Plot: The entire Hardy family (sans Gertrude) head to Los Angeles to protect the life of stuntman Terrence McCauley, a son of one of Fenton’s old friends.
Borrowing from the past: The Hardys head to California as a family, just as they did in the revised Clue of the Broken Blade (#21), where they all got jobs on a movie set. Frank and Joe also headed to Los Angeles in Mystery of the Desert Giant (#40), The Shattered Helmet (#52, Hollywood), The Firebird Rocket (#57), The Vanishing Thieves (#66), The Crimson Flame (#77), Cave-In! (#78), and The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47).
The Hardys head for the hospital after being a few feet from an explosion. They almost never go to the hospital. Joe was sent to the hospital for “shock” after being in an exploding building in The Secret Warning (#17) and he found himself hospitalized for a stabbing wound in Training for Trouble (#161).
Before this book, Laura Hardy received a personality transplant: Laura actually says something … interesting. She sasses her sons about their attitudes toward police involvement in their cases, insists on helping investigate, and claims credit for cracking Fenton’s tough cases. She also gives Terrence advice on his love life. Where is the real Laura, and can we keep this one instead?
Well, we know Fenton’s not that kind of detective: While on the phone, Fenton’s notes on the attempts on Terrence McCauley are:
Rope — cut?
Window — glass
Empty extinguisher!
I don’t know what I like the best, there. “Window — glass” is pretty good — what the hell else is going to be in a window, sandstone? — but the exclamation point after “Empty extinguisher” is a contender too. “My God! The building hasn’t been properly carrying out regular safety inspections! Fenton to the rescue!”
Safety first: Fenton met Terrence’s father, Brian — also a stuntman — by chasing a crook onto a movie set and into a building rigged to explode. That’s how you get a reputation for safety in the stunt business — by not hiring enough security guards or buying barrier tape or orange plastic cones to warn people a building’s about to go boom.
Joe’s confusing love life: Joe shows more affection for Terrence’s car, staring at it and fondling it, than he ever does for anyone human. Of course, it might be a little creepy if he did treat a girl like a car, but until he tries it, he won’t know if Iola would object. Of course, Joe can’t tell the difference between a woman and a crossdresser at one point, so puberty should be one hell of an adventure for him.
Everyone loves Joe: When Joe is knocked down by a bomb blast and gets a little fuzzy headed, both his father and Frank make fun of him. (Frank uses variants of the “X-rayed his head and found nothing” joke, which is at least seven decades old.) Concussions are hilarious!
Insurance? Don’t make me laugh: Frank mentions he and Joe have high insurance premiums. I assume what they actually have is the state-mandated safety net that everyone has to be allowed to buy to meet state law. Otherwise, some insurer is crazy or owes Fenton a major favor.
Maybe he should avoid that legal career: As usual, Frank’s knowledge of the law is shaky. He resists going to the police after the boys were almost forced off a cliff even though he memorizes the truck’s license plates, saying the police would only be able to arrest the man for reckless driving. Well, no; the testimony of Fenton Hardy’s sons would probably be able to bump that up to attempted murder, and it would allow police to get a search warrant for the criminal’s home. But, hey, no, go on using Terrence as bait so the culprit can make several more attempts on the kid’s life. There’s no chance he’ll be successful, is there?
Of course, Frank’s sense of legality has been warped by being Fenton’s son, where the truth and personal glory trump the law every day of the week. Frank hacks into the California DMV computers and breaks into a suspects office with no consequences in this book, which as I’ve noted elsewhere, is unsurprising: Civil liberties are something that happen to other people.
Because integrity’s so important to him: Frank calls one of the suspects “a man of integrity” after talking to him. Of course, Frank, knows integrity: he’s sitting in the man’s chair, rifling through his files, after breaking into the man’s office — before he even tried to interview the guy.
But he’s better at law and integrity than Dixon is at football: Joe saves Fenton and Terrence by tackling them, taking them out of an M-80’s blast radius. Dixon claims he practiced his tackling as a football tackle. Um, no; tackles are offensive players who try to keep other players from being tackled. For the record, Joe has been a halfback in The Sinister Sign Post (#15) and safety, quarterback, and halfback in The Crisscross Shadow (#32). His football experience — if not his position — is mentioned in The Yellow Feather Mystery, (#33), The Clue in the Embers (#34), the revised Great Airport Mystery (#9), The Shattered Helmet (#52), The Mysterious Caravan (#54), The Vanishing Thieves (#66), Game Plan for Disaster (#76), and The Blackwing Puzzle (#82).
Bad promotion: Flame Broiled, Terrence’s movie, has a big party after the movie opens in multiplexes across the country. Wait — isn’t that backwards? The party should be before everyone knows how bad the movie is, right?
Opinions: A surprisingly good book. The characters act like real people instead of the Prozac Pod People who populate most Hardy Boys books. The boys act like real brothers, Fenton mocks Joe’s stupidity, and even Laura has a personality. One of the incidental characters, Caleb, even stands out as something other than a villain or source of information. The book has the sense to point out some of its flaws; for instance, Joe realizes the studio system is dead despite a studio head wanting to sign Terrence to a studio contract, but the exec claims he wants to revive it, and in Hollywood, that might be possible. A bombmaker makes use of the fact that wire colors are completely arbitrary, and those who disarm the bomb realize it as well. And when threatening a sleazy reporter, Frank taunts him with the lowest of all jobs: ghostwriting for kids books.
Of course, Joe manages to catch Terrence when Joe is dangling from a parachute and Terrence is nearing terminal velocity, so it’s not all hyperrealism.
Grade: A. I have to admit, I even laughed when a stuntman used “What the Evel Knievel!” as an exclamation. Although the “parental units” was a little dated, even when this came out.
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