Radical Moves (#113)

You know, Chet gets laughed at for his numerous hobbies, but no one says anything about all the avocations Frank and Joe pick up for a mystery and then never refer to again.

Take, for instance, Radical Moves. Frank and Joe start skateboarding; Joe, in particular, is pretty good at it. Will this be referred to again? No. No, it will not. Just like Joe playing video games in Attack of the Video Villains (#106) and both brothers firefighting in The Smoke Screen Mystery (#105), skateboarding will be forgotten. And how many hobbies has Chet had in that same eight-book period? Two, if you count his attempts to win a costume contest in The Secret of Sigma Seven (#110). Well, three, if you count him playing video games with Frank and Joe in Video Villains, but frankly, Chet didn’t expend enough enthusiasm for the video games or the costume contest to qualify, and in neither case was he completely blind to his incompetence.

So Radical Moves is based on the idea that Frank and Joe are skateboarders now, and Joe’s pretty good. The narrator explains skateboarding to the readers, often using Frank’s thoughts, and yes, it sounds exactly like a middle-aged guy explaining the latest hip youth craze to aliens. By page 40, I was thoroughly sick of the word “thrash” and all its variations, and I despaired that I still had more than 100 thrashin’ pages left to go.

While at the Bayport skatepark a few days ahead of the Bayport (*ugh*) Thrashathon, the Hardy brothers meet Zach “the Hawk” Michaels, whom Joe immediately recognizes as a great professional skateboarder. Frank embarrasses himself by asking about skater lingo (“Hey, just what is a thrasher, anyway?” [3]), and Joe embarrasses himself with his adulation of the Hawk. Zach emulates the Hardys’ stilted speech, and I’m sure he’s making fun of them without them knowing it. But after Frank and Joe foil an attempt to steal Zach’s skateboard by a motorcyclist all in black, Zach decides they’re all right and takes them up on their offer to investigate the attack, even if he’s not willing to tell Frank and Joe about his past.

If you’re wondering: By the time this book was published in 1992, Tony Hawk had been a professional skater for a decade, and he’d been winning championships for almost that entire time. (We have always had Tony Hawk with us.) That’s obviously what the author is referencing with the “Hawk” nickname; when Zach performs a “pop off” — going up over the edge of a half-pipe, then descending — Frank “could see why his nickname was ‘Hawk’” (9). Given that actual hawks can get quite a bit higher (Frank doesn’t seem all that impressed by Zach’s altitude) and aren’t that good at skateboarding, I have to think it’s a reference to Tony.

Zach introduces Frank and Joe to the skateboarding world gathering in Bayport: Rick “Rocket” Torrez, a competitor who is Zach’s ex-best friend; Barb Myers, who sponsors Rocket, used to sponsor Zach, and now doesn’t like Zach very much; Maggie Barnes, a skateboarding reporter “on cable” (18; Joe repeats “on cable” throughout the book, as if skateboarding is equally likely to be found on C-SPAN, The Nashville Network, or ESPN); rival Danny Hayashi, who Zach says “leaves a bad taste in my mouth” (28; I just bet he does, wink wink nudge nudge); and Chris Hall, president of Scorpion Boards and Danny’s sponsor.

Zach is evasive about the root of his bad blood with Barb, Rocket, and Danny, and he won’t tell the brothers about secret deals he’s making with skateboarding companies; Frank and Joe find this extremely suspicious, although why should he trust Frank and Joe with intimate details of his personal life? And why would he divulge information about deals that could net him a fortune? (He eventually tells the brothers about his plans to sell his skateboard design to Hall, and Frank blabs it to Rocket like a total Chet.)

The attacks / attempted thefts keep coming. At Zach’s house, the mysterious rider pushes Zach into an empty pool, then drives off with Zach’s board; in the ensuing chase, Joe tries to run him off the road — total villain behavior from Joe — and the motorcyclist tries the half Ghost Rider, swinging a chain at the Hardys van. (Not a flaming chain, unfortunately.) The chase ends in the Bayport Mall parking lot when the motorcyclist takes a spill going around a delivery van. The rider beats up Frank and Joe but loses the board before he flees. The motorcycle is stolen, which closes up the lead the Hardys bade Lt. Con Riley to follow up on. While the Hardys and Zach were chasing the thief, Zach’s workshop is trashed.

Zach eventually reveals his secrets. Rocket hates him because they used to work together, but Zach robbed the place for skateboard components, and Rocket was fired; Zach then quit Myers’s team out of guilt, which caused Myers to hate him. Zach apologizes to Rocket and says he’ll get Rocket’s job back, even pay back their former employer, but he doesn’t admit he stole Rocket’s idea for a skateboard. (He does say he’ll split the profits 50/50, though, after Frank spills the beans.)

Frank and Joe are left home alone for the second straight mystery; this time the adults are on vacation. It’s a good thing, though, because someone turns on the gas in the Hardy home to … discourage Frank and Joe? No, it seems more likely that someone was trying to kill them, since they were asleep when the gas was turned on and no vague threat was issued, as the villains so often do. Frank and Joe are not concerned, though. I mean, they survived, after all, and the house didn’t explode. Why should they care?

Well, perhaps because Joe at least is left with a “fuzzy feeling and … [a] throbbing at his temples” (77) the next morning. That suggests there might be lingering effects they might want to get checked out, but whatever — that’s not the Hardy way. Frank uses the gas as an excuse to laugh at Joe’s suggestion that someone is watching Zach’s home from the vacant house across the street. Joe’s right, though, and they find food wrappers and a cup with lipstick on it when they finally investigate. Immediately Myers becomes a suspect. Frank and Joe even let the police know about the break-in … eventually. But they don’t visit Riley to tell him what’s going on; they don’t want to get caught up in his “questioning” and “investigating” and “documentation.” The Hardys have to be free to fly and “carve large” (78), just like the Hawk, dude!

Later, Zach cracks his shoulder after someone pours silicon lubricant at the bottom of the pool he uses for skateboarding practice. Zach asks Joe to compete in his place, but after another failed attempt to steal Zach’s board, the Hardys, Zach, and Rocket construct a decoy board. (Frank cannibalizes “an old shortwave radio that had been gathering dust in a closet” [116] for some of the electronics, in case you wondered what had happened to their shortwave sets.) They let the board be stolen and follow the thief to the Bayport Arms Hotel, and they hear the thief’s first name — Danny — before the tracker and bug are destroyed.

After they figure out who the thief is, Frank and Joe are stumped at what to do next. Although it’s true that they might not have much evidence against Danny, they have two weapons in their arsenal they never use, despite how effective they would be: they could accuse Danny of the many crimes that went along with his mugging attempts (fleeing the scene of an accident, assault and battery, and attempted murder), and they could call upon the Bayport Police Department to use its full majesty and authority against him. I mean, this guy attempted to gas Frank and Joe to death! He’s more than a petty thief or even an industrial spy — he’s a menace! Well, really, it was his employer who broke into the Hardy home, but they could still say that unless Danny gave up his boss, Danny was the one who was going to go to jail.

While Joe competes, Frank uses library resources to discover Myers’s company is great shape, so she could pay for Zach’s board design if she wanted. Hall’s company, however, is about to go under, so he probably couldn’t pay Zach anything, despite what Hall promised Zach. Frank is so excited by this discovery he “almost [forgot] to return the volume … to the periodical room” (136). My God, Frank — you’re a monster!

At the competition, Joe battles Danny, but Danny uses his board to knock Joe down. Danny is DQed, and Frank advises having Danny arrested while he investigates Hall. Frank picks the lock on the back of Hall’s truck and finds lockpicks, silicon lubricants, and a black motorcycle riding costume. Hall smacks Frank upside the head and drives away, but Frank rallies the skateboarding community, who pursue Hall. Joe and Rick grab onto the back of Hall’s truck — bad example for the kids! — before vaulting onto the back of the truck. Frank, following on a borrowed board, chases down Hall when he abandons his truck.

Oh, that lipstick on the coffee cup? Total red herring. Myers previously dated Hall and hoped to be cut in on his new skateboard deal (or theft). So … she watched Zach’s place from the vacant house with Hall, witnessing his attempted larceny, vandalism, and bodily harm? Geez. And she gets away scot-free, despite her horrible morals.

The bad guys are arrested; Zach gets Rocket his job back and convinces his old employer to produce his radical board design. Joe, despite his high-intensity training with Hawk and relatively good showing at the *sigh* Thrashathon, decides to give up skateboarding and thrashing.

Thank Odin for that, at least.