Tuesday, January 02, 2007

the boy detective fails, again

Lucy, as much as she's nice as 3.14159265, and I are now locked in public dispute over the penultimate page of The Boy Detective Fails (see update to her post and footnote and update to mine). TBDF is one of the few books to earn a full five kiwi rating in Lucy's antipodal book-rating system. So as not to leave interested bystanders out in the literary cold, I have scanned the relevant page for your perusal here (don't worry, it's not a spoiler):

second to last page of the boy detective fails

If you do like this page, then you will definitely love The Boy Detective Fails, given that this is the worst part. Indeed, you can feel free to follow its instructions by printing the scanned page, finding someone's hand to hold, reading the passage again, and making the requested drawing on your printout. Even better: instead of writing the name of that chump whose hand you're holding, write mine! C'mon!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pages from The Boy Detective Fails in better times, selected nonrandomly but not especially deliberately from somewhere in the middle:

better two pages from the boy detective fails

BTW, I may dislike the second-to-last page, but the ending itself is pretty good.

1 comment:

Lucy said...

I think even if you don't especially like this page, but are merely not inspired to destroy it, then you would like the book, as long as you like the other extract.
I didn't love the page, and I wouldn't actually follow the instructions, but it was just an odd, whimsical interlude. Maybe you just need to work on channelling your inner teenage girl while reading it.