Book Look: The Hermux Tantamoq Adventures by Michael Hoeye

I have always loved the cover. I picked it up because it didn't have pictures on it. Little did I know, it was called 'minimalism in that funky 90's, wavy way with the scrawly font.

Hands down the most obscure book I've mentioned here, and undoubtedly the one that has influenced me the most. These were much more popular in Europe; That is to say; They heard of them over in France and Germany. USA, well, we were all on the Harry Potter train, and rightfully so.

Before there was "Geronimo Stilton", before there was "Redwall", before there was "Mistmantle", there was this: Hermux Tantamoq.

A watchmaker who leads a simple life; Coffee, his job, funny suits, his pet ladybug, reading. He inadvertently ends up as a pseudo-detective. There's still an appeal of having a fairly ordinary job and talent for something you love, while also being head-first in something else that's wilder.

And being able to own a lovely apartment on what must be a middling salary. 90s kids can't relate.

Because yes, this was for kids. And looking back at it, I'm not sure it was intended to be.




Reading this book as an adult, it's...it's not badly written, at all. I can clearly see moments that influenced my own fiction writing.

I have a feeling that the publish had no idea how to advertise these books. It's introspective and somewhat mature, and the characters are still rodents with absurd senses of fashion and funny names.

The second book has one of the characters being nailed to the deck of a sinking ship and cutting his ear off...several hundred pages before they fight a scorpion in an old tomb.

The third one is even wilder, with false paternity, and legal matters. What kid would be interested in that? It's still my least favorite of the four.

But because the characters were animals, they were shoved under 'children's books'. I really do think that this series was intended to be the kind of quirky thing you read at a coffee shop, what I imagine David Sedaris books to be like, a childish idea with clearly adult concepts.

Or perhaps the book equivalent to a Pixar movie - only these didn't take off nearly as well. I had to rebuy the entire series secondhand because they aren't on Amazon, they're no longer in print, and the only eBook copies I could find were in German. My original copies are in a box somewhere.

The fourth book came out in 2007, and the series is still marked as 'active', despite ... truth be told, I haven't tried to find Michael Hoeye on social media. Seems a little odd. But I hope somehow he knows that there's at least one person who was deeply impacted by a mouse and his quiet life.