“A very welcome nostalgic and subversive take on the cartoons of our childhoods.”
Summer 1977 – The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon’s Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster–another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboen Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
Thirteen years later – the former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask. And Andy, the once intrepid tomboy now wanted in two states, is tired of running from her demons. She needs answers. To find them she will need Kerri, the one-time kid genius and budding biologist, now drinking her ghosts away in New York with Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the club. They will also have to get Nate, the horror nerd currently residing in an asylum in Arkham, Massachusetts. Luckily Nate has not lost contact with Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star who was once their team leader . . . which is remarkable, considering Peter has been dead for years.
The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It’s their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
It doesn’t take a master detective to deduce that the titular meddling kids are based on a certain gang and their dog with a penchant for snacks named after himself. It also doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a noir version of the Scooby Gang all grown up and subject to real life problems sounds like a whole lot of fun.
With nods to Lovecraft and a sharp, incisive wit when it comes to teen detective archetypes, Meddling Kids sounds like a very welcome nostalgic and subversive take on the cartoons of our childhoods but given a many tentacled inter-dimensional twist.
Meddling Kids is out on 11 July 2017 and is available from Amazon.
RICHARD COSGROVE