So, I’m pretty sure Edgar Cantero is a magician, because there is no way this story should have worked.
The offices of A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean have one desk. One chair. One phone. A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean share an office. They share a job. They share a body.
Twins who are ultimately half of a truly functional person – he’s logical, she’s creative, he’s ordered, she’s wild – they work as “Private Eyes” out of a dingy office by Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and have engaged in a battle for dominance since they were in utero.
A.Z. Kimrean infiltrate the inner circle of a California drug lord to discover who is murdering his sons one by one, and Cantero, with acerbic wit and clever writing, turns every noir and PI trope on its ear. This book is a witty, funny, biting, gender bending adventure about family, embracing being the hero of your own story, and basically being a fucking weirdo.
How the twins function doesn’t really matter. Their psych doctor (who is also like a mom to them) calls them chimeric twins. Adrian is the twin everyone wants on the case, Zooey not so much. Zooey is also a bit of a nymphomaniac and the twins are a hermaphrodite.
As I said, nothing about this story should have worked, and yet, the book was very enjoyable. It was funny, interesting, and incredibly fresh. As someone fairly familiar with the detective genre, it was pretty cool to watch this book subvert it at every turn.
This Body’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us is another Edgar Cantero book, so it’s probably not for everyone, but I enjoy Edgar Cantero, and I’m highly recommending it.
Tag Archives: authors: edgar cantero
This Body’s Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us
Meddling Kids
Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids was one of my favorite books in 2018. In fact, it might be one of my favorite books ever.
In a Scooby Gang meets Lovecraft adventure of horror and comedy, four former child detectives and a descendant of their faithful weimaraner – an equally faithful weimaraner – take another look at their last case which, due to the bizarre nature of the case, one of them still cannot believe was simply a guy in a mask.
Andy, who convinces the others to reinvestigate, pinpoints that case as the trigger that destroyed their lives, haunted by the memories of their nights out in the forest. Andy is a tomboy, now butch lesbian, with a criminal record wanted in several states. Kerry, child genius and would be biologist – is plagued by nightmares, unable to finish college, and descending into alcoholism. Nate (the nerd) checks himself into and out of mental institutions, and Peter (the Golden Boy) becomes a successful Hollywood actor until he takes his own life not long after Kerry starts college. Peter now manifests as a hallucination that only Nate can see and hear.
As a devoted Scooby Doo fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book. As a less devoted Lovecraft fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book. And as a not devoted but totally remembers reading the stories Nancy Drew fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book.
If you’re looking for a logical detective story, you’re not going to find it here. What you will find is a tale of broken people who reunite to unbreak themselves, just a little bit. In spite of the fact that you’re basically dealing with three broken people, a telepathic dog, and broken hallucinated person, this book is fun and funny. I laughed out loud quite a few times.
I don’t think this book is for everyone. This book draws heavily on those child detective stories we all read as kids, as well as Scooby Doo, and it draws a lot from the Cthulhu mythos. If you don’t like any of those things, it’s probably not a book for you, as those things don’t seem to be for everyone. Cthulhu especially doesn’t seem to appeal to a lot of people, and a lot of younger people don’t seem to be all that familiar with it. It just feels like a lot of people aren’t going to get the book because they’re not going to be familiar with its brilliant campiness and nostalgia.
Put another way: if you only like watching Scooby Doo, you probably won’t like this book. People never fail to amaze me in that they went into a book expecting to read a novel length version of Scooby Doo, this isn’t what it was, and they hated it. DUH, you idiots, it was never supposed to be a novelized version of Scooby Doo.
One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen leveled at the book is that the writing was all over the place. It was, but I took at least some of that to be part of the point. And anybody who has read The Supernatural Enhancements knows Edgar Cantero does weird stuff like that. I didn’t love The Supernatural Enhancements because the story was meh and I expected more. I felt like I got exactly what I expected here.
I saw one or two people complaining the story was transphobic but I missed that. I’m always a bit hesitant to label people “phobes” anyway and overall I’m usually an insensitive cow, but I feel like transphobic here was a leap. I don’t assume trans people are evil because of this book. I never did anyway, but here we are.
Anyway, I recommend this book highly, even though I know a lot of people aren’t going to like it, and honestly…I don’t care. It was good, nostalgic, campy fun and totally in line with what I expected from Cantero and from a book inspired by a cartoon, a horror author, and some detective books. It’s not a novelization of Scooby Doo.
Oh, and it is most definitely not a kids book.
The Supernatural Enhancements
I really enjoyed Edgar Cantero’s The Supernatural Enhancements. It was pretty weird though.
The story takes place in the fictional town of Point Bless, Virginia, where our main character, a European young man only called “A.,” has inherited a supposedly haunted mansion. With him he brings Niamh, his bodyguard. She’s Irish, a mute, and 16. A. is about 23.
A. inherited the house from a distant cousin named Ambrose Wells, who he doesn’t know well. He doesn’t know the Wells branch of his family much at all. Wells supposedly committed suicide by jumping out a third story window. Soon after moving in, A. and Niamh start experiencing supernatural phenomena almost immediately. As they research the Wells family and the dead relatives from generations back, they find clues to a secret society that met once a year at the Wells home.
The book isn’t written as a normal book. It’s written as journal entries, articles, poems, letters, and other things, making it a unique experience of a book that reminded me of other supernatural and horror stories, as well as a Scooby Doo cartoon.
I really don’t want to give away much more than that. I was really satisfied with the ending, and I didn’t figure it out. This book was a lot of creepy fun and I highly recommend it for its plot, its pace, its horror, its humor and its characters, which grew on me more and more as the book went on.
I’ve already bought Cantero’s next book, Meddling Kids, which is a take off on a Scooby Doo cartoon. God, I’m so excited already.
words in scarlet ink 