Friday, November 21, 2014

Cross-Country Crime (#134)

Cross-Country Crime coverPlot: Frank and Joe interrupt their ski vacation through the Canadian Rockies to help a man wrongfully accused of robbing a bank.

“Borrowing” from the past: It’s November! Specifically, it’s a week-long Thanksgiving vacation for Frank and Joe. Now, few of the books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate specifically take place around this time of year — The Sinister Sign Post is set in the fall, the revised Short Wave Mystery probably happens in November, and Game Plan for Disaster occurs about the time in November when college football seasons were wrapping up their regular seasons in 1982. But! The boys duck out on their family during the Christmas holidays in The Mystery of Cabin Island, spending the actual holiday and much of the break on Cabin Island …

You know what? I’m going to change the format, because a) it’s my blog, and b) no one’s reading it anyway. Might as well try to pander to a different demographic, like elementary school students trying to cheat on book reports.

So, anyway, the second page tells us Frank and Joe are spending Thanksgiving in the Canadian Rockies, away from their friends and family. That will be the last time Thanksgiving is mentioned in the book. Since Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, that makes sense, but on the other hand, why set the story during Thanksgiving if you’re not going to reference it? Frank and Joe don’t call home to wish their parents a happy Thanksgiving, and they don’t mention the holiday or any of the trappings when they talk to Con Riley, the only other American mentioned in the book.

Anyway, Frank and Joe are cross-country skiing across Alberta, from Banff to Lake Louise, a trip that’s about 35 miles through the Rockies. Frank is looking forward to some downhill skiing at the end of the trip, while Joe wants to do some snowboarding, “hoping to get in some action” (3). While getting breakfast in the real town of Evergreen, the local sheriff paws through their packs. The trust company (Canadian for “bank,” according to the book) has just been robbed, and the sheriff has to clear the boys. Usually, this would be a cue for the brothers to join in the investigation, but Frank insists they have a “date with nature” (8). Don’t worry: it’ll be just as chaste as all their other dates. You don’t have to worry about Joe doing something inappropriate with a maple tree or anything.

Outside of Evergreen, a blizzard hits. Frank’s not worried; according to him, it’s not cold enough for hypothermia. On the other hand, “you never know” (9), which isn’t what you want to hear your nature expert say. Frank and Joe stumble across Mitch Taylor, who has wrapped his snowmobile around a tree. Mitch is unconscious, and when the boys rouse him, they find he’s suffering from memory loss. Amnesia, the boys diagnose, although they’re confident Mitch doesn’t have a concussion. Except loss of consciousness and memory problems are two major symptoms of a concussion. (It turns out Mitch has been lying in the snow for an hour or so before the Hardys reach him. No one is concerned about that — not cold enough for hypothermia, remember.)

In any event, Frank and Joe get Mitch to his cabin and accept his offer of hospitality while the blizzard passes. A radio station, WBNF, broadcasts a description of the bank robber that looks a lot like Mitch. (Note: Canadian radio station call letters begin with “C.”) Frank and Joe are suspicious of Mitch at first but uncertain of the etiquette of accusing one’s host of bank robbery and mollified by his weak excuses, they decide not to worry about it. The next morning, the boys take advantage of Mitch’s hospitality to get in some snow sports before leaving Evergreen behind. No mystery for these boys, nosiree! They’re all about winter sports. “Whoooee,” Joe enthuses as he snowboards down the hill behind Mitch’s cabin — until he’s swallowed up by an avalanche. Frank and Mitch dig him out of the snow, but that makes the book’s second cliché (after “amnesia). If there’s a bear attack, they’ll hit the cliché hat trick.

This rescue guilts the brothers into helping clear Mitch. That they were ready to abandon the man in their pursuit of pleasure doesn’t speak well of them, but there’s still time in the book to find someone more unlikeable. They grill the sheriff when he comes to arrest Mitch, but he refuses to say anything: “I’m might be backwoods, but I’m not stupid” (28). If you’re not stupid, what are you doing in a Hardy Boys book? But then he answers the boys’ questions about the witness who fingered Mitch and about the bank’s security, so maybe he belongs here after all.

Two alternate suspects raise their heads:

• George Dupuy, who owns the local lumber company. Mitch used to work for him, but Dupuy fired him when Mitch ratted him out for unscrupulous logging practices. Now Dupuy is in debt and needs the money; framing Mitch might be an extra bonus.
• Rob Rubel, who’s suddenly flashing money around Evergreen despite being insolvent the week before. He also doesn’t like Frank and Joe, threatening Joe on their first meeting and calling him “Joey boy” before forcing him off the slopes on a subsequent meeting. He claims his grandfather willed him the money, but Frank and Joe don’t take that explanation seriously.

Somehow, neither Frank nor Joe suspects Justin Greeley, the guy who starts a conversation with the non-standard use of “Word up?,” or Bill Forman, the guy who tells Dupuy, his boss, “Go jump in a hole” when Dupuy tells him to actually do some work. Oh, the two guys are always around, and Justin’s the person who put Mitch at the scene of the crime, and they’re two of only three people who know the Hardys are going to do a little constructive B&E at Dupuy’s, an adventure that ends with Frank and Joe being shot at. But surely these two couldn't be responsible! Frank and Joe don’t even rule them out, actually. It never crosses their mind that Justin and Bill could be the thieves.

They are, of course. That’s the way these books work.

They also don’t suspect Tom Gregory, a 12-year-old who calls himself Hot Doggy Dog. (The author evidently has heard of Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose first album had been released two years before Cross-Country Crime was published, but didn’t know that Snoop spelled the last part of his name D-O-double G.) HDD also knew Frank and Joe were going to try to break into Dupuy’s safe, but he gives everyone motorized snowboards, which are surprisingly real things.

While snowboarding with Joe, HDD, Bill, and Justin, Frank scores the cliché hat trick, encountering a brown bear. Although Frank’s convinced standing still is the best course, the boys drive him off grouping together and shouting, appearing to be an even bigger predator. Amusingly, despite the trick’s success, they still argue what the best tactic is against bears.

Frank and Joe solve the mystery, although you have to worry about their tactics. In addition to breaking into Dupuy’s office and safe, the boys rifle Rubel’s apartment and wander into the burgled bank and pick locks there as well. (Why did Frank and Joe bring their lock picks on a ski trip? Especially since thieves’ tools are illegal in many jurisdictions.) B&E is a crime, no matter the reason, and interfering with a crime scene should have gotten them arrested. They also pilfer $100 from Rubel’s apartment to have it checked against the stolen money. When Frank and Joe finally clear Mitch, Joe’s peeved the sheriff is taking credit for what they uncovered. The boy should be happy the sheriff is choosing to overlook the details of their investigation. At the very least, he would have been justified to deport them.

But Frank and Joe aren’t forthcoming either. They don’t share their findings with the sheriff, although that’s SOP for the boys. When they are chased by their attackers at Dupuy’s office toward Evergreen, neither Hardy considers getting help in the town; they are more concerned with blowing through town and losing their pursuer in the woods. Later, they convince the sheriff to let Mitch out so that they can retrace his steps on the morning of the robbery, but Joe thinks the sheriff will let them wander about, unsupervised.

The walkthrough doesn’t really reveal anything new, but it does inspire everyone to look at Justin’s identification of Mitch more closely. They don’t get to expose his lie because he and Bill are already fleeing the jurisdiction. Frank, Joe, and Hot Lion catch up with the thieves, but shockingly, taking a 12-year-old to apprehend bank robbers is not the best plan, and all three are captured. Bill and Justin lift off in a stolen helicopter, but Frank and Joe grab onto the chopper’s skids as it lifts off. Justin can’t shake them off, and Bill can’t shoot them off, so they put the helicopter into a dive and ditch it. Everyone jumps into the snow from about 50 feet, and only Justin is injured.

Let’s stop for a moment. Fifty feet fall, from a helicopter probably going at least 100 miles per hour. Even into snow, that’s going to be a hell of a stop. But for Frank and Joe, it’s only a “bone-jarring thud” (142), and their forward momentum is immediately extinguished. Justin breaks a leg, and he’s the worst off.

With Justin immobilized, Frank and Joe pursue Bill on their motorized snowboards and catch him before he can jump into a chasm, a la Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. After turning the criminals in to the sheriff, Frank, Joe, Hot D-O-single G, and Mitch are ready to unwind — no more snowboarding, no more skiing, no more mysteries. They plan to return to Hot Doggy Dog’s house, watch a movie, eat popcorn, and … wait, what?

“Did I tell you we have a hot tub?” Tom asked the Hardys.
“Now this is my idea of a hard-core vacation,” Joe said.

If Tom were older, I would tell readers to cue the porn soundtrack there and let their imaginations take over. As it is, I have no idea what to tell you.

Grade: C-. A forgettable book, although it reminds me of the slightly better Open Season (Casefiles #59). At least in that one the rural mountain sheriff has the decency to point out the felonies the Hardys commit during their “investigation.”

Friday, November 14, 2014

Crime in the Kennel (#133)

Crime in the Kennel coverPlot: When a dog at the pet hotel is kidnapped while Iola is on duty, she is fired, and Frank and Joe hunt for the dog. (Mostly to find the dog. Her boss was kind of a jerk.)

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much, really. Gertrude’s pie is lemon this time; Gertrude made a lemon meringue pie in The Secret Panel (#25) and The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27). Frank uses the Sleuth to get into position for a trap; the boys don’t often use their motorboat in the digests. When discussing unrealistic career aspirations with a waitress, Joe jokes Frank “was supposed to pilot the next space shuttle” (33). Frank and Joe were astronauts in The Skyfire Puzzle (#85), although neither of the boys were pilots. Frank did get to threaten to space a man, though. That has to be a career highlight, although not one you can joke about to gain the confidence of a potential source.

Oh! Frank and Joe also have cargo almost fall on their heads when they visit the waterfront. This happens many, many times in the original canon — it’s a cliché, like storms when they are on Barmet Bay and the boys’ case dovetailing with Fenton’s and the decaying Bayport waterfront. The latter also appears here; the boys visit the waterfront throughout the canon, although it was best described in The Melted Coins: “Bayport’s waterfront is a picturesque but squalid part of the city. The streets were dark and crooked, crowded with second-hand stores, cheap hotels, and shabby restaurants. There was an unpleasant odor … in the air” (93).

In our last episode, which no one saw: Iola’s former co-worker, Dana Bailey, gushes about reading about Frank and Joe catching thieves at the fairground. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear in any of the immediately previous books. Does anyone know if this appeared in one of the digests? Or was this made up to give Frank and Joe some cheap heat?

All-American boys: If you ever have thought Frank and Joe were absurdly competent, Crime in the Kennel does its best to disabuse you of that idea. The boys are continually beaten and humiliated by their opponents. They leave their van unlocked, and a suspect rifles through their stuff and takes the only bit of evidence they had. While investigating a pet store during working hours, Joe is buried under a pile of bagged dog food. When Frank and Joe break into the pet store that night to look at the store’s records, both are bopped over the head with a mop handle, then stuffed into large dog carriers. There’s so much wrong with that sentence: the breaking and entering, the single blow to the head with a mop handle knocking them out … they deserve to be locked in dog carriers. Frankly, they deserved to be locked in dog carriers and not let out until the staff arrived the next morning, but they manage to escape their impromptu prisons.

Later in the book, both boys are maced by a suspect. After Iola is kidnapped, Joe is chloroformed by her kidnapper and hauled away. Joe spends most of the rest of the book trying to escape his bonds and getting beat up by the kidnapper once he does break free. Joe is humiliated in Kennel, and who does the humiliating? An animal technician with no particular martial arts prowess.

Frank is at a loss against a female opponent. He knocks a paintball gun from her hands, but she slugs him, then bites him and easily regains the gun. On the other hand, Frank makes up for this and getting mop-handled by taking a paintball at point-blank range between the eyes without flinching. That’s going to sting like a mother — that’s going to sting real bad, man. But Frank just wipes the paint away and continues like it’s nothing.

Perhaps their martial arts skills are degenerating. At one point, Frank uses a “partial karate stance” (17). What the heck is that? Do you learn that when you get your half-green belt?

Iola!: I’ve gone over Iola’s fiery, occasionally mercurial, temper before, but she doesn’t display much of that in this book. She complains at the injustice of getting fired, but she doesn’t give her boss any of the heat she would have given to Joe. I suppose dealing with an adult is a different dynamic. After Frank and Joe agree to find the missing dog, Iola immediately takes off for Boston with her mother and doesn’t return until more than halfway through the book. Frank and Joe immediately allow her to deliver the ransom for a different dog; she’s immediately abducted — the abductor says it’s because she tried to remove his mask, but we don’t actually see her try to do that — and spends most of the book tied up or cowering.

Joe does call her a “strong person” (23), though, and he fears her wrath when he and Frank lose the dog they were supposed to be dogsitting for her. (She had agreed to look after the dog, but when she got a chance to go to Boston, she fobbed the dog off on the brothers.) His fear is unfounded, though; she doesn’t attack Joe when she finds out, even though he starts his explanation with “We can explain” (95). (Nothing positive has ever followed “We can explain” in the history of the human race, so obviously Iola can restrain her temper when she wants to.) Her next question was which of the suspects had stolen the dog; perhaps she had merely shifted her anger to a more appropriate target.

Iola does get back at her ex-boss, though. When she has been cleared and Dana has been arrested, she’s offered her job back. She says, “I’ll think about it” (147).

All the news that’s fit to print: The newspaper this time is the Banner. The Banner appeared in The Great Airport Mystery (#9). The Times is Bayport’s most popular paper, appearing in thirteen books (counting both original and revised books).

You know that movie, starring that guy who was on that show: Midway through the book, Frank and Joe are followed by a red pickup, driven by someone wearing a mask. Frank says, “He looks familiar … like that movie character, the green one with the huge teeth and superpowers” (75). The movie Frank is so strenuously avoiding mentioning is The Mask, starring Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz (her first acting role). The Mask was released in 1994, one year before Kennel was published.

It’s so hard to tell the difference, sometimes: Frank believes the dognapper is an amateur because “he hasn’t done anything really serious. … Mostly he’s given us headaches” (79). While I appreciate Frank’s appraisal — he ends up being right, after all — those amateurs give him and his brother a thorough working over. In the canon, the professional criminals generally don’t give the boys two beatings and a chemical attack and a humiliation like the criminals in Kennel.

On the other hand, the criminals aren’t the brightest. They steal the dog Frank and Joe are looking after with the expectation that this act will make them give up the investigation. Perhaps, if they issued an ultimatum or threat — give up now or we kill the dog — it would have worked. But they don’t contact Frank and Joe, so of course the brothers are going to continue looking for the animal. Later on, one of the dognappers attempts a semi-glutteal ransom for the dog, but that goes poorly as well. Also, one of the dognappers says, after being captured, that Frank and Joe don’t have any real evidence against them; unfortunately, Frank had just rescued Joe and Iola from being kidnapped, and as Frank points out, their testimony about what happened is likely to be more than enough to send both of them to prison.

We’re living in the future! (‘90s edition): Frank manages to gain the phone number of the dognapper by using a “caller ID box” (98) when the dognapper calls in a ransom demand, but Frank needs to call the telephone operator to get the number’s location.

Warehouse dog: As shown on the cover, a dog aggressively gets near Frank. In this case, it’s a pit bull terrier. Although Frank and Joe were frequently attacked by dogs, they never ran into pit bulls in the original canon. Doberman pinschers and German shepherds were the most common.

Comments: This is not the best-written digest. I could be charitable and say it seems to be geared for a lower reading level than other digests, but I’m not sure that was what the writer and editorial staff were aiming at. The first two paragraphs of Kennel do not sound as if they were professionally written, and although the book improves from there, the prose never really overcomes the shaky start of passages like, “Iola Morton was Joe’s girlfriend. If Iola was in trouble, he had to help her” (1).

The book does have a couple of genuinely touching moments. After Joe finds Iola after they had both been kidnapped, he asks her if she’s all right; she replies, “Now that you’ve found me” (115). It’s not the most original, but it feels genuine because the characters so rarely express that sort of idea. The criminals are also a boyfriend / girlfriend team, with the girlfriend as a reluctant criminal: “After Price fired you, Mike, didn’t I tell you I would stick by you? … You were after some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to be a criminal, but I didn’t want to lose you either. So I went along” (140). The speech manages to generate some sympathy for the poor woman, despite her terrible taste in men.

Grade: C-. I would not want to read another book about the thoroughly average Hardy Boys, but I admit, locking them in the pet carriers was a stroke of genius.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Maximum Challenge (#132)

Maximum Challenge coverPlot: Frank, Joe, and four of their friends compete on the TV show Maximum Challenge when it comes to Bayport; at the same time, a rash of burglaries also hit Bayport.

“Borrowing” from the past: Hurd Applegate calls the Hardy home in the middle of the night, wanting the family to look for his stolen coin collection. The Hardys have helped Hurd before, recovering his stolen jewels and bonds in The Tower Treasure (#1) and his lost stamps in While the Clock Ticked (#11). He turned into a staunch ally of the Hardys, even helping bail them out of jail in The Great Airport Mystery (#9) after they were arrested for robbing the mail. Frank’s down on Hurd in Maximum Challenge, calling the old man “weird” (20). Frank also says, “We managed to nail the last few people who ripped him off” (20), alluding to The Tower Treasure, While the Clock Ticked, and perhaps The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100), in which Frank, Joe, and Chet keep Hurd from being double-crossed by the people digging up the buried treasure on an island Hurd owns.

Joe says Bayport General Hospital is the best in the city. Bayport General appeared in A Figure in Hiding (#16), The Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28), and Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). For some reason, though, no one trusts their ambulance; the Hardys transport a man with a broken clavicle to the hospital in their van instead of waiting for the ambulance. Of course, the injured man had to wait for them to change their clothes before they took him to Bayport General, but the important thing is that he didn’t have to ride in an ambulance.

Bayport’s newspaper in Maximum Challenge is the Times, which is the most common paper in the original canon. Fans of the Banner, Star, Press, and News will no doubt be disappointed.

The show: Maximum Challenge is based on the show American Gladiators, a syndicated 1989-1996 show in which amateurs competed against each other and the show’s cast of athletes in physical challenges. The show had several different events, such as an obstacle course (called “the Eliminator”), jousting with padded sticks on raised platforms, a maze, and a climbing wall. All these events, with some modifications, were used in Maximum Challenge.

Maximum Challenge’s shooting schedule is extremely inefficient, though. Each of the five competitions of Bayporters vs. Maximum Challenge’s Champions are held on separate nights. This is grossly inefficient for a TV show. To lower production costs, TV shows will film as much as they can in one day — Jeopardy!, for instance, films five episodes per day. Tearing down and reconstructing Maximum Challenge’s obstacle courses makes that more difficult, but the show could easily have fit the taping into two nights. That way, they wouldn’t have to pay rent on the venue or pay per diems and travel expenses for the crew for an entire week.

Maximum Challenge also stole from the kid’s game show Double Dare, which aired on Nickelodeon from 1986 to 1992. Double Dare combined trivia questions with “physical challenges.” Maximum Challenge had no trivia, but it did have “gloop,” a green, slimy concoction that competitors splashed into when they fell from heights. “Gak” was a similar disgusting substance that figured into many of Double Dare’s physical challenges.

Iola!: In the original canon, it’s hard to say what the boys see in their favorite dates. Neither Iola nor Callie has much of a personality, other than being generally pleasant and absurdly agreeable. Both are pretty; I suppose that’s more than enough for most teenage boys. Callie was valedictorian of their high-school class in The Great Airport Mystery (#9), so Frank may have an appreciation of her intelligence that explains why he’s attracted to her. Iola … well, she “understood the finer points of baseball” (34), according to The Wailing Siren Mystery (#30), which Joe regarded as a plus. Joe also called her a “capable sleuthing assistant” (15) in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34), but he rarely allowed her to help with mysteries.

We’ve gotten a better idea of what Joe might see in Iola in other digests. In Past and Present Danger (#166), Iola seems to have temper that leads her to give Joe a couple of “playful” punches. The violence is alluded to in Trouble in Warp Space (#172) as well. In Maximum Challenge, Iola is still fiery, but her emotions are all over the place.

The best description of her is “mercurial.” At the beginning of the book, she kisses Joe when their team wins a spot on Maximum Challenge. A kiss is pretty intense for Joe and Iola, but ten pages later, she was “glaring … hard at Joe” (11) after a practical joke is played on them by the Maximum Challenge crew. She complains that it’s unfair that the Maximum Challenge team has more experience than she and her team do, which seems to miss the point of the show. Before one of the competitions, she engages in a little lighthearted gunplay, pointing a loaded prop gun at her teammates and pouting when it’s taken from her. When she learns the gun had a bullet under the hammer, she faints. Later, Joe accuses her of baying for an opponent’s blood. Before the final competition, she complains when Frank’s nervous and can’t control the volume of his voice.

I’m not saying any of these actions are unbelievable, nor are they unbelievable when taken together. What I’m saying is that no one else is allowed to swing between emotions and criticize their friends like Iola does. I’m also not saying we should blame Iola; as I mentioned in >Past and Present Danger, Joe may have driven her to it. In Maximum Challenge, he mentions that he’s “hugged one or two girls” in his life (106). I doubt Joe’s stopped at hugging, though … he probably moved on to the dreaded K-I-S-S-I-N-G after that.

Speaking of euphemisms … : A heckler — later revealed as one of the pros the Hardys’ team will be competing against — “pointed a mocking finger” at them. I’ve never heard of the middle finger described as the mocking figure before, but live and learn, I always say.

Near current events!: After Iola’s shocking lack of gun safety — not unlike her brother’s in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8) — Joe mentions a movie where a live round ended up in a gun and killed the star. Joe is probably referring to The Crow, in which a jury-rigged round accidentally lodged in the barrel of a revolver and was later launched at star Brandon Lee when a blank round was fired.

Bayport is … : The team wins the Maximum Challenge competition for “New York area” groups (2). That doesn’t narrow it down much, but it’s another data point.

I don’t think that’s how it works: A woman tells Frank and Joe she had received a gymnastics scholarship to a school she couldn't afford. Usually, this is good news; scholarships pay for college educations, so the question of whether she could afford the college becomes moot. She continues her story as if this meant she couldn't attend the school. Either she meant the scholarship was partial, not covering some aspect of the college experience (room and board is most likely), or NCAA regulations prevented her from making the money necessary for incidental expenses.

In case you were wondering: Frank uses a “five-cell flash” when staking out a jewelry store. That’s a flashlight that requires five batteries — probably D batteries, in this case — to work. As you might imagine from anything using that much battery power, it’s pretty bright.

In the future: After catching the cat burglar, a woman who was blackmailed into robbing local merchants, Joe says he doubts he will ever be a cop — evidently the frisson between ethics and law is too much for him. On the other hand, he doesn’t recognize one of the Maximum Challenge athletes at the beginning of the book because he is wearing a disguise — a raincoat — so maybe he’s looking for a job that will give him a little more leeway.

Other people depend on you, you know: Frank and Joe actually decide not to investigate the burglaries at first so they can be properly prepared for the competition. A wise choice; with four teammates who would suffer if Frank and Joe were unprepared, it would be selfish for them to spend the night running about looking for a cat burglar. I mean, of course they are eventually going to get drawn into the mystery, but that’s because it’s part of the series conceit.

A new front in the war on language: With this book, I’ve given up complaining about the use of “bro” in these books. I hold out hope, though, that “dude,” which Joe uses once, will not be repeated.

Comments: Although the idea of Frank and Joe (and their friends) excelling at yet another thing and increasing their fame beyond all rational bounds is absurd, the actual mechanics of Maximum Challenge are occasionally exciting. The first competition, which combines rock climbing with sniping, is a nice twist, and the maze challenge, which is portrayed as much as problem solving as athletic competition, is genuinely exciting. Also, it gives Phil Cohen a chance to shine, which is nice. The other competitions are less original and exciting, but they are solidly based on American Gladiators, so I can’t complain. I preferred the reality show in Warehouse Rumble (#183), although that’s because the post-apocalyptic trappings of the obstacle courses gave them a little extra oomph.

The kids all act like normal teenagers. I mentioned Iola before, but Biff thinks he can win a contest of strength with a professional athlete and has no idea how absurd that is. The Hardys and their friends endure a great deal of ribbing at school after Maximum Challenge plays an on-air prank on them, and even Aunt Gertrude gives them guff. I think the most realistic moment of the book — perhaps the entire canon — is when one of Iola’s friends laments her defeat in the rock-climbing competition. Iola had an early lead but was overtaken by her professional opponent, and her friend later says, “We were rooting for you guys … Iola did so well at first” (35; emphasis mine). Everyone expects things to keep going the way they start, no matter how much the odds are against it.

The criminal mastermind’s plan itself is stupid. Frank says, “Working for a traveling show would be a great cover for a burglar” (85), which is true — except that the high-profile burglaries could easily be matched to the show’s stops. Which the Bayport police do. The mastermind has insulated himself from the actual thief, so it’s possible he doesn’t care about that. However, he has the thief make the final drop of the stolen goods on the Maximum Challenge set, which is stupid. It’s where everyone can see you! And you might be filmed picking up stolen goods!

Grade: B.

Friday, October 31, 2014

The Hardy Boys Ghost Stories

It was a long-drawn-out, moaning sound that rose in volume to a veritable shriek, indescribably terrifying.
“Ghosts!” clamored Chet.
“There aren’t any such things!” snorted Joe.
— The Mystery of Cabin Island (original text), p. 69

The Hardy Boys Ghost Stories coverThe Hardy Boys Ghost Stories is a book that should not exist.

The Hardy Boys series is built upon rationality and coincidence. Frank and Joe follow the form of detective stories, gathering evidence to prove someone has committed a crime and logically building a case against that suspect. (The coincidences are unconnected to the rationality, except inasmuch as it is the primary method by which the boys gain their clues and proofs.)

Although ghost stories are nothing if not a series of improbable events piled atop each other, they have little of the rational about them. Or I suppose they have their own rationality — Event A happens, which causes, as a repercussion, Event B. It doesn’t matter that Event B is impossible and that no one in the history of humankind has ever perpetrated Event A. The story insists that they happened that way, and we suspend our rationality for a moment to enjoy the atmosphere and danger presented by the ghost story.

The Hardy Boys Ghost Stories has six ghost stories in its 137 pages. None of them are that enjoyable.

Here are the six stories, from least spooky to the most:

6) “Phantom Ship.” Frank and Joe are on the Atlantic, and a storm is rolling in. Of course it is; Frank and Joe long ago angered the storm god who watches over Bayport, and seeing the boys on the ocean, he must punish them. He has also smited the Sleuth, which mysteriously stops working, and their radio. Or maybe he has clouded their heads so that they can’t see what’s wrong; that would explain the rest of the story.

Frank and Joe are given sanctuary aboard the Samoa Queen, but only after boarding do the boys realize they are on a ghost ship: a mid-19th century whaler headed for the Pacific. The frightening thing about a ghost ship is the potential for sailing on it forever and being damned for all eternity. That possibility isn’t brought up by either the narrator or the characters, though. So what is the terror of the Samoa Queen?

All the whalers (but one) are mean to Frank and Joe. They don’t like the Hardys, and the captain doesn’t listen to them. (Still, Frank and Joe manage to show their seamanship is better than some of the ghosts. I suppose you get sloppy after a century at sea, no matter how dedicated you are.) Truly, it’s a masterpiece of terror.

Frank and Joe are thrown overboard and land in the Sleuth instead of the open sea. Somehow, Frank and Joe credit their survival to another ghost — one the ghost sailors couldn't see — who kept pointing for them to jump overboard, even though they ignored it. I suppose believing in Ghost Squared (or Super Ghost) makes as much sense as anything else in this story.

On the plus side, Frank and Joe are prepared to use karate against ghost sailors.

5) “The Haunted Castle.” Frank and Joe visit a castle in Scotland, just like they did in The Secret Agent on Flight 101. In this case, Fenton has sent them to help Lord MacElphin deal with a ghost infestation.

The castle is haunted by the first Lord MacElphin, a 17-century pirate named Rollo who bought his lordship with his pirate booty and was generally cruel to everyone. That’s a good starting place, but the author forgot to make his ghost frightening. Sure, he pops up in the dungeon nightly (with an extra matinee on Sundays) and shakes his chains throughout the castle, but he doesn’t do anything threatening. He just shows up and sings sea chanties. I can see wanting to exorcise anyone, living or dead, who sings songs of the sea at any time of day, but it’s not frightening. It’s annoying.

The story also mentions Rollo MacElphin stole the local witches’ meeting grounds; after reading that, it will surprise no one that Mrs. Crone, the housekeeper, is also the leader of the local witches. How does she lead them? Well, she leads them in this frightening chant: “We are witches … We know the magic spells and will bring the powers of darkness down on anyone who tries to cross us!” She’s also trying to keep the current Lord MacElphin from selling the castle so the witches can get their pagan-holy ground back, so she made Rollo visible. (He’s always been in the castle, due to a witches’ curse, but he was invisible.)

Frank and Joe release Rollo from the curse by talking to him twice, being American, and most importantly being named “Hardy.” (The curse can be lifted when “a hardy pair guards the dungeon door.” Convenient!) Poor Mrs. Crone is fired from her job, which breaks the poor woman: “I will go to Glasgow and cease to be a witch,” she declares.

I almost feel for her.

4) “The Mystery of Room 12.” This would be switched with “The Haunted Castle” in the rankings if I could only figure out why it’s supposed to be frightening.

The Hardys — even Laura! But not Gertrude — go to a hotel on the New England coast. The innkeeper tells the guests of a captain who went to sea in the 19th century but had an unprofitable trip, and his ship sank within sight of shore. He went down with the ship, playing his flute, and his widow (and everyone within a mile or two) heard his sad, sad song.

While staying in Room 12, Joe is awakened by a child crying. Frank doesn’t hear the crying, though, and he’s annoyed when Joe wakes him up. The bathroom door opens in the middle of the night, but it doesn’t make its usual squeaking noise. When Joe wakes Frank up to talk about that, Frank threatens to kill him. Reasonable enough. Frank is also prepared to use karate against whatever comes along; since he doesn’t believe in the supernatural in this one, he’s not really planning to karate chop a ghost child.

The non-scary stuff keeps going on — it also includes a woman who kinda looks like a witch, I guess, and a chest that smells like camphor after more than a century — until Frank finally gets his non-believing ass stranded on a local lake with Fenton and Joe has to sleep in Room 12 alone. He is confronted by a little ghost boy, who non-verbally demands he open the camphor-wood chest and get out his flute.

And that’s it. The innkeeper mentions the dead captain had a son — also now dead — and that Room 12 had been the boy’s room. Sorry he didn’t mention the haunting! Well, the joke’s on him: now the chest doesn’t smell like camphor any more.

3) “Mystery of the Voodoo Gold.” This isn’t scary, but at least it doesn’t have a ghost, so it’s not like it was trying to be scary.

In an Atlanta mall, Frank and Joe kill some time by going to a fortune teller. Fortunes cost $10, and the boys have only $11, so they flip a coin to see who will get his fortune told. Frank wins, and the fortune teller informs him his future holds a man with one blue eye who drives a white car, the Green Dragon, and gold. Obviously, Frank will find himself in the middle of an updated Norse myth, with Odin as the one-eyed man, his horse Sleipnir transformed into a white sports car, and Fafnir, a dwarf transformed into a dragon by his greed for gold.

No, not really. Fenton takes the boys to the Green Dragon, a restaurant, where they are accosted by the one-eyed Pierre Buffon, whom Fenton identifies as “one of the most cold-blooded cutthroats in this hemisphere.” Pierre asks the Hardys if they’ve seen an envelope lying around — it’s totally not valuable, but man, he’d like it back — and Fenton treats Pierre as if he’s got excruciating body odor. Perhaps he does.

Later, Frank and Joe find the envelope attached to the bottom of their briefcase — what are the odds? — and the letter inside directs them to a Civil War gold hoard. Just like in The Secret of the Lost Tunnel! Except this time it takes no effort to actually find the gold, even though they’re digging in a thunderstorm. Frank and Joe leave the gold in situ, fleeing the rainwater filling their excavations. Before they can claim it, they get a call telling them Laura is having emergency surgery, and they need to return to Bayport at once. They do, of course, although no one ever tells anyone what the surgery is for.

Frank and Joe don’t inform anyone about the gold, of course, and by the time they check back on it, a month later, it’s been paved over in a massive road construction project. C’est la vie!

There’s also some nonsense of about a voodoo statue watching over the gold; the fortune teller warned them about it. The boys spot it atop the hoard, and they seem leery of its powers. Since I can’t believe Frank and Joe would actually pay attention to the curse the statue is supposed to visit upon those who steal what it guards, I’m choosing to ignore that.

2) “The Walking Scarecrow.” Frank and Joe’s car breaks down while they’re on their way home from a day of backpacking in the Bayport Hills. Joe says they’re a “zillion miles” from anywhere, but it’s the Bayport Hills; how far can it be from anywhere? How far can it be from Bayport?

In any event, the boys decide to walk to the nearest farm to phone for help. Reasonable enough, given that they have no cell phones and for some reason are not able to fix their vehicle. (For Frank and Joe, that’s a horror story right there.) While walking up the road, they are unnerved by a scarecrow. Of course they assume it’s a real person at first; when you meet someone wearing a stovepipe hat, tattered clothes, and weird shoes in a cornfield, you just assume that it’s a farmer, right? Isn’t that what farmers wear? I mean, my dad doesn’t farm any more, but his stovepipe hat with the Case-IH logo stitched on it is still sitting on the back porch.

After passing up the scarecrow, the boys hear footsteps and a voice they attribute to the scarecrow. Frank and Joe totally want to karate chop that scarecrow, but it never gets close enough — it just warns them to go away. The boys ignore the advice and break into an abandoned house … well, they break into a house, but they discover it’s abandoned later. The house has no electricity or phone service, so Joe proposes a false dichotomy: sleep in the car or in the spooky, critter-infested house. (He forgets that they can keep walking down the road to find another house. It should have made him feel stupid the next day when a nearby farmer shows up, but I don’t think he makes the connection.)

The boys fall asleep, but the scarecrow wakes them, telling them to leave again. Frank and Joe give chase, because … it’s a crime to disturb someone’s sleep? I dunno. But while they’re chasing the scarecrow, the house is struck by lightning, and the house burns to the ground. The farmer who lives “next door” shows up and takes them to his house for pancakes and tows their car and is the greatest guy ever!

Why did the scarecrow save their lives? I dunno. Why did it come to life? *shrug* But the story had a spooky house (I was hoping it had been used by a serial killer, and in my head, it was) and it was somewhat atmospheric.

1) “The Disappearance of Flaming Rock.” “Flaming Rock” is the name of a mining town, so get your mind out of the gutter.

In the 19th century, a prospector stumbled into Tucson and told a tale of the inhabitants of an entire town vanishing: their food was still warm on the table, clothing and furniture was untouched. An expedition was launched later, but snows kept it from Flaming Rock; when they reached the town the next spring, they couldn't find the town. In the 20th century, the town had been spotted twice, with both observers confirming the prospector’s details. But each time, they couldn't find Flaming Rock again, either, and the two observers both disappeared mysteriously within a month of their sighting.

Spooky, right?

So Frank and Joe decide to check it out, battling through a rainstorm to do so. And of course, they find the town exactly as the prospector described it! Just as in The House on the Cliff, Frank is seriously intrigued by all this, while Joe is a little afraid. So Frank, ever sensitive to his little brother’s feelings, tells Joe that they’re going to split up. Thanks, Fred.

Their investigations are more stupid than scary. Joe knocks himself out by hitting his head on a coal scuttle and hallucinates an Indian blaming the white man’s crimes against Indians for Flaming Rock’s destruction — or is it a hallucination? The Indian leaves behind a headband that Joe picks up. Frank gets himself locked in a jail cell. Doofus. In the morning, Frank takes pictures of the town, and then they leave.

Back in Bayport, they tell the tale. Joe says he had an “Indian friend” translate the markings on the inside of the headband: it was the name of a chief killed just before Flaming Rock’s end. The ink itself dated back to the 1800s. And Frank’s pictures came out fogged. Spooky! Except for the part where there was no actual jeopardy for the Hardys, who are in no danger of disappearing like the previous re-discoverers of Flaming Rock!

Friday, October 24, 2014

The Mark of the Blue Tattoo (#146)

The Mark of the Blue Tattoo coverPlot: Chet is kidnapped during his first day as an ice-cream man, and the incident may have something to do with increased gang activity — but not necessarily gang violence — in Bayport.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe visit Fenton’s study, looking for advice. In Blue Tattoo, the study has an “old leather couch” and bookshelves with Fenton’s “impressive collection of crime literature” (119). The office first had a couch in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). Fenton has often had a library of crime-related books, but it was located in its own room, not in his study.

In other mysteries, the study has contained Fenton’s collection of trophy firearms (The Missing Chums, #4), disguises and souvenirs of past cases (While the Clock Ticked, #11), comfy chairs (The Sign of the Crooked Arrow, #28; The Shattered Helmet, #51; The Mysterious Caravan, #54; and The Pentagon Spy, #61; and the revised Mark on the Door, #12, and Melted Coins, #23), a short-wave radio (The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo, #47, and the revised Secret Warning, #17), criminal records (Crooked Arrow; The Secret of the Lost Tunnel, #29; The Secret Agent on Flight 101, #46; The Apeman’s Secret, #60; and the revised Hooded Hawk Mystery, #34), a safe (Hooded Hawk and The Mystery of the Chinese Junk, #39), and a TV (The Four-Headed Dragon, #69).

Gertrude makes a strawberry-rhubarb pie for the boys. Gertrude made a strawberry-rhubarb pie for the boys in the revised Mystery of the Flying Express (#20) and a rhubarb pie in the revised Clue of the Broken Blade (#21) and The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48). Gertrude submits “strawberry rhubarb pie” as an entry in the Freddy Frost Ice Cream Company’s new flavor contest, and of course she wins.

After Joe swings from the top of a moving ice cream truck through its small side window and into the truck’s storage area, a man asks Joe, “Did you ever think about joining the circus?” (145). Frank makes the standard “as a clown” joke, but seriously, Joe was a clown for the Big Top Circus in Track of the Zombie (#71). Both brothers also worked as trapeze artists (among other things) for “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21).

Two-thirds of the way through the book, Chet balks at taking on gangsters and murderers, but he’s done so before without blinking. The boys took on organized crime in The Night of the Werewolf (#59) and The Shattered Helmet (#52) and attempted murderers in The Pentagon Spy (#61), Sky Sabotage (#79), and The Swamp Monster (#83) without backing down. Heck, he’s even helped the Hardys fight terrorists, who are much more frightening than anything in The Mark of the Blue Tattoo. So why’s Chet being such a chicken now?

It was the ‘90s: When Frank wanted to run a license plate, the first thing he did was “logged on to the Net” (26). The dial-up modem sound wasn’t described, but from that description, I can hear it — followed a few seconds later by “You’ve got mail.”

Also, the Freddy Frost ice-cream truck trucks stop at several playgrounds, both municipal and school. That just makes sense in a commercial sense — you go where the customers are, right? — but in the 21st century, concerns about childhood obesity might get ice-cream trucks banned from such child-heavy (and heavy child) areas.

When Chet is kidnapped by two men in ski masks, Frank hypothesizes that it might be part of a hazing ritual, which Iola equates with “a practical joke” (12). Given the attention hazing has received, especially hazing incidents that have resulted in injury or death, hazing today is considered much more serious than a practical joke.

Bayport Chamber of Commerce: Since it’s a book based in Bayport, Frank and Joe patronize several local businesses. Frank and Joe grab a slice at Mr. Pizza and a grilled cheese and soda at the Starlight Diner. The brothers also accidentally on purpose run into Officer Con Riley at the Coffee Spot, where they pick up coffee and doughnuts. Chet works for Freddy Frost Ice Cream Truck.

Congratulations, ghost writer and editor! This may be the first book that featured Bayport business names that I didn’t laugh at.

When you’re a Hardy, you’re a Hardy all the way: Frank and Joe are astonished to be mistaken for gang members by Hedda Moon, the city’s peace broker to the teens. However, if she’d phrased it differently, it would have made more sense; Iola talks about the “clout” (58) the boys wield, and Joe’s favorite teacher, Mr. Bennett, claims Frank and Joe have a great deal of influence on other students. Later on, when investigative reporter Aaron McKay is about to tell Frank and Joe he’s decided they aren’t gangsters, Frank and Joe grab him by the arms, and Frank says, “Time for a casual stroll and a friendly talk” (105), which is what gangsters say to the guy they’re about to stuff in the trunk of a car and bury in a shallow grave in the desert.

Metafiction: McKay suggests he wants to write a fictionalized version of the Hardys’ adventures, which he expects to be popular: “It wouldn’t surprise me if the publishers decided to do a whole series of books about you” (63). Frank stalls McKay, but one can almost imagine Joe winking at the camera and saying, “That’s ridiculous, don’t you think?”

Later, when Iola goes missing after investigating on her own, Joe thinks, “If anyone had harmed Iola, he would pay them back with whatever it took” (135). Iola was killed in the first book in the Hardy Boys Casefiles series, Dead on Target, which led to a longstanding vendetta between the Hardy boys and the Assassins, who planted the bomb that killed her.

Dumbest teen gangs ever: First, everyone knows Marlon Masters is the “most powerful gang leader at Bayport High” (4), but the Hardys haven’t actually done anything about Masters or any of BHS’s many gangs. Second, one of these teen gangs is named the Gimps. The Gimps! They change their name to the superior “Mad Martians,” and their biggest rivals switch from “Gutfighters” to Comets. (Joe dislikes Comets, which does lack an intimidation factor, but Gutfighters is awful.)

Thirdly, the gang the Hardys are fighting is the Starz, which most people think of as an off-brand HBO or Showtime rather than a name for an intimidating gang. Fourthly, the Starz’s biggest tough backs down when Joe looks at him funny. Fifthly, the Starz’s revenge consists of pushing and tripping the Hardys and their friends. Sixthly, when they want to get back at Callie for snooping, they dump her looseleaf binder on the floor, and it takes her ten whole minutes to return the pages to the proper order. That’s intimidation!

Ahead of the curve: The Freddy Frost Ice Cream Company is running a contest to suggest a new flavor. Chet, eager to make a good impression on his employer, comes up with quite a few suggestions, like lasagna and champagne, that disgust his friends. Two stand out: “hash” (94), which could refer to three different meanings (beef, hash browns, or hashish), and “guacamole sherbet.” The latter is an intriguing idea that I think would appeal to modern foodies, and the sherbet’s low milkfat content would be nicely offset by the fattiness of the guacamole. Also, Joe’s suggestion of a corn chip cone, offered in jest, is really a nice touch. Chet was enthusiastic about the idea, although like all his ideas, he abandoned it quickly. I can see a semi-upscale restaurant making it a specialty, although it might be hard to sell from an ice cream truck.

The po-po ain’t on your side, man: Once again, Frank and Joe decide to cut the police out of their investigation. Frank warns Chet not to pass along a bit of important evidence (the star tattoo on one of his kidnapper’s wrist) to the police, although to be fair, he might just have been peeved that he and his brother were not immediately recognized by officers and that Callie was frisked. Later, it doesn’t occur to Joe to contact the police when someone tries to kill him with an ice-cream truck. Near the end of the book, Frank and Joe pump Con for info without reciprocating.

Maybe Joe considers reporting crimes to the police to be in the same category as snitching to teachers, which he considers “against his principles” (46). Or maybe both brothers realize the police are hopelessly out of date; Con laments that the “rumble has gone out of style” (126). The next thing you know, they’ll tell Con that gang violence no longer involves musical numbers!

I find your lack of faith disturbing: When Frank and Joe lead the hunt for Chet, Joe says they’ll do everything they can to find their friend. Iola asks, “What if that’s not enough?” and wants to call in the police. Iola: Frank and Joe’s best has always been enough to find Chet, as it was in this case. I mean, their fourth case, The Case of the Missing Chums, was entirely about finding a kidnapped Chet (and Biff).

Iola also complains about being left out of the case, which is a fair complaint. (Callie gets to do all sorts of things to help the investigation, although to be doubly fair, she also works hard to find things to do.) Rather than complaining directly to Joe about being forgotten, Iola has Chet deliver the message. It immediately slips Joe’s mind that he’s supposed to include Iola, but rather than seizing the moral high ground with a blistering lecture, Iola slips out of the Morton house and gets thrown into an ice-cream locker to freeze to death. That’ll certainly show Joe!

Frank and Joe — awesome teens, great job!: Joe is described as having the “casual grace of a star running back” (1). When the Starz prepare to attack Frank and Joe, the brothers slip into the “unfocused attention of a trained martial artist” (31).

Have you been paying attention?: When someone pours glue over a library book and Frank’s notes, Frank gets blamed and sent to the principal’s office. The principal believes him, but she wonders what the perpetrator’s motive is. C’mon — Frank and Joe pick up enemies everywhere, and the school had already asked the brothers to investigate an extortion ring.

Blessed are the peacemakers: After Frank says he was talked into a peace conference with the Starz, Tony Prito is appalled: “The nerve … I’d like to negotiate some knuckles on that guy’s … nose” (54). Hot-headed Italian stereotype or hot-headed teenager stereotype?

Opinions: Blue Tattoo has a lot to recommend it. It does a good job looking at the role Frank and Joe occupy in Bayport High School. They aren’t universally adored by the student body; in fact, it seems as if the Hardys are isolated, able to rely only on their immediate circle of friends. This isn’t the way other digests portray the Hardys — a new friend always pops up — but it’s more realistic that the only real friends they have are Biff, Chet, Tony, Callie, and Iola. Frank and Joe are too busy to dedicate much time to friendship, and they need to guard against people who want to associate with them only because of their fame.

It also shows that Frank and Joe’s aggressive crimefighting lifestyle has left them blind to problems in their own backyard. Bayport and BHS seem riddled with teen gangs, and the boys have done nothing about it. They pay the price, too; their classmates are intimidated by the gangs, unwilling to discuss them with the Hardys. Frank and Joe’s teachers range from sympathetic toward them to oblivious to the brothers’ reputation; the school librarian doesn’t buy Frank’s claim that someone else vandalized his library books, and Ms. Amity makes Frank (and the rest of his English class) study The Return of the Native, written by local boy Thomas Hardy.

On the other hand, the book has its flaws. Frank and Joe are not top-notch investigators, oblivious that the Frosty Freddie ice cream trucks are being used as part of a criminal network even as they watch it happen. It’s not obvious that the trucks are being used to run numbers, although the OTB the truck stopped at should have been a clue. It is obvious that they’re being used for something illegal, though; several times the truck the brothers followed drew a large crowd of adults, but children were frequently ignored. Frank and Joe just think it’s weird, part of the business world they don’t understand.

Also: the blue tattoo on one of Chet’s kidnapper is never used to identify the kidnapper, although everyone assumes the tattooed star means the kidnapper was a member of the Stars. And Hedda Moon never should have used a nom du crime (“Lunatic”) that referred back to her; the astronomy-related gang names she chose after taking over the gangs also were a poor choice.

Grade: A-. A strong Bayport and high school setting will cause me to forgive the book’s weaknesses.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Sidetracked to Danger (#130)

Sidetracked to Danger coverPlot: Frank and Joe journey to exotic Indianapolis with friend Jackson Wyatt to view the world’s greatest model train collection, but it’s stolen before they can see it in its full glory.

Yes, model trains. Contain your excitement.

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much, really. They do travel by train, which used to be Frank and Joe’s primary way of getting around the country. Frank, Joe, and Jackson take a train from Bayport to Indianapolis, and they also board a party train (see below) for a short excursion. During the first 85 books, Frank and Joe took trains fourteen times, including the titular Flying Express in the 20th book in the series.

Frank and Joe didn’t visit Indianapolis in the original canon, although they were briefly stranded (and almost kidnapped) in Indiana in the original Hunting for Hidden Gold. They also will visit Indianapolis later in the digest series, in Double Jeopardy (#181). That mystery plays to Indianapolis’s claim to fame: motor racing.

To distract a guard, Joe blathers on about “everything he knew about Mustangs and restorations” (49). Although Joe has never been shown to have a predilection for any make or model of car, both he and his brother are good with automobiles. A summary of their mechanical skills can be found in the entry on Double Jeopardy.

The reason Frank and Joe are able to take this fabulous trip to Indianapolis is that they are on winter break. Somehow. The book is set in February, so I’m not sure how that works; even though some colleges don’t start in the new year until February, I can’t imagine Bayport High is still on break from Christmas, and I’ve rarely heard of a separate break between Christmas / New Year’s and Spring Break. In any event, Frank, Joe, and the chums took a vacation to Jamaica over a winter vacation in The Mysterious Caravan, and their investigation in Cave-In! occured during winter vacation.

Before heading into the subterranean levels of Indianapolis, Frank packed his supplies: a flashlight, a compass, his cell phone, and a city map. The boys didn’t use cell phones in the original canon — they hadn’t been popularized yet — but they did use a compass (six books) and a variety of sizes and flavors of flashlights (56 books). They even used a map (of Bayport) in The Melted Coins (#25). The real questions are why Frank thought to bring a compass on a trip to see model trains in Indianapolis, and whether he brought the map of Indy from home or bought it in Indiana.

Inaction Jackson: As far as I can tell, this is the only appearance of Jackson Wyatt, the boys’ putative friend, in a Hardy Boys book. Who is Jackson? He’s a train nut, a man who likes model and real trains. At 22, he has already qualified to be a fireman on the train, and he’s learning how to be an engineer …

Yes, Jackson’s 22 years old. At that age, four years is a huge age difference. How did this train enthusiast become friends with the a pair of teenagers he most likely never went to school with? It’s never explained. The only point of shared interest between the Hardy boys and Jackson is an interest in trains, and Frank and Joe don’t seem too enthused by them. Frank says he and Joe are “fans,” although “a real drag” (38) is as far as Joe ventures when asked to comment about a million-dollar theft of model trains.

Most likely Jackson knows how famous the brothers are, and he’s decided that if he spends time with Frank and Joe, some of that attention will reflect onto him. He doesn’t have much to recommend him to the brothers, though, and he hopes the entre to the world’s best model-train collection will interest them. (It’s an impressive collection, but it’s model trains; you have to be really interested in the hobby to travel halfway across the country to see any collection.) Frank and Joe most likely agreed to come with him out of pity and, well, a chance to see Indianapolis. Haven’t done that before!

Joe, you sly dog: Japanese model train collector Yoshio Agawa — “Asia’s top model train collector” (3)! — brought his daughter, Genji, along with him to see the collection. Genji (which is a boy’s name in Japan, as far as I can tell) shows little interest in the trains, but she does like hanging out with Frank, Joe, and Jackson. Especially Joe, it seems; when the four split into two pairs, Genji hangs out with Joe, although she crashes through a rotten subterranean floor despite Joe’s warning of “Don’t go in there!” (53). (Don’t worry; he totally rescues her.)

It’s more likely, I suppose, that Joe engineered the pairing. (Iola is not mentioned in the text.) After meeting Genji, he smoothly suggests, “Maybe you could spend some time with us tomorrow” (17). When her father is a suspect in the theft of the model trains, Joe’s reaction is to groan “Not Genji’s dad” (27). Unfortunately, he misses his chance to impress her when she finds out he and his brother are detectives; the text blandly says the boys “told Genji about some of Frank and Joe’s experiences” (43). C’mon, man! Brag about yourself! You deserve it!

Detective accoutrements: While wandering around a deserted train car, Joe’s “detective radar” (87) perks up, alerting him that he’s not really alone. When Frank suggests looking over surveillance tape again, Joe says, “Frank’s detective button has been pushed” (100). What I want to know is where those pieces of technology were installed on their bodies. Or, if they are external tech, do they get strange looks from the people who see their detective radars and detective buttons?

Always order the special of the house: When eating at the RibRack, what do the boys order? Burgers and fries. Of course. They’ve had ribs before, while in Texas for The Swamp Monster, but they burgers are among their favorites: they ordered burgers in 22 books in the original canon.

If you weren’t there, I can’t explain to you how awesome the ‘90s were: Genji’s seventeenth birthday party is held on an excursion train, which travels from Indianapolis, through the Hoosier National Forest to the south, and back again. That’s not particularly ‘90s, and really, it doesn’t sound like a fun party for teenagers, no matter how much food they cram onto the train. (It sounds fun to me, but I’m a middle-aged white guy with a fondness for Midwestern forests and hills.) But! The ‘90s part is the entertainment on the train: “a boom box and an assortment of CDs” (77). Cool!

Also, Frank repeatedly calls Joe “bro.” This is not exclusively a ‘90s phenomenon, as much as I wish it was. But I think the trend can be traced back to the ‘90s. Also, there’s no excuse for Frank to say “bro.” Ever.

Villains are a weaselly and incompetently murderous lot: The villains swing between formidable and awful. On one hand, they pull off a plot that involves kidnapping the crew of a train at a critical juncture; one of the crooks fells Joe with one punch to the stomach, and he later hops off a near-runaway train with little damage. On the other hand, when one of them shoves Frank in front of a train, Frank has plenty of time to cross the tracks and get out of the way. Also, the point of kidnapping the train crew (and the subsequent mayhem) was to get Frank and Joe to drop the case, but the criminals never said that, and the boys were entirely unclear about why the train had been attacked. Better communication skills wouldn’t have helped the crooks, but it would have allowed everyone to take them more seriously.

The narration uncharacteristically editorializes after the final villain was captured: “From that point on, he behaved like the whining weasel he really was” (147). Perhaps he was a weasel, but he deserves more respect than that; he almost got away with it! (Unfortunately, the boys just happened across him at a food court near the Hardys’ hotel. In all of the city of Indianapolis, he just happened to be at the wrong place!)

You’re learning about trains!: Frank, Joe, and Jackson are awakened every morning at 6:30 by the arrival of the Hoosier State, an Amtrak train that runs between Indianapolis and Chicago, as it prepared to head to Chicago. The Hoosier State leaves even earlier in 2014; according to Amtrak’s June 9, 2014 schedule, the Hoosier State leaves Indianapolis at 6 a.m. on its way to the Windy City. The Hoosier State runs only on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, but the Cardinal, which runs from New York to Chicago, leaves Indianapolis at 6 a.m. on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.)

The boys (and Jackson) stay at a hotel in Indianapolis’s old Union Station; the three share an old Pullman car, still resting on its tracks, refurbished as a hotel room. Shockingly, these rooms are real, and they are still available for guests of the Crowne Plaza at Historic Union Station hotel. The rooms sound cool, but they also sound very noisy.

I don’t think you’re real EMTs: After Frank and Joe save the adult collectors from the Ridiculously Slow Death Trap after a day of imprisonment, the paramedics prescribe “soup and juice right away” (143) for Agawa. Soup and juice? It was only one day; it’s not like he was about to starve. Are these people in the pocket of Big Soup and the Juice Conglomerate?

Opinions: Sidetracked to Danger is a bit bland, and it even fails to live up to the promise of action model trains imply. True, there are scenes on real trains, but those trains are either stationary or the party / excursion train. Neither is worthy of the great Hardy adventure tradition. Combine that with the glittering city of Indianapolis, and you have a book that fails to generate much interest.

Grade: C. In three months, I will forget I ever read this book, even though it has a travelogue of downtown Indianapolis, a place I have been to and probably will return to.

Friday, April 11, 2014

The Secret of the Soldier's Gold (#182)

The Secret of the Soldier’s Gold coverPlot: When Fenton heads to Portugal to consult with a police friend, Frank and Joe look for a missing suitcase full of World War II gold.

“Borrowing” from the past: The plot is vaguely like The Secret of the Lost Tunnel, in which Frank, Joe, and Chet help a general track down some missing Civil War gold. Unlike Lost Tunnel, the Hardys have no adult supervision, and the gold was hidden only about 55 to 60 years before (as opposed to 80 some-odd years in Lost Tunnel. Also, Frank and Joe have replaced Chet with an attractive young Portuguese woman, and that’s never a bad thing.

Languages are always a concern for the Hardys in a foreign country. Frank and Joe do not know Portuguese, although they do pick up a few words during Soldier’s Gold. They did not go to Portugal in the original canon, although they did go to Brazil, another Portuguese-speaking nation, in The Masked Monkey (#51). In Soldier’s Gold, Frank is taking Spanish at Bayport High School and claims to have received an A in German class last year. On the other hand, he has trouble realizing “Frau” is a German honorific. His language experience can be seen in the Shadow Killers post.

Frank and Joe are confronted by a trio of fascists with a Doberman, and later they are confronted by mastiffs when they break into a walled estate. The boys have been menaced by Dobermans twice in the original canon: the revised A Figure in Hiding (#16) and The Night of the Werewolf (#59). Additionally, they were chased by Dobermans in Panic on Gull Island. They faced a mastiff in The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#49).

When Frank and Joe ask Fenton what he knows about Lisbon during World War II, Fenton laughs and says, “I don’t know anything firsthand.” Since the character was created in 1927 as a man approaching middle age, at some point in the series’ floating continuity, he probably served in the war — at the very least, he must have been draft eligible. Essentially, he could have been a World War II veteran anywhere between The Short-Wave Mystery (#25) and Masked Monkey. However, evidence of his service is scant; Lost Tunnel mentions Fenton served a summer in an officer’s training camp, but it’s unclear when that was.

Frank mentions he and Joe are track-and-field athletes. Their history as track athletes is discussed in The Mystery of the Black Rhino (#178), but they’ve never competed in field events. Neither Frank nor Joe mentions their gymnastics experience, which would have been relevant; Frank has worked out on the parallel bars, and both performed on the trapeze in “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21). In fact, Frank and Joe had an entire barn fitted with gymnastic (and boxing) equipment. The barn lasted from The Tower Treasure (#1) to The Hidden Harbor Mystery (#14).

Joe also makes an impressive dive off the Ponte de 25 Abril, and Frank hopes he can replicate his diving form in his next competition. Joe has never been a competitive diver; the closest he ever came was in Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84), in which he was captain of the Bayport High swim team and a record-holder in the 100-meter freestyle.

While renting a motorboat on the Tagus, Frank and Joe show their marine operator’s licenses. Frank and Joe have been puttering around Barmet Bay since the Coolidge administration, but the original canon never mentioned they had a license to do so. They have pilot’s licenses (for airplanes), fishing licenses, driver’s licenses, licenses to operate short-wave radios, and even a permit to hunt with their falcon, Miss Peregrine — but they never bother with licenses for boating.

When the rented motorboat’s gas tank is shot, the brothers decide to abandon ship. Joe says, “The same thing happened to us once in Barmet Bay … We made it to shore then.” I can’t find what Joe is referring to, even expanding the definition of “same thing” to any shortage of gas or danger of explosion.

Euphemisms: Frank and Joe’s relationships with Iola Morton and Callie Shaw are usually spoken of elliptically by the narrator. In Soldier’s Gold, Iola and Callie are “two of the most popular girls in school,” and they “often spent time” with Frank and Joe. I’m impressed by the vagueness of the description. What do they do when they spend time together? Go on dates? Shoot rats at the dump? Discuss Proust? And does Callie and Iola’s popularity rub off on Frank and Joe, or are the girls bucking social convention by being seen in their presence?

Perhaps in gratitude for bestowing their time on the unworthy Hardys, Frank and Joe buy them “cool-looking Portuguese shoes” in Lisbon. The narration says the boys “thought Callie and Iola would like” the shoes, but I’d hate to see the results of their shopping expedition. I’d be amazed if the boys know Iola’s and Callie’s shoe sizes, and what do high-school boys think looks “cool”? Sneakers? Stilettos? Bedazzled flip-flops?

Of course, neither Iola nor Callie spend any time with the brothers in Soldier’s Gold, although Frank and Joe do worry that the girls will be jealous that they are going to a freshman girl’s birthday party. Since I think Iola already knows Joe waits until he’s out of town to step out on her, I think they are safe as long as they’re in Bayport. (Iola should perhaps be worried about Isabel, the girl they meet in Lisbon. Isabel actually gets to help investigate!)

We know who’s in charge: When Frank and Joe learn of the missing gold, they immediately want to talk it over with Fenton. Fenton needs to be at police HQ to talk to Chief Collig, but he says, “It won’t hurt if I’m a few minutes late.” No, Fenton, why not waste the time of an important public servant to have a discussion with your sons that could easily be taken care of later in the day or week? Collig should expect it, really. He knows how famous you are.

The March of Technology: It takes Frank and Joe fifteen minutes to place a person-to-person call to Bayport through the hotel switchboard. This book was written in 2003. Are Portuguese telecommunications really that slow? Perhaps my expectations for intercontinental calls are too optimistic.

Later, the Hardys acknowledge the existence of cell phones, asking Isabel to call the cops on hers. She says she left it at home to recharge.

Not smart enough to be scared: When Frank and Joe visit the estate where the gold is supposed to be buried, they see guards with machine guns and guard dogs patrolling the ground. Later, they put into action a plan to sneak onto the grounds, but the men with machine guns barely enter into their plans. Why should they? Frank and Joe have never been shot with a gun. Later, when they leave a hole in the ground at that estate, they briefly worry that they might be confronted by the police, who might be infiltrated by neo-fascists. That worry disappears almost as soon as they voice it.

Later, when they believe the fascists have the gold, they are puzzled about why a different group of fascists are following them. Perhaps because they’re fascists, and they always like to get the boot in? Or this group of fascists don’t know the others have the gold? Or because they want to eliminate the witnesses to their gold theft?

There’s a secret code for you: While talking with English-speaking fascists in Lisbon, Frank and Joe resort to Pig Latin to communicate secretly. I admire Joe’s cleverness; understanding a foreign language doesn’t mean total, native mastery, and Joe exploits that.

Food … of … the … world!: The Hardy family visits Picanha, a restaurant that serves only one dish: picanha, which is rump steak served with salad, rice, and beans. The author gives no indication whether restaurants serving only picanha or one-item restaurants are common in Portugal, or whether Picanha is a special Portuguese restaurant that rips off tourists who are too overwhelmed to have an idea what to order in a foreign country. At least there won’t be any surprises.

Frank and Joe also sample some Sumol, a real Portuguese soft drink. From its corporate page, it looks broadly similar to Mountain Dew in look, although Soldier’s Gold mentions it comes in many flavors.

Practice, practice, practice: Joe is bopped on the head as he enters his hotel room. He and Frank then pursue his attacker down the fire escape, jumping from the final landing to the ground. Frank is sure that the impact of hitting the ground didn’t help Joe’s head wound any, but “he was impressed that it hadn't kept Joe from running after the intruder at full speed.” If there’s a family that knows how to cope with head trauma on the fly, it’s the Hardys; they certainly have enough experience with it.

Famous amateur detectives!: The news that Frank and Joe have a treasure map gets out among Lisbon’s police officers. Numerous people are suspected as the leak, and Frank and Joe force themselves to consider that the cute girl they like might be the one who spread the news. That’s good thinking!

Most of the rest of their brainwaves are bad thinking, though. They solved the case with a simple personal ad; if they’d thought of contacting Lisbon’s German population in the beginning, it would have saved them a lot of headaches. (It wouldn’t have been much of a mystery, perhaps, but who knows?) When they saw the home where the gold was buried was heavily guarded, they should have investigated the past of the person who owned the house. You know, just in case that’s important. It doesn’t end up being important, but it could have.

Later, they decoy pursuers into thinking the gold is buried in a botanical park. When the pursuers confront them, they feign fear and run away. They do not, however, try to sneak back and see who was following them.

Logic tricks: When Frank and Joe learned the buried suitcase held bricks, not gold, they had to think of explanations for why the bricks had been buried. Frank uses some tortuous logic: the man who buried the gold and was later captured by the Nazis had let the secret out, so when he was able to get to the gold after the war, he buried the bricks to make it appear he lied. But whoever got the information from him — under torture, in a prison camp — would likely have had a head start over the former POW and would likely have gotten to the gold first.

Jealous enough to start firebombing: After finding the gold and returning it to their client — with surprisingly little difficulty in transferring millions of dollars of gold from Portugal to the U.S. — they are offered a reward. Frank and Joe refuse, so their client offers to make a donation to Bayport High School. Joe says, “Bayport High School is just about to become one of the most envied schools in the country.”

Geez, Joe. BHS already had you and Frank, who pull sports championships out of orifices they are not usually pulled from. What ostentatious monument to prosperity is BHS going to get — a new gymnasium? A tech campus? Gold-plated urinals? If I lived in nearby Bridgewater or Hopkinsville or Southport, when I heard this I would hate Bayport with an intensity that would cause my hair to spontaneously combust.

Opinions: Soldier’s Gold is a solid story. True, Frank and Joe’s investigation leaves a great deal to be desired — they charge into everything, just like always — the book has a lot to like. Neo-fascists are sinister yet believable villains, blending into society and making Frank and Joe suffer a tinge of paranoia. This anonymity gives the villains a reason not to kill the Hardys: an investigation might ruin their disguise.

Also: Nazi gold makes everything cooler.

Grade: B+.

Friday, March 28, 2014

The Emperor's Shield (Casefiles #119)

The Emperor’s Shield coverPlot: Frank, Joe, and Callie go to Germany to help Fenton’s college roommate locate a Roman fort and its fabulous treasure.

“Borrowing” from the past: In Shield, Frank can understand and speak German, with some difficulty, after taking two years of high-school German. In The Jungle Pyramid (#56), the boys had both taken German classes, enough to speak the language roughly. (Before that, in Danger on Vampire Trail [#50], Joe knew what he’d picked up from TV.) The boys “perfected” their German when visiting the country in The Submarine Caper (#68). That book marked the boys’ only previous journey to Deutschland; they visited Dusseldorf, Frankfort, Munich, Glochen, and Lumburg.

Frank and Joe (mostly Frank) is in Germany to help Dr. John Maxwell, who was Fenton’s college roommate. We don’t know much about Fenton’s college life — except that he was a pole vaulter who cleared more than 16 feet, as revealed in The Sting of the Scorpion (#58) — but his acquaintances pop up with surprising frequency. Whenever the boys need an expert — a helicopter pilot, a FBI agent, a director of the State Experimental Farm, psychiatrist, prison warden, judge, head of NASA security, doctor in Morocco, Army general or Navy officer — Fenton will know one. Either they are an old / good friend or they served together in the army or police or Fenton will have run across them in his investigations. Perhaps that’s why Frank and Joe can use Fenton’s name so freely to get out of trouble: he knows everyone important.

The teens run into angry German shepherds at one point. They’ve run into German shepherds before: The Mystery fo the Aztec Warrior (#43), The Haunted Fort (#44), and The Demon’s Den (#81). Shepherds are the most common canine menaces for the boys in the original canon, narrowly nosing out Doberman pinschers and wolfhounds.

Joe takes over in an aerial disaster, guiding a stalled plane into a controlled glide, managing to save himself and the pilot. In the digests and Casefiles I’ve read, Frank is usually the pilot, but Joe is as experienced behind the stick as his brother. As I’ve mentioned before, both he and Frank get instruction from a pilot named Stewart in The Short-Wave Mystery (#24). Jack Wayne — Fenton’s personal pilot — starts teaching them in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37); both brothers make an emergency landing in that book. They get their pilot’s licenses in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39) and learn to fly seaplanes and float planes in The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42). By The Stone Idol, they’ve moved on to helicopters, and in The Sting of the Scorpion, they fly baby blimps.

At the end of The Emperor’s Shield, Frank, Joe, and Callie go skiing in the Alps. Frank and Joe are experienced skiers, starting all the way back in The Cabin Island Mystery (#8). That was cross-country skiing, though; their first downhill skiing was in The Jungle Pyramid, in which they skied the Alps — the Swiss Alps, though. (They also go cross-country skiing in Cave-In, #78, and Open Season, Casefiles #59.)

Lazy and awful: I’ve complained about covers before, but man, that cover is awful. First of all, it’s a picture cover, which are almost always boring, and secondly, it’s lazy even for a picture cover. Trenchcoats and fedoras? Which cover designer did Pocket Books get for this one — Clichés R Us? (It’s a cliché name, see.) I know the cover was designed to tie into the Hardy Boys TV series, just as all the covers from #105 to 121 were, but that TV series ran for thirteen episodes in 1995. This book was published in 1997; by that point I could hardly have looked for “the exciting TV series!”

The March of Technology: Oh, man, the ‘90s. If you need a refresher about how good we have it today, read The Emperor’s Shield. All the bad memories will come rushing back. The archaeology crew is forced to use a “microwave-size” scanner. Frank dials into a server, then uses Telnet to connect from the server to Web — specifically to what looks like a newsgroup. Later, to send a file to a server, Frank has to program the server’s number into a modem. Nowadays we don’t have to even think about servers or modems to move information around, and Telnet, for most of us, is a dim memory — if we remember it all.

Let the Hardys teach you geography: Shield has a lot of German geography, although I’m not sure it does a good job of pinning the towns and waterways to any context.

The book takes place in southwestern Germany, mainly within the (unmentioned) state of Baden-Württemberg. (For those who have a picture of Germany in their head, that’s down in the lower left of the country, bordering France and Switzerland.) The chums fly into Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg and a city of 5.3 million. From there, they take the autobahn south — presumably taking the A81, which runs north and south from the city — passing by the Neckar River; the Neckar is a tributary of the Rhine, running north through Stuttgart until it merges with the Rhine at Mannheim from the East. The narrator contends the Neckar was the border of the Roman Empire at its largest; Wikipedia puts the border a little east of the Neckar, but even if Wikipedia is completely accurate, the assertion is close enough to accept as true.

On the drive, the heroes spot the Black Forest and the Zugspitze. I assume it’s the Zugspitze; the narrator calls it the Zugspitze Mountains, but I believe the author is referring to the peak in the Wetterstein Mountains, which is the highest in Germany (9,718 feet). Perhaps the narrator isn’t thinking of the Zugspitze, though, as it’s in Bavaria’s border from Austria, quite a distance to the east of the Hardys’ path. On the other hand, it’s the highest point in Germany; who knows how far away you can see it?

The Hardys’ destination is Kolbingen. Again, I think it’s Kolbingen; the town’s name is “Köbingen” in the book, but Kolbingen’s location is the right spot, about an hour and a half from Stuttgart. The town’s population is about 1,300. They later attend a winter festival in Esslingen am Neckar, a city of about 92,000 that is less than ten miles from the center of Stuttgart.

Hidden for years, unearthed by the Hardys: Dr. Maxwell is well ahead of the curve in this book, using satellite and aerial images to find the road and fort he’s looking for. Satellite archaeology has become a viable way to search for the past, especially given cheap and free views from space. (Think of Google Earth images, for instance.)

I was surprised to find the Roman emperor Decius, the eponymous emperor, was not made up by this particular Dixon. Decius (or Trajan Decius) ruled from A.D. 249 to 251. Decius was the first emperor to die in battle vs. a foreign enemy, killed in battle (along with his son and co-emperor, Herennius Etruscus) against the Goths in northeastern Bulgaria at the Battle of Abrittus. Evidently that legendary shield Maxwell was searching for was less than effective against, you know, people trying to kill him.

Less convincing is the condition of the artifacts in the fort — “the air is so cool and dry … that everything’s been almost perfectly preserved.” So perfectly preserved, in fact, that Frank and Joe think nothing of picking up swords and daggers from Decius’s treasure trove to defend themselves.

Mid-life crisis at 17: Joe rents a car to get him, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend around Germany. What does he choose? A red Porsche 911 Turbo, utterly impractical except to stroke Joe’s ego; it barely has enough room for Callie in the back seat, and when they go to a festival with a fourth person, they have to take the train instead. (Frank doesn’t get to drive it often, despite being the person who can read the road signs.) Unfortunately, Joe doesn’t even get a decent car chase. What’s up with that? Don’t Americans always like the car chase?

Duplication of effort: When Dr. Maxwell disappears, certain aerial photos go with him. Joe volunteers to re-acquire the photos from the original photographer. The photographer volunteers to take Joe along with him as he takes the photos again. But why didn’t the photographer keep the negatives? I mean, that’s standard practice, right? For exactly this reason?

Dream big, baby: Stymied for a moment in their investigations, Callie suggests going to the snow festival in Esslingen. Frank tries to avoid having fun with his girlfriend, but eventually gives in: “‘It looks as if Callie gets her wish,’ Frank mumbled.”

Ha! If Callie got her wish, she’d probably have a better boyfriend. The narration does call her Frank’s “girlfriend,” so she’s got that going for her, but the pair only vaguely resembles a dating couple. Sure, Frank gives Callie a kiss on the cheek at one point, but then again, Callie gives Dr. Maxwell’s assistant, Stephi, a farewell kiss on the cheek, so that doesn’t mean much. When Frank and Joe rescue Callie from kidnappers, Frank “clasped her hand briefly.” Such untamed emotion! Callie tries to get a rise out of him while impersonating a wealthy collector, calling him “Honey,” but he doesn’t respond. At least Frank knows not to contradict Callie when reading new year’s fortunes; Callie says her fortune means she will become class president, and Frank keeps his mouth shut, despite his doubts.

Contender for the three most ‘90s’ words ever: “Everyone started moshing.” That’s a complete sentence, written by an adult (presumably), for money. It’s perfect in its ‘90s-ness without being self-consciously ‘90s. Bravo!

The author follows this sentence by saying, a little later, “The band cranked for well over a half hour.” Is “cranked” a synonym for “played” or “thrashed” or whatever that I just wasn’t hip enough to have heard in (*checks copyright date*) goodness, 1997?

We can be heroes: Frank and Joe not only save Dr. Maxwell from being entombed in an archaeological dig but they also save the villain’s unconscious henchmen from the same fate. Impressive, but to add to the degree of difficulty, the two brothers lug the goons out in fireman’s carries up a 15-20 feet tall ladder. I can’t imagine carrying 150 to 200 pounds of dead weight up a makeshift ladder. Well, I can, but my imagination demands I spend 20 minutes before climbing securing the dead weight so I don’t drop it. But Frank and Joe — man, I can criticize them for poor first aid techniques, but they can save lives when they need to.

Opinions: A story set in Germany in winter should be full of local color, but except for the schneefest — snow festival — and new year’s fortunetelling, we don’t see much of Germany beyond the clichés. The schneefest itself is mainly candied almonds and moshing, which isn’t representative of Germany. I don’t think it is, at least.

A foreign culture, the winter cold, youth, exciting new technology: Emperor’s Shield could have been a lot more interesting. Unfortunately, Frank spends most of his time looking over photos and fiddling with his computer, and the detecting is mainly accusations, a harebrained impersonation scheme, and chases. Fortunately, Frank and Joe don’t get to use the local police as their lackeys.

Grade: C-