‘Dead Kid Detective Agency’ by Evan Munday

Reviewed by Kevin Marc Fournier

No book should have its publisher’s promotional material held against it, but the selling description of The Dead Kid Detective Agency as “dark, hilarious, educational and hip” is not only especially dire, it’s sadly apt. If ever a good book were spoiled by its author trying far too hard, this is it. We’re told of the history teacher at Sticksville Central High School that “he told several inexcusable jokes, but he was so enthusiastic about them they were almost funny.” Of a high school rock band the book says that “Their strategy was to compensate in volume what they lacked in musical knowledge.” Both statements could be applied, with little adjustment and perfect justice, to the writing here.

A pity, really, because there are a number of things to like about this debut novel (and first in a projected series of seven) by talented graphic artist and illustrator Evan Munday – including an appealing heroine with equally appealing friends, an enjoyable mystery plot (of the treasure hunt variety, rather than the fair-play puzzle variety), and good, expressive illustrations.

The story moves between two different narrative voices, marked out by different fonts.  One of these voices, the authorial third-person that begins and ends the book, is relentlessly facetious: a barrage of arch asides and winks at the reader, unending quirk, strained diction and laborious similes. I’ll concede that one of those laborious similes, out of perhaps a hundred and a half, surprised a laugh from me – “Mrs. Tischmann was a wide-eyed woman in a sweater that had double-crossed the wrong bedazzler.” But the vast majority are tortured, self-consciously silly, or merely meaningless: “The air was crisp and a bit cold for early September, like a Granny Smith apple left in the freezer by accident.”

Much stronger are the chapters narrated by the book’s central character, the unfortunately named October Schwartz, who – despite a superficial slew of twee attributes (a precocious goth-girl who plays trombone, joins a curling team, and likes a klezmer-punk band called The Plotzdam Conference!) – is very much an authentic thirteen-year-old girl: bright, foolish, posturing, vulnerable and funny.  October has recently moved to a new town, is starting a new school, and is tragically short one parent (the trifecta for YA novel heroines); she spends much of her time in the old cemetery behind her house, working on a novel entitled Two Knives, One Thousand Demons.  (Occasional glimpses of this novel-in-progress, incidentally, are a small but genuine pleasure.)  Reading aloud an invocation from her manuscript has the inadvertent effect of summoning the spirits of five dead children from different eras of Canadian history, who will help her investigate the death of her French teacher, Mr. O’Shea, with whom she had bonded over a shared love of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cemeteries, ghosts and demonic invocations notwithstanding, there’s unfortunately nothing in this novel that could justifiably be called macabre, let alone spooky. A collection of ghosts who pass the time by staging musicals and playing jenga are unlikely to disturb the dreams of even the most neurotic reader. (It’s customary to say of books like these, by way of faint-praise, that they don’t take themselves too seriously. But I rather prefer books that play it straight, and let me decide whether to take them seriously or not.) In the end, these ghosts amount to little more than comic relief and capsule history lessons. It’s indicated that they will play more central roles in the promised sequels, and indeed, a significant portion of this first book seems dedicated to setting up the following ones.

But the real heart of the story here, the part genuinely worth reading, lies with October.  Her relationship with her father is quietly affecting, and her interactions with her small group of misfit friends are often funny in an unforced and even charming way. Even better is her response to the death of Mr. O’Shea, and here Evan Munday accomplishes something really worth doing.  It’s a tricky thing in a mystery like this to make the stakes just right, to make the protagonist emotionally connected to the murder victim enough to give the investigation weight and resonance, but not so much as to spoil the pleasure of the puzzle. Munday gets this difficult balance exactly right, and as the book progresses and the mystery plot moves to the fore, the writing steadily improves. A late passage in which October tries to make some sense of the outcome of her investigation is genuinely affecting – all the more so for being, as if by some miraculous dispensation, relatively understated.

As for the promised (or threatened) education, there’s certainly no shortage of facts about Canadian history and pop ephemera both, inelegantly plunked down in semi-digested chunks.  But what our author lacks in elegance he almost makes up for in enthusiasm; indeed, the whole book has a guileless enthusiasm and a kind of junky energy that tween and early-teen readers are likely to find as engaging as I found exasperating.

ECW | 320 pages |  $11.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1550229714