For better or for worse, anyone under a certain age should be acutely aware of what Scooby Doo, the character and the basic formula behind his and his pals’ adventures, is. Four kids and a talking dog ride around solving mysteries, often involving a thief or a smuggler in a costume trying to scare everyone away from whatever crime is being committed.
Author Edgar Cantero’s 2017 comedic horror novel Meddling Kids asks what would happen if the Scooby gang investigated some real monsters of the Lovecraftian vein.
13 years after the Blyton Summer Detective Agency solved its last case, the four kids have grown up to be, well, less than successful. Leader Peter (the Fred) found some fame as an actor before dying of a drug overdose. Smart girl Kerri (the Daphne based on her appearance) is something of a grad school drop-out tending bar and not living up to her potential. Her cousin Nate (the Shaggy) is in a mental hospital, still seeing visions of Peter. Tomboy Andy (the Velma) is a vagrant who can’t seem to hold down a job. They did have a dog way back when, Sean, a Weimaraner, but he died of old age. Kerri’s mom breeds those dogs, so she has Sean’s great-grandson Tim with her. And for the record, neither of the dogs can talk.
However, something happened on their last case. The foursome had met multiple summers in a row, always solving some case involving a guy in a costume that fell into some ridiculous trap of theirs. But the last one haunted them. It seems there may have been something a lot more real than just a guy in a suit. The monsters might very well have been real. And given the surviving kids, now young twentysomethings, don’t much remember what happened to them or even understand what exactly was going on, so that means they need to go back and look into whatever happened in that spooky house in the middle of a lake over an abandoned mine again.
This was something of a wild novel. Cantero, a Spanish author, had a habit of switching his narrative style around as the book progressed. Sometimes that meant making up verbs, and sometimes that meant changing things up to read more like a script of some kind then switch back to a more conventional novel. That took some getting used to, and a part of me wondered how much this had to do with the fact Cantero speaks English as a second language (if at all, I have no idea whether or not someone else translated this book to English or he wrote it in English). Regardless, that does bring in a certain fluidity of language and allowing for a greater range in the humor. And this book is funny in places, sometimes in meta ways is an instance where Andy reacts in a way to refuse to let a chapter end.
Now, Scooby Doo fans should be aware this isn’t an exact one-to-one switch. Nate is no coward or glutton, and I pegged Kerri as a Daphne due more to how often Cantero remarks her hair is bright orange. That said, this was a fun book. It’s not for kids, but for former kids who recognize a good parody of childhood institutions when they see one. The monsters are creative, the dialogue snappy, and the characters vividly defined. It’s well worth a read for fans of childhood adventurers who never seem to grow up on some level.
Grade: B+
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