The Castle Conundrum (#168)

Plot: Frank and Joe work at Teen Village International, a French project rebuilding a medieval village for refugees. But someone is trying to sabotage the project by creating mysterious accidents and impersonating a local ghost.

They’ve Got Troubles: Teen Village International is described as a “teen program.” Frank and Joe seem excited about it, but the “program” seems to mainly consist of a couple of weeks of hard labor in the harsh sun. Perhaps Frank and Joe have “problems” they need to work out with tough love, backbreaking work, and long hours in the unrelenting heat.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe use tae kwon do, which adds to their vast repertoire of martial arts experiences. The Hardys most frequently use karate, but they also have experience with jiu-jitsu, judo, and kendo, along with boxing and wrestling. Joe is mentioned as a broken field runner, which could be a reference to his experience as a football player (eight of the first 85 mysteries, starting with #15, The Sinister Signpost, in 1936) or track (three of 85, starting with #31, The Mystery of Wildcat Swamp, in 1952). “Broken-field” running isn’t really a track activity, although Joe is supposed to be a top sprinter (#81, The Demon’s Den, 1984); in any event, Joe is a “star athlete” (#36, The Secret of Pirate’s Hill, 1956)

Fenton Hardy, Freelance Police: Fenton is in Paris to attend a conference on diamond smuggling. For heaven’s sake, why? What possible reason does a private detective have for learning to stop diamond smuggling? That’s a police job — and the Feds, at that. But this is consistent with Fenton being a tool of the Man, as when he confidently tells his sons diamond smuggling is about to become a thing of the past. (How’s that going, Fenton?)

Better at Hard Labor than Bright Ideas: The point of Teen Village International, located in Provence, France, is that the teenagers will rebuild a medieval village as home for refugees. There are, of course, two problems with that:

1. Even refugees — who are somewhat in the “beggars can’t be choosers” camp, and in any case probably want food and freedom more than anything else — deserve better than to live in a village almost a millinneum out of date that is located in a harsh climate subject to mistrals, which are intense, long-lasting windstorms; and
   
2. The French are not exactly known for their love of foreigners.

Where Is Bayport?: Frank admits the Hardys live in New York state. Well, thank God we’ve got that out of the way.

Uglo-Americans: Frank and Joe, who have traveled the world solving crimes, don’t know much about the French. Besides the unfamiliar culinary and meteorological phenomena, they’ve never heard of lawn bowls (although it would have helped if someone had compared it to bocce), they’ve never heard of tisane (an herbal tea, which I’ve never heard of either), and Joe doesn’t realize the French currency is the franc. (Was the franc, now.) The worst is that Joe doesn’t realize the “market” everyone is excited about is not a supermarket. Evidently they don’t have farmers’ markets in Bayport.

A Family of Idiots: The de Frehel family owned the land TVI is rebuilding the village on, and they also own the nearby chateau. In the chateau is a treasure in jewels lost for almost two centuries, hidden by the dying Sieur de Frehel. The Sieur, before he died, liked to remind his family of the motto on the Frehel crest: True wealth is found around the family hearth. Yet in 180 years, none of the Frehel family bothers to search the hearth of the chateau. Of course, when he figures it out, Frank, not believing the family’s stupidity, mocks several generations of Frehels.

It’s Harry Tanwick’s Skeleton: When the Hardys and the dimwit Frehels find the treasure, there’s a skeleton with the gems and jewelry. Presumably it’s the bones of the Sieur, but his body was supposed to be elsewhere. Frank declines to speculate or investigate — or really care, when it gets down to it — the mysterious skeleton, which is one of the bigger investigative copouts since The Disappearing Floor before World War II.

Opinions: There are stereotypes aplenty here, and with the International Brigade of Teens, there’s a lot of stereotypes to go around. You have several rude Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, the surly German, etc. Even the crime is stereotyped: the German pulls his off with a precision cleverness, with the ingenuity being far more important than bodily safety, but it takes an American to go for real greed and murder. I can’t figure out whether the international teens’ misapprehensions about American culture is a clever backwards look — showing while Americans look at foreigners as one-note stereotypes, they don’t have a much more nuanced opinion of Americans — or whether it’s another cultural stereotype (i.e., foreigners are ignorant of American reality). I do like Gert, the unapologetic German; he seems straight out of central casting, with his uncaring attitude toward health and life but a keen interest in getting the job done right.

There are a large number of culprits here. What seems a simple Scooby-Doo, impersonate-the-ghost-and-get-the-land-cheap caper turns out to have several culprits, with the worst crimes being perpetrated by someone who wasn’t even part of the ghostly hijinx. This does introduce a degree of complexity to the solution, but learning part of what seems like a malicious trick is actually a harmless prank does feel like a letdown. The two plots, the ghost story and diamond smuggling, aren’t very well integrated, but that’s supposed to be to divert readers from thinking that diamond smuggling is part of the plot at all. It doesn’t work, but I think this Dixon was just trying misdirection rather than mediocrity.

There isn’t much new here; I believe it has literally all been done before in Hardy Boys’ books, and I don’t believe in the TVI mission for a second. That being said, it’s relatively inoffensive, and Frank essentially telling the Frehels they have a genetic propensity toward colossal stupidity is a great moment.

Grade: B-