The Adventures of Archie Reynolds



Story of a 12-year-old boy and the adventures he has in his neighborhood, dealing with situations like bullies, girls, and smugglers. Essentially Slice of Life meets adventure in a suburban setting.

There's basically two elements to the book. The Slice of Life elements are episodic, and woven inbetween the adventure elements, which follow the protagonists as they investigate a mysterious tunnel and a series of clues, resulting in them getting into trouble with smugglers.

This book contains examples of:

 * Banging for Help: Amanda is Bound and Gagged in a crate and banging and "mmmphhing" to get attention, which scares Archie for a bit.
 * Bound and Gagged: Happens to Amanda inside a crate.
 * The Bully: There are two who play a role during the first third of the story.
 * Free-Range Children: The main characters explore the town, an underground passage, and even ride an inflatable raft across a river.
 * Girls Have Cooties: Archie and his two male friends have a very negative view of girls, and don't want them to play tackleball (a variation of football) with them.
 * Gosh Darn It to Heck: The dialog contains exclamations such as "darn!", "good grief!", "darn near!" and "nothing doing!". The time period of the story isn't stated.
 * Inevitable Waterfall: When riding an inflatable raft through a river, one of these shows up.
 * Informed Attractiveness: The narration refers to three neighbor girls as "three attractive girls" when introduced.
 * Kid Detective: The heroes become that (in the classic "clue solving" sense) when trying to figure out the secret of the tunnel.
 * Linked-List Clue Methodology: Each clue the kids find leads to them searching for the next.
 * Secret Underground Passage: There is one used by smugglers, that the heroes stumble across while exploring the neighborhood.
 * Shown Their Work: The author has a great deal of knowledge involving tunnel construction, and it shows. The tunnel and its design are described in great detail.
 * Slice of Life: The main theme of the story, crossed with some suburban adventure.
 * Three Amigos - Archie and his two friends, who he is usually with. Amanda and her two friends, who are usually with her.