Plot: Frank’s karate sensei is brutally attacked just before a classmate enters a vital karate competition. Meanwhile, the government hires Fenton to find out who’s robbing National Guard armories of weapons, because that wouldn’t be seen as something that would be the FBI’s and ATF’s top priorities.
“Borrowing” from the past: Frank actually studies karate. He’s used karate several times in the past; the first time was in The Clue of the Hissing Serpent (#53). He’s actually a green belt, but he whines about the instructor, who has dedicated his life to karate, being too dedicated to the sport. Joe is not a student, even though he’s used karate in the past as well; in fact, he used it before Frank did, starting in The Bombay Boomerang (#49). And he keeps using it, all the way up to A Will to Survive (#156). Of course, they both used karate the last time they dealt with Japanese businessmen in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60).
Frank doesn’t understand Japanese, making it a rare language that he doesn’t comprehend. Frank knows French in The Mysterious Caravan (#54, although his schoolboy French can’t keep up with a movie) and Passport to Danger (#179, where it’s much better); as for other language classes, he’s taking German and Spanish in The Jungle Pyramid (#56) and Latin in The Secret of the Old Mill (#3). Outside the classroom, he didn’t understand Spanish in in The Mark on the Door (#13) but rectified the deficiency by The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37) and The Stone Idol (#65), and he perfected his German in The Submarine Caper (#68).
This time, on Stereotype Sweepstakes …: Our first contestant is Mr. Franklin W. Dixon, whose hobbies include cranial trauma, bondage, and “scientific” criminology. Your challenge: We will give you a country, and in 154 pages, you have to work in as many stereotypes for that country as possible. Are you ready? Good! Your country is … Japan.
Karate … ninja … samurai (which are a type of ninja) … yakuza … sushi is disgusting … honor … samurai swords … karate comics … dragons … ruthless businessmen ...
Outstanding! We will accept “karate comics” for the more common “manga.” I’m impressed you even correctly misidentified samurai with ninjas instead of something completely different. You’ve won the right to go to our bonus round. All you have to do is identify the #1 stereotype about Japan that you have missed. Are you ready? Go!
Uhh … nunchaku?
Oh, sorry, no. The correct answer was “geisha.” Better luck next time. But we do have some fabulous parting gifts for you. You have won a year’s supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat (and not a Japanese stereotype, no no), and Turtle Wax. See you next time on Stereotype Sweepstakes!
Oh, Bayport: When in trouble, Frank tells Joe to dial the “police emergency number.” Since not even Frank would be so pedantically exact to call 911 by that long name, that must mean Bayport does not have 911 service. Which is strange; you would figure that if any city needed 911, it would be the crime-wracked city of Bayport. 911 had been in use for almost two decades by the time The Shadow Killers came out in 1988.
On the other hand, maybe the town’s ambitions and priorities lie elsewhere. The Bayport Times, serving a small city of 50,000, has a foreign correspondent who travels to the Far East to cover stories. That’s insane, especially when even that correspondent wouldn’t even categorize Bayport as a major port.
Model members of the modern middle class: Frank and Joe have their own rooms. This is the first time they have not shared a room, although the last time their shared room was mentioned was when it exploded in The Shattered Helmet (#52).
Mental giants, they’re not: The Hardys are rarely the sharpest scalpels in the crime kit because they don’t want to seem too far ahead of their readers. But in Shadow Killers, Frank and Joe get needled by a local karate thug without much of a comeback. (He calls them the “Hardly boys.” Hey, I smiled.) Frank does get him back with the old “stain on your gi” trick, though.
While driving at high speed, Frank gets hit with a chemical in his eyes; rather than hitting the brakes or keeping his hands on the wheel, Frank does neither, forcing a passenger to grab the wheel and stomp on his foot, which was over the brake pedal. And while Frank battles a ninja on top of a building, rather than blocking the door down and waiting for reinforcements, he knocks the ninja toward the edge, then charges and almost falls to his death when the ninja dodges. (That’s a total villain move, attacking a man and almost falling to one’s death.) The father of their friend-for-the-book, Tikko, calls them “dangerous clowns”; they have no response. And after almost being killed by a booby-trapped grenade, Frank suggests that they “maybe” should turn the grenade over to the police. Maybe?
Most of this is Frank, the level-headed one, seeming stupid; Joe gets in on the fun when he can’t figure out that the grenade might have been stolen in the National Guard heists Fenton is investigating. Also, while watching an armory for thieves, he sees the thieves; rather than alerting the authorities, as he’s been told to do, he enters the armory and tries to apprehend the three well-armed villains. He ends up getting arrested for his trouble; it’s a fitting punishment, but unfortunately, there’s no law against being stupid, so he’s released.
Not off brand: In the armory, Joe finds some C2. Although the plastic explosive most people are used to is C4 (also called Semtex), C2 does exist, and as you might guess from the numbering, it’s an earlier version of plastic explosive, invented during World War II. C4 is more stable than its predecessors, but from what I can tell, C2 is still occasionally used.
Not a suggestive line: “Tikko was new to all this. Joe could feel her tensing beside him … Silently, Joe grabbed her hand and squeezed. Tikko got the message.” If you have read any Hardy Boys books before, you have likely guessed that rather than describing a moment of human intimacy, what Mr. Dixon has given us here is Joe’s signal to Tikko that they will wait to fight the thugs who surround them rather than attack immediately. Really, if you thought differently, you have only yourself to blame.
Opinions: Not a high point for the series. The boys come off as pretty stupid; I don’t mean “stupid” in a “makes bad decisions” sort of way (although there were bad decisions), but stupid in a “Weren’t they paying attention to their own stories?” sort of way. It’s obvious who the villain is and what the plot is, but like I said, the Hardys can’t be too far ahead of their younger readers. Fortunately for the Hardys, the villains aren’t too much better, using elaborate deathtraps and smuggling plots when there were so many easier ways to work their evil.
The worst part, though, is the ethnic stereotyping. As pointed out above, it hits all the high points of what Americans understood Japanese culture to be — including believing ninjas are assassins rather than spies who occasionally kill — with the exception of geishas and kimonos. (The karate gi fill the latter niche, I think.) To be fair, I don’t think anyone gets called “Honorable Mr. Hardy,” but on the other hand, in the final climactic battle, the thugs fight Frank and Joe with samurai swords and nunchaku. I mean, honestly. They’ve stolen shipments of guns and they think swords and guns are a good idea? These are yakuza! They’re practical in their killing.
I am disappointed the Hardys didn’t get to go to Japan at the end. It’s one of the few major industrialized nations the Hardys haven’t been to, and it’s a fairly popular tourist destination for Americans in Asia. Given that the Hardys have been to Cuba, Easter Island, Antarctica, and space, it’s a little weird they haven’t been to Japan.
Grade: C. The stereotypes aren’t as actively offensive as they could be, and at least the action continues throughout.
Really loving your stuff.
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