PotsandPlots

I bought Meddling Kids years ago because I was thoroughly entertained by its central conceit. The kids from a Scooby-Doo-style mystery-solving team. set-up have grown up, but are called back to investigate a crime they thought they solved years ago.

We’ve been rewatching Scooby Doo – Mystery Incorporated, which I highly recommend, and, as that series enjoys playing with the “meddling kids” trope, it felt like the perfect time to elevate Edgar Cantero’s novel up the TBR pile.

I took it on holiday, where I found that while I liked elements of Meddling Kids, ultimately, it wasn’t really my sort of book.

Growing Information:

Plant With: Mystery, Cthulhu, Scooby Doo.

Grows Into: An arch mystery horror that ultimately outstays its welcome.

Rating: Vibrant Annual 🌻🌻(Check here for rating information.)

Available now in paperback (affiliate link).

The Review:

As a Scooby Doo homage/pastiche, this book is good value. The kids have grown up, but all the elements are there, and Cantero imagines what being in Mystery Incorporated might do to you as you reach adulthood.

There are knowing winks to source material such as the “Zoinx” river, and the myopic sleuth having grown up and got contacts, so is never unable to see without her glasses. It’s worth noting that Velma and Daphne have been rolled into one character, allowing for the introduction of a new team member; a kick-ass Latino gender-fluid sleuth called Andy.

Cantero is also very good at breaking the Fourth Wall, with metaphors and asides that assume the reader is in on the trick, and is well versed in the genre of teenage trap-based criminal unmasking. It’s a lot of fun.

As the novel opens, the characters are stuck. Their lives, for reasons that become clear over the course of the novel, did not pan out the way they hoped. Essentially, they’re all screw-ups, and the reason is that their final case still has a hold on them.

Andy gets the gang back together to investigate. She’s convinced there’s more to the crime than the low-life thief they unmasked as teenagers.

The Old Ones Aren’t the Best

My gripe with the novel is probably very personal and your mileage may well vary. The deeper mystery in Meddling Kids centres around a Cthulhu-type “Old One” monster, with an occult high wizard angle thrown in.

As I mentioned in my review of Netherwood by Jake Arnott, horror is not my favourite genre, and I’ve never particularly liked the otherworldly horror of Lovecraft and all its various spin-offs. Meddling Kids is way too much like that for me.

I guess I was hoping for more of a detective-type story rather than a horror one. The supernatural elements in the book didn’t really work for me, and it certainly didn’t have any of the thought-provoking elements that I found in Netherwood.

That said, this would probably be asking too much. Meddling Kids does not set out to be thought-provoking. It sets out to be a pastiche of its influences, and this it does ably, while reflecting that there are more scary things in life than men in masks.

Ultimately, for me, the book is too long. It’s a neat idea, but stretched over 450 pages, it becomes butter scraped across too much bread. It’s a fun book, but ultimately Edgar Cantero doesn’t quite get away with it with his Meddling Kids.