“Borrowing” from the past: Beyond the Law really takes the time to fill in Ezra Collig’s past in a way that hadn't been done before. In the original canon, Collig’s life was a blank slate; he’s an old acquaintance and occasionally friend of the Hardys who professionally serves as anything from a hindrance to a lackey. Other than being afraid of bad publicity, being in his late 40s, and gaining the office of chief of police fewer than five years before, Collig has done little but sell Frank and Joe the supervan they use in the Casefiles and Digests. But Beyond the Law fills in the gaps. He dropped out of school to earn some money, joined a road construction crew, then made it onto the Millerton Police Department. After a brief term of service — he quit after exposing his partner’s graft — he returned to high school in Atlantic Heights, married his teacher Bea Cowan after graduation, and then joined the force in Bayport, rising all the way to the top. Bea passed away shortly before the beginning of Beyond the Law.
Collig also reminisces about how the increasing awareness of the legal rights of criminals has put a crimp in crimefighting. It’s amusing to hear Collig talk about how gunning a man down used to get you medals and a promotion but now gets you fired or that whacking suspected thieves on the calves was just prudent; it’s somewhat worrying to hear Collig complain about having to have sufficient cause to search a suspect, what with the Constitution and whatnot. Although on one hand this is a reminder that the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there — it’s also a reminder that the Hardy Boys canon, while ostensibly less violent than the Casefiles, had a lot of dodgy rights stuff going on within them that had nothing to do with racism. It’s also clear that the Hardy Boys can ignore the constitutional rights thing, as long as they don’t kill people or whack them in the calves.
Joe repairs the van, adjusting its timing. Joe has done a lot of mechanical work over the years, repairing the roadster and his motorcycle with his brother in While the Clock Ticked (#11), souping up a dirt bike in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60), and tuning up the car in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). In A Figure in Hiding (#16), it’s said he liked “nothing more than a mechanical problem”; in The Crimson Flame (#77), the narration mentions he and his brother often work on their car.
Fenton’s sartorial advice for the mystery: “Wear a good suit, and you’re bound to get mud, crud, or blood on it. Only cops who stay in offices can dress up for the job.” For more of his pearls of wisdom, see Last Laugh (Casefiles #42).
Frank and Joe give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The boys have always been good at first aid, and both have given mouth to mouth before: Joe in The Secret of Pirate’s Hill (#36) and The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), Frank in The Clue in the Embers (#35), The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), and The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48). Probably the most challenging first-aid work that either has ever done was in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), during which Frank attended the victims of a train derailment.
Where is Bayport?: After Frank and Joe have a few sticks of dynamite lobbed at them while on the interstate on their way back to Bayport, Joe asks, “Hey, you’re not going to try to catch the Mad Bomber of Route I-forty-nine, are you?” Although I don’t know what Route I-49 could mean other than Interstate 49, Bayport is nowhere near that road. I-49 runs between I-10 in Lafayette and I-20 in Shreveport, entirely within the state of Louisiana.
When Joe looks for Millerton on the map, he notes that it’s as far away from Bayport as one can get and still stay in the same state. Later, when the boys head to Millerton, the narration says it took a couple of hours. That leaves New York and Connecticut out of the running for Bayport (at least for this book); from New York City to Buffalo is more than six hours, and nothing in Connecticut is even close to being two hours from anything else in Connecticut (traffic permitting). But two hours works out about right for New Jersey; both the southeast and southwest corners of the state are about two and a half hours from the New Jersey part of the New York metropolitan area. If you move away from New York, say to Long Branch, Keansburg, or Asbury Park, the time works out about right.
Idiot’s Affairs: Obviously, when the scandal about what Collig might have done in Millerton comes out, the publicity conscious Bayport PD kicks him to the curb and starts their own Internal Affairs investigation. Why they do this is beyond me; the allegations were more than a quarter century earlier, and it has nothing to do with Bayport. (The Millerton PD seems uninterested in the allegations.) The IA detectives turn up nothing, of course; it takes two motivated teenagers to get something done. Like notice that a bunch of cops quit at about the same time as Collig. Frank and Joe don’t actually talk to any of these cops, but hey, they took the first step.
The new top of the police bureaucracy is portrayed as the villains in this book, but it’s hard to dispute two of their points: Kid vigilantes have no business in modern crime control, and if the entire city government was corrupt, it’s a reasonable assumption that Collig or someone on his force was also corrupt. Of course the investigation is shoddy and wrongheaded, but they at least started from the right point.
The March of Technology: While using the Millerton Police Department’s equipment, Frank finds their link to state databases is a “nearly obsolete computer.” I (barely) remember computers in 1991, and I’m having trouble figuring out what could be both nearly obsolete in 1991 and could still uplink with the state servers. A TRS-80? An Apple II?
When Frank and Joe announce on live radio they are going to Millerton to investigate the allegations against Collig, nearly everyone seems to hear the news. In a town with its own TV station, would everyone really be listening to the radio for an update on the Collig “corruption” case?
When Frank and Joe go with Callie to visit her friend Liz at the Bayport Times, they find her working on a typewriter. When I worked at newspapers, a half decade later at newspapers not much bigger than the Times, no one used typewriters — everything was computerized, although sometimes clunkily. But in 1991 … is Liz’s typewriter an anachronism, or is it a possibility? I don’t know.
I’ll take Forced Metaphors for $400, Alex: In a bit of deathless prose, Frank muses, “They’ll figure Collig left Millerton under a cloud … I just hope that cloud doesn’t rain on the chief’s parade.”
The Eagle: According to Beyond the Law, Bayport’s TV station is WBPT. There is, of course, no television station with that call sign; however, since 2001 it has been the call sign of a radio station in central Alabama: 106.9, the Eagle — “Birmingham’s home for classic hits.” When Beyond the Law came out, the station was WBMH, a country station. That iteration lasted about a year.
Modesty will get you nowhere: Frank mentally complains about the media always using the phrase “famous private detective” to describe Fenton. I know it must get monotonous — Fenton might as well change his name to Famous Private Detective Fenton Hardy, FPDF Hardy for short — but he is a famous private detective. Again, Frank and Joe have been using his name across the country as a get-out-of-logic-free card for years.
Separation of Frank and Joe, Part II: Like in Panic on Gull Island, Joe has a friend independent of Frank. Unlike in Gull Island, this cryptozoological specimen has a name: Johnny Berridge, a cameraman at WBPT. Berridge is obviously not a chum, which means he’s a … a … (I can hardly bear to say it) … a source.
In the old days, of course, the Hardys didn’t have sources — at least not consistent ones. They would come to town, pump you dry of information, and go about their business, never to see you again. If you were lucky, you might get to be a chum for a book, serving as extra manpower or as a sort of guide. But a consistent source? That suggests the Hardys have some sort of plan about their sleuthing, and that’s just un-Hardylike. On the other hand, it probably fits the Casefiles better.
Taking the wrong notes from Collig: After replacing Collig, acting chief Parker Lawrence tells Frank and Joe they are “finished on this case”; like Collig in Power Play (Casefiles #50), he forgets Frank and Joe have no real standing to be on the case, so there isn’t really a “case” where they are concerned, and they don’t work for him, so it’s not like he has the power to order them off the case. Threaten them with arrest, yes; order them like a boss, no.
Yee-haw!: This Dixon notes Joe uses the high beams on the way to the Morton farm. This is not noteworthy. If you live on or travel to a farm at night, chances are you will frequently get to use the high beams.
Don’t give Joe any ideas: After Collig tells Frank and Joe that (in a non-creepy way) he married his high school teacher, Joe muses that it’s “one way to get good grades.” Joe, I know you’re single, what with Iola being reduced to particles, and the book learnin’ is sometimes a challenge, but there are laws against that sort of thing. I know you don’t care about laws when they apply to you, but they’re there for your protection. Trust me. The short-term gain isn’t worth it.
Now, your brother — he’s 18. He can do what he wants.
Opinions: This is the book that should have been #50 for the Casefiles. It uses the series’ continuity, referring to Frank and Joe’s work in See No Evil (Casefiles #8) as the impetus for the anti-corruption drive that ends up with the reform candidates seeking to drive out Collig. It also features Collig, a long-time supporting character. It’s also nice to see Ezra Collig’s backstory get fleshed out, although a random Casefile is an odd place for that to happen.
As for the mystery itself … Well, it’s better than Power Play, but that’s not saying very much. The reform party’s attempts to dig up dirt on Collig are feeble — actually, calling it feeble is an insult to all the feeble people out there, especially the feeble minded. Forget the technology of the computer, which Frank understands but the Internal Affairs cops do not; they don’t quite get the combination of telephones and personnel records. Or, when it comes down to it, talking, something Frank and Joe mastered quickly. Frank and Joe even found the right guy to talk to immediately.
Also: Tossing dynamite at the Hardys while both are driving down the interstate. I can’t tell if that’s completely mental or completely awesome, but either way, it has no part in a Hardy Boys book, and it’s quite telling that Frank and Joe drive away from the bombing as quickly as possible so that they don’t get caught up in the mentalness / awesomeness or the justice.
Grade: C. When you balance the highs and the lows, it’s completely average.
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