In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo,
boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and
crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later,
Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus' Hospital
for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimagi-nable
strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn
up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete
their evil schemes.
Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy finds the companionship of two
lonely, extraordinary children, Effie and Gus Mumford--one a science
fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten
bravery, Billy treads from the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing
job, stumbles into the awkward beauty of a desperate pickpocket named
Penny Maple, and confronts the nearly impossible solution to the mystery
of his sister's death. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes
that dare the reader to help Billy decipher the mysteries he encounters,
the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity
of the unknown.
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2006
*STARRED REVIEW*
What happens when a Hardy Boy grows up?
Mood is everything here, and Meno tunes it like a master, even though
such a task initially appears impossible. Billy Argo, resident boy
detective of his small New Jersey burg, seems to have inherited the aura
of brains, fearlessness and rigid moral compass that always served the
likes of Encyclopedia Brown in such good stead. Billy solves crimes and
foils villains without breaking a sweat, aided by younger sister
Caroline and heavyset friend Fenton. Their successes are trumpeted in
newspaper headlines straight out of kids' adventure books ('Boy
Detective Solves Fatal Orphanage Arson'), prompting suspicions that what
the author has in mind is a long and ironic riff on children's fiction.
But the book takes a dark turn as the years pass. Billy continues
solving crimes and generally being a prodigy ('College Now For Boy
Detective'), but Caroline slips into depression and ultimately commits
suicide. Her brother winds up in an asylum as a result, not re-entering
the world until he's 30. This is the point at which Meno, a tricky
postmodernist who likes to embed separate story capsules on blank pages
and leave nonsense words in the margins, might be expected to throw the
curtain back, showing that our hero was crazy all along, no crimes were
solved and his whole life was a lie. Instead, the author gives Billy a
gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the
Convocation of Evil at a local hotel ('Featured Panel: To Wear a
Mask?'). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his
straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the
Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the
author takes his compulsive investigator at face value. A full-tilt
collision of wish-fulfillment and unrequited desires that's thrilling,
yet almost unbearably sad.
BOOKLIST, July 2006
*STARRED REVIEW*
Comedic, imaginative, empathic, and romantic, Meno, whose diverse works
of fiction include Hairstyles of the Damned (2004) and Bluebirds Used to
Croon in the Choir (2005), is particularly attuned to the intensity of
childhood and its lifelong resonance. In this cartoony and dreamlike
novel, Billy Argo of Gotham, New Jersey, receives a True-Life Junior
Detective Kit for his tenth birthday, and in no time, the gifted boy
detective becomes front-page news as he thwarts comic-book villains with
the help of his younger sister, Caroline. But Caroline commits suicide,
