Mystery with a Dangerous Beat (#124)

Well, if I have nothing else positive to say about this book, I must admit Mystery with a Dangerous Beat is a distinct title.

It’s always good to be a Hardy. In this particular instance, Frank and Joe get free tickets to a sold-out concert in L.A., courtesy of Fenton’s college friend, music manager Harold Manstroni. Who are Frank and Joe seeing? Why, it’s none other than the Funky Four, “the best dance band around.” I’m envisioning something between New Kids on the Block and Menudo, without any edginess or interesting ethnicity.

Since this is a Hardy Boys story, the concert can’t end without a heavy object almost dropping on someone; in this case, it’s a huge spotlight that narrowly misses “lead singer and heartthrob Brian Beat.” (As an aside, Joe thinks Brian has “total star power,” and he also regards Brian as the best-looking guy in the band.) A security guard denies Frank and Joe entrance to the stage to investigate the accident, so they have to totally coincidentally run into an incognito Brian the next day at an arcade, where Frank plays Air Racer, while Joe plays Hack Attack (a taxi-based game, which has never been a thing). Because the arcade evidently has the lamest games ever, the brothers have nothing better to do than save Brian when a malicious passerby outs Brian as a celebrity and he is menaced by adoring fans, who threaten to riot. How do Frank and Joe save Brian? By Frank testing that old free speech chestnut and shouting, “Fire!” in a crowded arcade. (Turns out that’s OK.) The author and editor show a lack of understanding about football, saying Frank acted like a “defensive lineman” by clearing a path for Brian and Joe; offensive linemen clear paths, while defensive linemen exploit gaps.

In the aftermath, Joe gets Brian to hire the brothers as extras for a video the Funky Four are making — you know, so Frank and Joe can keep an eye on him. While on set, Brian is hassled by Pico Hernandez, a music reporter who, you know, makes crap up to promote his magazine, Janet Reno’s Dance Party Scene (actually, I think this was from before Reno joined the magazine). Frank and Joe’s “vigilance” doesn’t stop Brian from being nearly electrocuted by a sabotaged microphone stand. Just after, in incredibly ‘90s moment, a woman wearing bike shorts and an “oversize denim jacket” over an orange top rollerblades onto the set to accuse Brian and the band’s manager, Marcus, of stealing a song she had written.

When Brian’s mother is admitted to the hospital, Brian wants Frank and Joe along as part of his retinue. Fenton has no trouble with the boys splitting from the family vacation to LA, saying in essence, “Sure, whatever, knock yourself out. Write if you get (paying) work!” Pico pressures Brian for an interview on the plane. It turns out Brian’s mother is fine, but a man posing as an orderly tosses liquid nitrogen on Brian’s face, but of course there’s no lasting damage, and the man escapes.

At a thinly veiled Magic Kingdom, Brian’s roller coaster car goes off the tracks; the next day, his dressing room is trashed, and the Jet Ski he was supposed to be riding toward a pier — driven by Joe instead — is sabotages so its accelerator is stuck.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Frank and Joe aren’t doing a very good job. Brian isn’t killed, so by that bare standard of bodyguarding, they’re successful. But with all those accusations and crimes, they discover nothing for the first half of the book. Even the boys themselves complain there are “a thousand loose ends.” They also let Brian get socked in the jaw by Pico, which in any rational universe should shut down Pico’s access to the band — but no, casual assault is another key facet of any Hardy Boys book, and not something the police get involved in. So the incident gets written off.

Also, Brian Beat is getting off lucky in the press. Stories about his contract situation, personal tragedies, a plagiarism accusation, and murder attempts should have reporters swarming around him like blowflies on a corpse. The only reason I can think of that they aren’t is that people really don’t care about him or the Funky Four. (Fun fact: The band’s manager really did cheat one of the band members, Jason, out of songwriting credits / royalties — or he thought he did, at least.) But even with that scandal, no one’s sniffing around the band except Pico, and he’s too incompetent to do any actual reporting.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the Hardys’ skill is their inability to find Brian when a ransom note shows up. Do they try to track Brian’s movements? Look for witnesses to his last known moments of freedom? Contact the police? No. They chase Pico for a while, wait, and then go out to Brian’s mother’s house to break the news to her, face to face. Fortunately for them, Brian is actually at his mother’s, and the ransom note is a fake. Unfortunately for them, someone has cut their brake line …

Ah, tampering with the brake line: the old movie chestnut, just as hoary as crawling through the ductwork in an office building. I’ve never crawled through a duct, but I know from experience that cutting the brake line being a sudden danger is bollocks. If you use the brakes at all — as Frank and Joe do on a mountain road before their brakes’ catastrophic failure — you can feel the brakes getting softer and less effective. You have a warning. That Frank can’t detect it also reflects poorly on the boys, or maybe on Fenton’s training. By this point in their careers, he has to know someone’s going to cut their brakes eventually, and he should have made sure they were prepared. I mean, the man has trained Frank to disarm land mines, for Thor’s sake.

With Brian safe, the boys and Marcus decide to try to trap the ersatz kidnapper. Although everyone suspects Pico, it’s Suzi B., the band’s fired dance choreographer, who had accused Marcus and Brian of stealing her song. Her ransom demand was her way of getting the money she was owed. The boys let her go, even though what she did was still a crime. But who cares? Frank and Joe seem to believe only attempted homicide is a crime worth their time.

And they get another attempted homicide; the music video requires a skydiving scene, and Brian’s parachute fails to open. To stack cliché atop cliché, Frank catches up with the falling Brian, and the two ride Frank’s parachute to safety. After this near disaster, the brothers start asking questions, and hey ho! they nail their suspect — Jason, Brian’s (jealous, but hiding it well) bandmate and best friend. Turns out he’s been trying to kill Brian because Brian always steals the spotlight, albeit inadvertently. It also turns out he stole Suzi B.’s song, then let Marcus steal it from him. With all those crimes, Frank seems concerned only with the parachute tampering: “That’s attempted murder … You could go to jail for that.”

Could! What is the source of Frank’s doubt? Does he believe the justice system is incompetent? Does he think a confession is insufficient to secure a conviction? Does he agree with Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons, believing “attempted murder” isn’t really a crime?

Congratulations, Frank and Joe! It took only four potentially fatal incidents for you to figure out what the hell was going on. Fortunately for you, the attempted murderer was incompetent!