been updated and up-adulted. The team are now in their mid-20’s and have all been scarred by a brush with the REAL supernatural, so much so that they are either in heavy denial, in a mental hospital or dead (suicide is suspected). But starting from that admittedly low base they – prompted or honestly pushed by Andy – decide to do something about it and face the monster that comes into their dreams more often than not every night. It’s a nice format – you get to see what happened to the gang years after the original cartoon ended (did you ever wonder about that?) and you get to see them kick real ass in the more modern/adult style complete with shotguns, axes and a fair amount of ectoplasmic gore (which naturally evaporates in contact with oxygen!). As a fan of the carton I can honestly say that I had a LOT of fun reading this. I laughed out loud more than once, there was a cosy sense of nostalgia and more than enough dramatic and creepy moments to keep me glued to the pages. The only slight criticism I did have was that the end ‘boss fight’ went on just a bit too long but I understand why he did it. Definitely recommended to Scooby fans. Oh, and the dog was GREAT. He was almost my favourite character and was ‘drawn’ by someone who obvious knows the canine mind! Oh, and Andy is gay… probably…. Or maybe just for Kerri, it’s complicated…… [lol]