tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45340173478082051222024-03-13T14:27:45.645-04:00Hardy Boys DigestsLighthearted synopses and analysis of the later paperbacks in the Hardy Boys series.Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.comBlogger146125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-37507412113018989222019-08-30T12:24:00.000-04:002019-08-30T12:24:03.582-04:00The Mystery of the Silver Star (#86)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6k3ucg2"><img alt="Mystery of the Silver Star cover" title="One of the Silver Star’s innovations was asymmetrical handlebars, although no one knows why." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y6k3ucg2" width="250"></a>So this is how the Simon & Schuster digests begin: with the theft of a bicycle. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After reading the final book, <I><b>The Mystery of the Silver Star</b></i> feels like part of a different series for two reasons. The most obvious is <i>Silver Star</i> is the product of a different era, both chronologically — it was written almost two decades before <i>Motocross Madness</i> — and in the conception of how a “typical” Hardy Boys book should be constructed. In <i>Silver Star</i>, the link to the previous paperbacks hasn’t been severed yet; <i>Desert Phantom</i> (#84) is mentioned early on, and all the previous paperbacks are listed on a front flyleaf. More importantly, <i>Silver Star</i> feels invested in the lives of the Hardys and their friends in a way later books don’t. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardy adults are part of the story. Frank and Joe have to ask permission for long trips. (They sometimes are said to ask later in the series, but in this case, it feels like a hurdle rather than a perfunctory line of narration.) The family has a Gertrude-cooked supper together, and the family banters during the meal. Laura Hardy worries about her sons, coming up with chores to keep them at home when a psychic predicts disaster for them — I mean, she’s listening to a psychic, so the book isn’t perfect, but the concern is real, as is her belief in her sons. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys’ friends aren’t ignored. Callie has a birthday party at El Caballo Blanco, and she warns Frank not to miss it, like he did last year. The description of the party takes several pages, and one of the gifts involves an inside joke that goes on for far too long. Chet serves as an inspiration for a role Joe has to slip into so the Hardys can catch the villain off guard. The boys borrow Laura’s station wagon — geez, I can’t remember the last time that was mentioned — to go on a double date with Callie and Iola, and when they have to divert to New York, they make sure Laura knows she can use their van. By itself, this investment in the Hardys’ lives doesn’t make <i>Silver Star</i> a good book, but the effort makes it a better book. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But the second reason is one I haven’t touched on often while writing about the series. A few months before <i>Silver Star</I> was published, Simon & Schuster released the first few Hardy Boys Casefiles, a parallel series with a different continuity. In the first volume, <i>Dead on Target</i>, Iola Morton died in a car bombing meant for the boys, and Frank and Joe took on a group of assassins called, well, “the Assassins,” and work with / against “The Gray Man,” an agent of “The Network.” Joe vowed to kill Iola’s murderer; the boys use firearms — not in the casual way, like in the early books of the canon, but in the serious, gritty ‘80s way. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">It’s kinda silly, but I get it: The Hardys must’ve seemed pretty hokey to the adults creating the series at the time. The Casefiles stories are a product of their era, and despite the series running twenty books longer than the S&S digests, the Casefiles were canceled almost a decade earlier, in 1997. (That’s what happens when you put a new book out every month, I suppose.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, <i>Silver Star</i> attempts to differentiate the digests from the Casefiles. Instead of a bombing, the instigating crime is the theft of a bicycle — an experimental, top-of-the-line racing bicycle, yes, but still a bicycle. It’s hard to think of a larger disparity in crimes than the one between bicycle theft and assassination. When the stakes escalate, Frank tries to downplay their experience: “Kidnapping is a little out of our league,” he says (97). This has literally never been true; the Hardys rescued the kidnapped Fenton in <i>The House on the Cliff</i> (#2) and Chet and Biff in <i>The Missing Chums</i> (#4), and as recently as <i>The Demon’s Den</i> (#81), they’d battled kidnappers. Later, <i>Silver Star</i>’s plot veers toward <i>Dead on Target</i>, as it includes espionage and the cooperation of a spy, but even that is used to illustrate the difference between the two series: The spy is a CIA agent, not from the fictional, ultra-super-dooper-secret Network, and no one dies. The spy the boys capture has the decency to be embarrassed that he was outwitted by teenagers rather than committing suicide, like the Assassin did in <i>Dead on Target</i>.</p><p><center>***</center></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Silver Star</i> has its good points, but as I mentioned above, they mostly revolve around the depth of the supporting characters and Frank and Joe treating them like real people. Chet steals his early scene, using his double-dip ice-cream cone to impersonate a reporter and make fun of the set-up: “Bayport’s pride and joy, that duo of dynamite detective work, Frank and Joe Hardy! … Eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy, the brown-haired, brown-eyed older of the two — … give me your honest opinion. Don’t you think all of this hoopla is a bit much for just a silver-colored bicycle?” (2-3). Chet knows his friends are working because when they are on a case, Joe is wears sunglasses — which isn’t true — and because “Frank always comes off like a walking encyclopedia on topics he didn’t used to know anything about” (4), which is absolutely true. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">As it turns out later, some of Frank’s arcane knowledge is that competitive cyclists sweat, and they drink water to replace the fluid. I mean, the narration specifically says Frank mentions this “to demonstrate his knowledge of cycling” (13). I don’t remember the ’80s that well, but I do know that we were told all the time when competing, even in more sedate sports, that we needed to drink water. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Is it any wonder Frank and Joe ditch Chet the first time he turns his back (for more ice cream)? He thoroughly broasted them. (Isn’t that what the kids say today?) And Frank and Joe can’t even come up with a decent parry when Chet says, out of nowhere, “I’m built for endurance, not for speed” (3). I mean, the possible put-downs for that out-of-nowhere line practically write themselves. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So racing cyclist Keith Holland asks Frank and Joe (through Con Riley) for their help. The setup has been done a bazillion times before in the Hardy Boys: Pranks / accidents have been following Keith during his long-distance charity race against Gregg Angelotti, and Keith, worried, wants Frank and Joe to get to the bottom of things. After chatting with Keith in his motor home, which is decorated like a kid’s bedroom with trophies and ribbons, Frank and Joe accept. As always when Frank and Joe investigate, things have to get worse before they get better. In this case, someone shoots Keith’s experimental super-bike, the Silver Star, during a race and steals the bike. Later, Keith disappears, leaving a note behind saying he’ll be back, but no one connected to him believes he left of his own free will. To find him, Frank and Joe solve the mystery of Keith’s neighbor, who has been arrested for espionage, and discover a rogue secret agent. Of course they find Keith and his bike, and they capture the spy. The end! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I mean, it’s not really that simple. <i>Silver Star</i> has a few complicating factors, of course. There’s a local psychic, Molly Frankel, whom everyone takes seriously — Frank says, “She’s always been legit” (37) — and who makes several doom-laden predictions about Frank and Joe and Keith. Someone plants a bug in the Hardys’ van, but they don’t notice him until he jumps out — while the van is in motion — and they don’t find the bug for days; the spy escapes, even though Frank makes the van go so fast the tires squeal on dirt. (When they do find the bug, they crush it, rather than use it to spread misinformation, and the villain mocks the brothers’ jejune conversations during their final confrontation.) When a suspect resists their questioning, Frank “wished [they] had something that looked like a private investigator license” (30), never thinking, well, Frank might be able to get a license; the suspect calls Bayport “crime-ridden” (30), not even knowing teenagers are the city’s main crime investigators. Frank gets an address wrong, and he and Joe end up in the middle of ‘80s New York, where they are accosted by a gang of knife-wielding auto thieves who are scared away by their car alarm. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Once Keith vanishes, the documentarian filming the race admits he pulled the pranks, trying to build some drama for the narrative. Realizing their investigation has uncovered nothing of value, the Hardys head to Keith’s hometown, Boulder, Colo., to look into Keith’s next-door neighbor, Mariana Bornquist, whom the CIA has accused of espionage. The CIA initially arrests Frank and Joe for breaking into Mariana’s home, but one phone conversation with Fenton gets Frank and Joe out of custody and into the thick of the investigation. (I like to think it wasn’t Fenton’s name or reputation that bailed out his sons but rather Fenton’s knowledge that the CIA isn’t allowed to conduct domestic operations in the United States, and the FBI should be in charge.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Side note: The narration contends doughnut holes are a local delicacy in Boulder. They’re everywhere now, of course, but <i>Silver Star</I> was written in 1987. Does anyone know if this was true? I mean, Dunkin’ Donuts created the first Munchkins in 1972, and Tim Hortons introduced Timbits in 1976, but I don’t know how great their market penetration would have been other than the northeast / northern Midwest.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe’s plan to capture Derek Willoughby, the spy who blackmailed Mariana into stealing weapons secrets, is complicated by the boys’ lack of operational intelligence, and Frank and Joe run headlong into the villains’ trap. Derek’s thugs kidnap the boys but find the tracker the CIA had planted on the boys without their knowing only halfway through the abduction. (It’s good to know the CIA suspects the boys are morons.) The thugs take the Hardys to Keith, Derek, and the bike. Derek is looking for the microfilm Mariana claimed to have hidden in Keith’s silver bike, now disassembled; Frank cooks up a cock-and-bull story to convince them to reassemble it, then rides out the door with Frank and Keith running behind. The CIA, in the area anyway because of the tracker, and Derek is humiliated. As he should be — not only was he foiled by teenagers, but the microfilm was in a bike in Keith’s Bolder garage, not in the super experimental Silver Star. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And that’s the end of the beginning for Simon & Schuster’s digests, and that’s the end of the end for me. Thanks for reading! I may be back with other posts, but don’t expect anything on a regular schedule. (Like you should expect that anyway, given this site’s posting history.) </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-79942360531067109712019-08-23T12:34:00.000-04:002019-08-23T12:34:04.977-04:00Alternate Visions of the End<p style="text-indent: 1cm">So <i>Motocross Madness</i> is an unsatisfying ending to the Hardy Boys digests. That gives me the opportunity to ask myself: How would I have ended the series? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">First of all, I would have waited until #200 to end the series. (That’s comic-book thinking; comic-book publishers love to make a big deal out of round numbers.) Continuing the six-book per year schedule, that would have meant #200 would have been released near the end of 2006 … or we could stall for time and release it in 2007, the Hardy Boys 80th anniversary. Making it a Christmas event, playing on the nostalgia market to make it a gift idea (more comic-book thinking) probably would have been more profitable; it would also leave the 80th anniversary year clear for the relaunch. I would have also made the final book an event: double the length, released in a hardcover edition. (More comic-book thinking; round numbers, extra-long issues, and special cover formats go together. I’m not suggesting the book should have <a href="https://www.cbr.com/bad-90s-comic-book-covers/">a chrome or lenticular or a die-cut cover</a> … well, if it’s a paperback, maybe a die-cut cover wouldn’t be so bad.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">As for the story itself, I would have the Hardys and their friends graduate from high school again. That would be more of a background element, though, like it was in the original <i> Great Airport Mystery</i> (#10). The real mystery would come from Hurd Applegate — or his estate, at least. Hurd appeared in <i>The Tower Treasure</i>, the first Hardy Boys story, and he most recently appeared in <i>The Secret of the Island Treasure</i> (#100), so it makes sense that he’d have a role in #200. In my ending, I’d have Hurd’s will leave a mystery for the Hardys; whether that mystery is a puzzle he constructed to challenge them or an ambiguity they need to clear up or something Hurd wanted resolved doesn’t matter much to me. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys would be helped by all the chums who’d had a role in the past: Chet, Tony, Biff, Phil, Jamal Hawkins, even Perry Robinson and Jerry Gilroy. Iola and Callie would get a chance to be real girlfriends and to stand by themselves as more than girlfriends; after all, Callie was class valedictorian in <i>The Great Airport Mystery</i>, and with an expanded page count, there’s no reason they can’t participate more fully in the mystery. Fenton, Laura, and Gertrude should make more than token appearances, and if the book throws in some connection to the Hardys’ forebears, well, so much the better. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Ideally, different eras and prominent locales would be represented; a trip to Cabin Island is a must, and they should take a Chinese junk as a ferry to New York, a reference to the <i>Mystery of the Chinese Junk</i> (#39). Perhaps they can visit mad scientist Eben Adar from the original <i>Disappearing Floor</i> (#19), or failing that, they can poke around the Perth estate from the revised edition. Their science teacher / track coach, Cap Bailey, who appeared in a couple of ‘50s mysteries, can advise them, or maybe something sinister is happening at Woodson Academy, Fenton’s alma mater, which showed up in <i>The Yellow Feather Mystery</i> (#33). Jack Wayne and Sam Radley could make cameos. Even one of the dumb mysteries could be referenced; an UGLI or SKOOL agent from <i>The Secret Agent on Flight 101</i> (#46) could pop up, for instance. The Blackwing Mansion from <i>The Blackwing Puzzle</i> (#82) might be another return locale. Heck, the Hardys could explore all the historical mansions in Bayport, perhaps using a previously unknown tunnel system. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Say, I like that idea. Linking these tunnels to Bayport’s history, like the slave trading done by the original owner of the Blackwing Mansion, or to the city’s Chinatown might give the book an extra hook. No — link it to the Prohibition era, during which the series began. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s what I would want, but Simon & Schuster would probably want links to the books they published after they bought out the Stratemeyer Syndicate. It would be hard to fault them for that, and I’m not against that. Unfortunately, those digests — the ones I’ve gone over here — are not as engaging as the original canon, and to be honest, they aren’t going to be as enduring. (And most likely, the paperback part of the canon, #59-85, won’t outlast the S&S digests.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So what might we add to this final story from these digests? WBPT has shown up a few times, and I think Jamal Hawkins is a worthy addition to the supporting cast. I’d even add Daphne Soesbee to the mix, even though she’s shown up only three times. Author Stephen D. Sullivan has made Officer Gus Sullivan a viable choice, although he’s less vital than Con Riley or Chief Collig. Granite Cay, the island in <i>The Secret of the Island Treasure</i>, might make another worthwhile setting. Happy Burger from <i>The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping</i> (#120) could pop up. They solve mysteries based around Bayport sports entertainment complexes, temporary or otherwise, more than a dozen times, so I suppose they could visit an empty stadium or two; they have a proclivity for amateur dramatics, so skulking around the Grand Theater from <i>Cast of Criminals</i> (#97) or the Orpheum from <i>The Giant Rat of Sumatra</i> (#148) might work, especially if the tunnel system had an exit there. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But I’m shoehorning; I don’t have any real enthusiasm for any of these, save Jamal. Vette Smash from <i>Wreck and Roll</i> (#185) could play a concert in one of those theatres for a post-graduation bash; that would work. <i>Day of the Dinosaur</i> (#128) introduced the Bayport museum, which is located at the former Sackville Mansion; the mansion would make a good stop on the underground tunnel tour, and the museum’s dinosaur park, stocked with “Dino-bots,” is worth revisiting. Psychic Colin Randles and his family from <i>The Case of the Psychic’s Vision</i> (#177) would be fun to mock, if nothing else. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The story would need the usual trappings: the brothers getting knocked out, people getting kidnapped, car trouble, strange forms of transportation (I don’t think they’ve ever used Segways), smugglers. (That would go with the tunnels.) The food should be plentiful; the storms should be severe. Every bit of crimefighting kit should be at their fingertips or under a coating of dust in storage, and science-fictional devices should be available. (Could combine that with transportation and put the brothers in the new Bayport Hyperloop.) Parental supervision should be nonexistent, even though the Hardy parents and Gertrude would be present; the boys should order the police force around like their own private security team. The <i>Sleuth</i> and the <i>Skyhappy Sal</i> should return. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The boys should kiss their girlfriends like they mean it, just once. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">We obviously didn’t get this, and we never will. But honestly, I don’t think I’m asking for too much — just everything I want. </p><br />
Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-67578648229144247072019-08-16T12:20:00.000-04:002019-08-16T12:20:13.212-04:00Motocross Madness (#190)<a href="https://tinyurl.com/yy2xfxep"><img alt="Motocross Madness cover" title="I would’ve chosen to show the exploding motorcycle instead of this." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/yy2xfxep" width="250"></a>So <b><i>Motocross Madness</i></b> is how the digests end: with Frank and Joe competing in a motocross competition while trying to find out who’s sabotaging the event. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">On one hand, it’s an entirely appropriate ending. It’s a Bayport story, and Bayport is the heart of the Hardy Boys stories. The plot involves a multi-stage competition in which Frank and Joe succeed as talented amateurs; these pop every ten books or so. (See <i>Warehouse Rumble</i>, #183, <i>Trouble Times Five</i>, #173, <i>Training for Trouble</i>, #161, or a dozen other books.) Frank and Joe make passing mentions of their history; Frank says, “I remember reading accounts of Hardys riding cycles as long ago as nineteen twenty-seven” (26) — 1927 being the year the first Hardy Boys book was published — and Joe says, “Sometimes I feel like we’ve been solving mysteries for the better part of a century” (40). Aunt Gertrude makes an appearance to worry about the boys’ safety, which is something she always used to do, and when she gave it up, we discovered no one else really cared. Joe also mentions that time “we rode down Bay Road to that House by the cliffs” (40), a reference to <i>The House by the Cliff</i>, the second Hardy Boys story (and still one of the greatest). Bayport continuity pops up in TV station WBPT and the <i>Bayport Journal-Times</i>, which evidently is a merger of two of Bayport’s newspapers. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Stephen D. Sullivan wrote <i>Motocross Madness</i>, and he’s probably the best candidate to write a send-off. (Well, maybe Chris Lampton, who seemed to specialize in Bayport-area mysteries, would have been a better choice, depending on your point of view, but Lampton hadn’t written a book since <i>The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping</i>, #120.) The book has a few of his hallmarks: Callie, Iola, and Chet head to Jewel Ridge, Conn., and the motorcycle offered as a prize for the winner of the motorcycle competition is an O’<i>Sullivan</i> SD5, with SD standing for “Stephen D.,” one imagines. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">On the other hand, I don’t believe the plan was to make <i>Motocross Madness</i> the final book. When the Casefiles series was axed seven years before, Simon & Schuster had at least one completed (or nearly completed) book in the pipeline, and nothing about this book screams “grand send-off.” (That’s not surprising; little about the digests suggests any sort of overarching plan.) Chet, Iola, and Callie are barely mentioned; the only pal present is Jamal Hawkins, who I think is a great character but who would be an odd choice to represent the Hardys’ chums in a final book. The continuity notes could have been bolted on, and Sullivan writing probably was a coincidence. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Motorcross Madness</i> is an inoffensive book, with few of the previous books’ gaffes that made me chortle and make feverish notes. But the mystery itself is half-baked. Sullivan needed more space to develop the story, whether to check on the condition of a competitor whose motorcycle <i>literally explodes</i> in the middle of a jump or to explain how Frank and Joe knew the motive for some of the incidents or to explore the effects of a bridge collapse in the middle of a race. Still, Sullivan keeps the story moving, which excuses a lot of problems. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So Frank and Joe get roped into charity motocross competition by Jamal, who — in addition to being an small-plane pilot — is also a pretty good amateur motorcycle racer. Since the event uses smaller 125-cc bikes and is designed to raise money for the medical expenses of the daughter of a motocross track owner, Frank and Joe don’t need too much convincing. (Today, Corrine Fernandez and her family would head to GoFundMe, which is far less of a hassle than designing, promoting, coordinating, and operating a motocross competition. See how far we’ve come with health care in just 14 years!) The prize is the O’Sullivan, which is similar to post-war <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_motorcycles">BSA motorcycles</a>. The O’Sullivan’s real attraction, however, is that Corrine’s father restored it, in part, with pieces from the garage of Gus Metzger, who designed a super-engine that was destroyed in its first run. (Metzger also destroyed the engine’s plans before the first run and died before he could build a second engine.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The problems start early. While Frank and Joe are signing up, a helmet-clad trespasser bulls his way out of the track’s office and past the brothers. They can’t be arsed with stopping him or chasing him, which gives me Spider-Man flashbacks. (The non-burglar doesn’t end up killing their Uncle Ben or even their Aunt Gertrude.) Someone uses a small fire at the pre-race party at the VFW to clear the room while he / she / they commit petty theft. During the first day of competition, one of the two top pros at the event is knocked out of contest and into the hospital when his motorcycle explodes during a stunt jump. (No one seems to care; the Hardys don’t interview him or check in on the investigation of the explosion; they don’t even visit the fellow in the hospital.) Someone tries to steal the first day’s gate, which the brothers do care about; they recover the money but lose the thief. On the second day, someone smacks Jamal on the skull, ties him up, and takes his place on the track, racing badly to eliminate him from the competition. But Frank and Joe discover Jamal and alert track officials; before <a href="https://www.snard.com/sg/guide/?ep=62a&fmt=0">the impostinator</a> can be unmasked (unhelmeted, I guess), he leads Frank and Joe on a merry chase through a nearby construction yard and escapes. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The suspect list is too long to list — or really, the suspects are too indistinguishable to care about. Only Justin Davies stands out, and that’s because of his unspecified grudge with Jamal. We don’t know how Justin and Jamal’s enmity started, but it has escalated; Jamal says Davies “nearly ran me over at a crosswalk last week. Then he tried to make it look like my fault” (45). Before one of the races, Davies uses his motorcycle to splash mud all over Jamal, which causes Jamal to start a fistfight with Davies. With all due respect to Sullivan, I doubt Jamal would have responded with violence so quickly; he’s an upper-middle–class African-American kid who probably endured more and has been blamed for most of it. (As evidenced by Davies trying to make the crosswalk incident look like Jamal’s fault.) He’s never shown a hair trigger before. I have to imagine it would take a shaved-head fellow like Davies using the n-word before Jamal flew off the handle; I also have no doubt Davies probably has used the n-word in Jamal’s presence. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In any event, a reprobate roll call would be useless. Equally useless would be delving into the accuracy of the motocross stunt names Sullivan uses, like “no-footed can-can” and “cowboy split” (61); the former seems legit, the latter not, but I don’t care. Anyway, the final event — an endurance race — starts without Frank and Joe having made any real headway on whodunnit or why. (I mean, they suspect someone wants the O’Sullivan, but that’s a no-brainer.) During the endurance event, thugs on a motorcycle knock out Jamal and another racer in an attempt to steal their rides. Frank and Joe — in the middle of the race, no less — defeat them, tie them up, and rejoin the race. The two thugs are revealed as outclassed competitors who faked injuries to drop out and concentrate on their thieving. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe regain some of their track positon, but as they pass over a bridge, it collapses behind them. They do not seem to care about the effect this will have on the competitors they passed. They end up tied for third, with Corrine’s brother, Paco, winning over the remaining pro, Amber Hawk. (I will give Sullivan considerable credit on one front: The competitors are pretty evenly distributed between men and women, and no one suggests the women / girls are at any disadvantage against their male competitors.) At the unveiling of the O’Sullivan, a masked rider steals the prize, racing off toward the construction site again. This time the Hardys capture him, burying him and the motorcycle under cement dust. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So the mystery’s solution is that there were two different groups working the competition, which would have been interesting if Frank and Joe had figured it out beforehand. The robbery-type crimes were perpetrated by the two Frank and Joe caught on the track; the ones that were designed to eliminate competitors were perpetrated by the father of another competitor, who wanted his daughter to win the O’Sullivan; he also sabotaged the course — including the collapsing bridge — to help his daughter. When that didn’t work, he turned to grand theft motocross. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So why is the O’Sullivan so danged important? Well, it’s because of the parts from Metzger’s garage — specifically, the gas tank. While Metzger burned the blueprints for his supercycle, he used the gas tank to sketch the original design, making the tank valuable … assuming its use as a, you know, gas tank, didn’t also destroy the sketches. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But the good news is that Corrine’s family not only has the money from a successful fundraiser, but they also have the O’Sullivan and the gas-tank designs. Frank and Joe have the pleasure of competing and another mystery solved under their belt. The last page has a note of finality to it; when asked what they are going to do next, Frank says, “Who knows?,” and Joe asks, “A long vacation, maybe?” (154). Jamal hopes they will “both be ready to rev up and race new criminals” (154), which may be a hint about the new series; the Undercover Brothers ad on the inside back cover, which faces the final page, claims the brothers will have motorcycles. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">As for me? Well, I was a little disappointed by the finale, but I did learn that “Klaxon” is a trademarked term, as Sullivan capitalizes the word. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_horn#Klaxon">According to Wikipedia</a>, a Klaxon is specific warning siren — think the “ahooga” of a submarine as it dives. This is a small consolation, though. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But I’m not done! I have one last digest to go: the first one. I’ll be back in two weeks for that one.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-39302365609299888552019-08-09T12:48:00.000-04:002019-08-11T02:19:53.393-04:00George Edward Stanley<i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/08/one-false-step-189.html">One Final Step</a></i> is George Edward Stanley’s last published book set in anything resembling the original Hardy Boys continuity. He published a few Hardy Boys Secret Files books after <i>Final Step</i>, and he wrote a pair of Hardy Boys books that weren’t published and don’t have a date in the <a href="http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/DG1231.html">University of Southern Mississippi’s George Edward Stanley Papers guide</a>. One of the unpublished books was written originally for the later Undercover Brothers series with the original title <i>Living with Blue People</i>; the title morphed to <i>Desert Danger</I> and finally to <i>Sahara Oil!</i>, but <i>Living with Blue People</i> is as nearly as perfect an encapsulation of Stanley’s Hardy Boys work as can be imagined. Like his Hardy Boys books, the title is inexplicable on its own and completely clashes with the Hardy Boys style and tone, and I can’t read it without thinking about how bad it is. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I’ve been hard on Stanley, but that’s only because his Hardy Boys books are awful. But that’s just his Hardy Boys books! He wrote literally dozens of other children’s books, as evidenced by the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110910150357/http://www.cameron.edu/~georges/">archived version of his faculty web page</a>; some of his works written under pseudonyms, like the digest <i>Hidden Mountain</i> (#186) and his Secret Files work, aren’t even included. He was a professor of African and Middle-Eastern languages and linguistics at Cameron University, a state college in southwest Oklahoma. <a href="https://biography.jrank.org/pages/1287/Stanley-George-Edward-1942.html">Another biography</a> has more astonishing information: He earned a doctorate in literature! He was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame in 1994! He was a member of the National Council of Less-Commonly Taught Languages, which isn’t that prestigious, but it’s fun to know! He taught creative writing to others! He was a working writer that publishers turned to, time and again! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">George Edward Stanley, who passed away in 2011, had an amazing career. His family and friends should be proud of him, regardless of what I say about him. I mean, his Hardy Boys stories are poor, which is disappointing, given that <a href="https://biography.jrank.org/pages/1286/Stanley-George-Edward-1942-Sidelights.html"> reading the Hardys and other juvenile series inspired his writing career</a>, but that’s just one aspect of his impressive life. The rest of his career extended far beyond most people’s achievements. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-75744355145704669682019-08-02T12:40:00.000-04:002019-08-02T12:40:10.707-04:00One False Step (#189)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yxeunbud"><img alt="One False Step cover" title="Well, it’s a picture that suggests a human element to it." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/yxeunbud" width="250"></a>I approached the penultimate Hardy Boys digest, <b><i>One False Step</i></b>, with some trepidation. George Edward Stanley, who wrote <i>One False Step</i>, had also written two of the worst books in the digest series (<i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-case-of-psychics-vision.html">The Case of the Psychic’s Vision</a></i>, #177, and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/06/hidden-mountain-186.html">Hidden Mountain</a></i>, #186). What if <i>One False Step</i> lived up — or down, if you want to think of it that way — to that standard? Or would it be worse if it <i>didn’t</i>?</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, <i>One False Step</i> is not in the same class as <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> or <i>Hidden Mountain</i>, for ill or for good. It’s obviously a Stanley story; it has the weird level of unimportant details that Stanley must feel gives depth to the story but just ends up being weird. Do we care Aunt Gertrude is reading a romance novel, <i>The Bride from Butte</i>, that has been written by the granddaughter of one of Gertrude’s college friends? No. Why would we? Neither the book nor its author pops up again. Do we care Callie has an identical (but distant) cousin, Mary Beth Edwards, in New York? Well, kinda, but Mary Beth doesn’t show up at all; she’s just a passing mention, a robbery victim whom Frank and Joe hear about but never talk to. I understand naming the Bayport High School cafeteria lady, Mrs. Conroy, but her banter with the Hardys and their chums is a waste of page space. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And then you’ve got Frank and Joe’s new next-door-neighbor and friend, Matt Jenkins. (No mention of whether his family replaced the Forsythes, mentioned in <i>The Mystery of the Chinese Junk</i> [#39], or if they moved in on the other side.) He never turns into a Larry Stu the way Colin Randles does in <i>Psychic’s Vision</i>, but we learn all sorts of irrelevant detail about him: He lived in Botswana, his father was a well-known mystery writer who died of cancer, his mother is a diplomat, and he wants a “normal American high-school experience” (8) like seeing Aerocircus, a weird circus that sells tickets at more than $200 a pop. None of that is relevant, except for the last one, as Matt drags Frank, Joe, Chet, and Tony to Philadelphia at the last moment to see Aerocirque, without first securing tickets. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, Matt also uses his Africa sense when Joe doesn’t read the chapter in his history book on apartheid; Matt gives him a lecture on the subject, which he knows about because he lived in Botswana and “apartheid affected all the surrounding countries” (3). That’s like a Canadian telling a Russian about Jim Crow legislation because, hey, Canadians are like Americans and right next door. Still, Joe says, “I should get an A on that test!” (3), and Frank says, “I learned a lot of things about that time too” (3). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That Frank ended that statement with “<a href="https://youtu.be/fiOMbqPHFwo?t=28">fellow kids</a>” should be understood, even though it’s not on the page. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Stanley’s handling of the supporting cast is a mixed bag. Chet in included only so everyone can make food jokes, which is standard for a Hardy Boys story, and even though that should be condemned (to an extent), I also don’t want to talk about it. Tony Prito is added to the boys’ trip to Philadelphia because … because … I don’t know why, honestly. I don’t know why the expedition needs a fifth boy, and Tony adds nothing to the story; they don’t need his muscle or knowledge or even his mass as ballast. He doesn’t even use his Italian heritage and food-service experience to complain about / laud Philly cheese-steak sandwiches or hoagies or Italian roast-pork sandwiches or water ice (aka “Italian ice”) or strombolis. I had to double check to make sure the fifth boy wasn’t Phil Cohen or Biff Hooper or Jamal Hawkins. I’m still not entirely sure Stanley was consistent throughout — not because I doubt Stanley’s ability to get the name right but because <i>it didn’t matter</i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Girls, on the other hand, fare better. Iola gets in cutting remarks about Callie’s overachieving nature and her brother’s comic-book collection. Callie appears only momentarily, delivering the news of her cousin’s robbery. Gertrude is teased about whether wedding bells are in the future for her and her friend, Mr. Phillips. (The last time Gertrude had a possible romantic entanglement, it was with Clayton Silvers in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/07/past-and-present-danger-166.html">Past and Present Danger</a></i>, #166.) The girls in Philadelphia like the boys, or maybe boys in general; when local girls party with the Hardys and their chums, the boys are never lacking in dance partners, and Tony picks up digits from many of them. The girls ask the boys to tell them about Bayport, which … well, where do you start? (After that, Elisabeth, the hostess of the party the boys go to, points out how rich her female friends are, which confuses Frank and Joe, but I think she confused the word “sleuth” for “gigolo.”) Later, Frank and Joe get a couple of girls to show them some Philadelphia “hospitality,” if you know what I mean. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(What I mean is “historical sites” and “lunch at an exclusive restaurant.”) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In Philadelphia, Frank, Joe, and their friends are allowed to stay with one of Fenton’s contacts, Det. Mario Zettarella, and his wife, Gina. Five teenage boys are a lot to have dumped into your house at the last moment, but the Zettarellas don’t mind; they have five grown boys, and Gina enjoys nothing more the feeding and care of teenagers. She was a stock trader for a brokerage before she married Mario, but raising a family — and cooking! — is more fulfilling for her. Why, even with her children out of the house, she doesn’t consider returning to a brokerage! (This is important, but Stanley doesn’t mention it again.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe say this is their first time in Philadelphia, but that’ s not true. In <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/02/shield-of-fear-91.html">Shield of Fear</a></i> (#91), Frank and Joe helped their father expose organized crime and corrupt officers in the Philadelphia police. (This will become important later — or would have, if anyone had remembered it.) They passed through Philadelphia in the revised <I>Secret Warning</i> (#17), <i>Twisted Claw</i> (#18), and <i>Short-Wave Mystery</i> (#24) and the original <i>Secret of the Lost Tunnel</i> (#29), but Frank and Joe don’t do anything there. Interestingly, the Hardys will return to Philadelphia two books later, albeit in a different continuity, in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/08/extreme-danger-undercover-brothers-1.html">Extreme Danger</a></i>, the first Undercover Brothers book. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The only mystery in <i>One False Step</i> is whether everyone in the book is brain damaged, or if we’re supposed to pretend they aren’t. The Mary Beth’s family’s high-rise apartment is robbed, an impossible crime with only a few strange marks left on their balcony. The Edwardses weren’t at home because they were at a performance of Aerocirque, the Cirque du Soleil ripoff that uses helicopters to support the tightropes and trapezes. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(I admit, that level of precision flying and acrobatics is impressive; I don’t believe helicopters could remain reliably steady long enough to support the equipment, and tying two helicopters together sounds horribly dangerous. I also imagine multiple helicopters inside a stadium would produce hearing-destroying levels of decibels. Still, I’d probably go see it.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, an impossible robbery of a high-rise apartment should suggest daring, high-altitude acrobatics acts faster than you can say “Wallenda,” but no one makes the connection in New York. No one in Philadelphia makes the connection to Aerocirque when another high-rise apartment is robbed in an identical matter, even though Mario is working security at Aerocirque and is called to the robbery as soon as the show is over. (His position is the only way the boys were able to get into Aerocirque, which is mighty convenient!) The police instead waste their time interviewing fired chauffeurs. Frank and Joe make the connection eventually — not after any epiphany or discovering new evidence but after seeing Elisabeth, the daughter of Aerocirque’s founder, point at apartment buildings while talking to an acrobat. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The brothers tell Mario, and he inserts them into the high-wire troupe that is going to pull the robbery. (These acrobats are all masked mutes, so the impersonations are not as difficult as one might think.) Frank and Joe are supposed to be anchors for the tightrope walkers who will cross over a street to a penthouse from an office building across the street, but one of the two tightrope walkers twists his ankle getting out of their helicopter. After the cable is fired across the street and anchored on their end, Frank and Joe are given the codes for the penthouse’s security and signaled that they must make the crossing. Walking the wire to the penthouse is no problem for the boys, since they do high-school gymnastics and have spent the day training with the troupe, but when they get to the penthouse, the security details they have are for the wrong manufacturer. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Mario and his men are inside the penthouse, so Mario tells Frank and Joe to walk back over and mime to the other two tightrope walkers what the problem is. The police need time to get over to the other building to arrest the thieves before they board their helicopter and escape. Why the police wouldn’t already be in position, given that they had the time to do so while Frank and Joe were walking over in the first place, is beyond me, but …</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, there’s no “but,” really. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So Frank and Joe walk back over the tightrope. It’s a little more difficult this time, but Stanley makes sure to bleed the scene of most of the tension. When the Hardys complete their second tightrope walk, they find the two acrobatic thieves not only knew who Frank and Joe really were, but they’re not even mutes. The thieves subdue the boys and load them into the helicopter, planning to dump them into the Atlantic, but Elisabeth, the daughter of their legitimate and criminal boss, calls them back; she’s OK with robbery because they need money, but murder is too far. Frank and Joe are locked in a penthouse, where Mario tells them he figured out Aerocirque was behind the robberies before the Hardys did, and he told the gang / Aerocirque leader he had to cut Mario in, or he was going to jail. Mario then leaves. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After she’s left alone with the captive Hardys, Elisabeth tells them everything else. Because Frank and Joe are held in the room where the gang stores its equipment — the storage area is hidden, but keeping Frank and Joe in the same room is still a bad idea — Elisabeth is able to fire one of the cable bazookas, and Frank and Joe make one last high-wire walk. Belatedly, we learn a member of the United States Olympic Committee has told Joe “if [Joe] kept at it, he could make the [gymnastics] team in 2008” (143). Seems like we should have heard about that sort of astounding c.v. earlier! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The gang cuts the wire just before Frank makes it across, but he catches the wire, and a friendly woman lets him and Joe into her apartment. (It wouldn’t be a Stanley story if we didn’t learn completely irrelevant and boring information about the woman, Louise Schuster. “She tries to help wayward teenagers,” Frank says (147), and I weep for whatever editor worked on this book. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">From there, Frank calls the FBI. Mario is arrested — he did it “for the money” (130-1), which suggests that if his wife had gone back to work, he might have remained honest — as are two of his officers, the Aerocirque acrobats, and Elisabeth. Her father escapes to the Caribbean, presumably with all the money. Crime does pay! The book ends with Matt suggesting Frank and Joe walk a tightrope as a school fundraiser; despite having decided never to walk the wire again, Frank and Joe give in to teasing and peer pressure. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">This moment of lightheartedness allows us to forget Gina, whose life has been ruined by the Hardys intrusion. Frank and Joe do not see her after their abduction, and Tony, Chet, and Matt slink away. Callow teenagers! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>One False Step</i> is a poor story; an ungenerous yet still accurate assessment would be that it’s a very poor story. The digest series is littered with stories that plumb that depth, and I’m disappointed Stanley would not crash beyond that low-water mark of ineptness to give readers something sublimely ridiculous or ridiculously sublime. This was Stanley’s last chance to challenge Dr. John Button for the title of worst Hardy Boys writer, and he failed at it. That he didn’t fail by succeeding is an altogether appropriate capstone for his Hardy Boys career.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-27261845493364278652019-07-19T12:43:00.000-04:002019-07-19T12:43:01.385-04:00Farming Fear (#188) <p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yxf8jzp4"><img alt="Farming Fear cover" title="The barn — the barn — the barn is on fire!" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/yxf8jzp4" width="250"></a><b><i>Farming Fear</i></b> is one of the few digests with a reasonable setup that is able to deliver on that setup. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In <i>Farming Fear</i>, written by Stephen D. Sullivan — and yes, Officer Gus Sullivan makes his appearance, as disinterested in doing his job as ever — Chet and Iola are concerned about their grandparents. Dave and Marge Morton live on a farm outside of Bayport, the old Morton family farm, but things aren’t <a href="https://youtu.be/6WFF52u5VWc?t=1044">all relaxing and bucolic there</a>: “shadowy figures” (2) are lurking around the property, the animals are spooked, and small tools are missing from the barn. Chet and Iola’s parents are on a Caribbean cruise, so of course Frank and Joe are willing to help! (Callie — who is definitely Frank’s girlfriend, according to <i>Farming Fear</i> no matter what <i>Hidden Mountain</i>, #186, says — is skiing with her family.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Despite the book having a huge retcon — the Morton farm is owned by Chet and Iola’s grandparents, not their parents, and the latest generation of Mortons has never lived on the farm — Sullivan wants to link the book to the series’s past. The farm was founded in 1927, the year of the first three Hardy Boy books, and Dave and Marge have lived there since Bayport was a “tiny seaside village” (3). This ignores that Bayport has always had a population of 50,000; I imagine when the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts they heard of a large but boring city down the coast. Since it’s winter, it’s vague what the Mortons farm, which is consistent with past depictions; I was never sure what Mr. Morton raised either. In <i>Farming Fear</i>, Dave and Marge have a lot of fields, which suggests they grow row crops, but the fields have a lot of ponds, which suggests they raise livestock. Yet Iola says they have only a couple of cows, and Chet says they keep the cows and some horses “for tradition” (9). The Mortons had horses and cows in the original canon, and the land contained a bog, but in <i>Farming Fear</i> there are no orchards and no vineyards, no mention of pigs or poultry; the only heavy equipment seems to be one tractor. What are Dave and Marge growing? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Also retconned, inasmuch as anyone cares: Chet and Iola’s grandfather is Ezekiel Morton, not Dave, in both versions of <i>The Crisscross Shadow</i> [#32]. Old Mr. Smith has land abutting the Morton farm in both versions of the next book, <i>The Hooded Hawk Mystery</i>, and the Abby Sayers estate is next door in <i>The Four-Headed Dragon</i> [#69], but neither is mentioned in <i>Farming Fear</i>; I admit both are prime candidates to be bought out. An apple orchard is mentioned several times in the canon but isn’t mentioned at all in <i>Farming Fear</i>; according to <i>The Melted Coins</i> [#23], Chet and Iola’s father bought the farm, but <i>Farming Fear</i> says it’s been in the family for five generations. In <i>The Pentagon Spy</i>, #61, Mr. Osborn is the Morton farmhand, although <i>Farming Fear</i> does mention the Mortons cut back to one farmhand during the fallow months, so Osborn could be laid off for the winter. Or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_a1_SO8hu0">throwing pumpkin bombs in New York</a>.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Soon after Frank and Joe go with Chet and Iola to the Morton farm, a tractor charges them from the barn. The Mortons’ farmhand, Bill Backstrom, claims someone rewired the tractor to start up unexpectedly and jammed both the gas and brake, but … well. Later, when the kids go on a horse ride, someone shoots at them. Well, <i>maybe</i> someone shoots at them; they hear the crack of a rifle several times, but it’s not like they hear bullets whistling by or the smack of a bullet into a tree or rock, and the only person they see with a firearm is the Mortons’ crotchety neighbor, Vic Costello, and he has a shotgun, not a rifle. Could’ve been a hunter, for all they know. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The next day, the Mortons’ sheepdog, Bernie, is stolen. The Bayport PD sends a pair of officers out, but they aren’t very interested. Why should they be? The crime didn’t happen in Bayport. Shouldn’t the Mortons have called the sheriff of whatever county they are in? Besides, it’s winter, which means Bayport is never more than six hours from a possible blizzard, and the cops have better things to do than look for a missing dog. It’s probably a prank, according to Officer Sullivan: “Farm kids have strange sense of humor, sometimes” (49), which — as a former farm kid myself, with absolutely no ability to self-reflect — I have to say I resent. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Because officers Gus Sullivan and Julie Scott shrugged their way through the interview, the kids decide to investigate. They track snowmobile tracks in the Mortons’ motorized buggy, which is an old, stripped-down VW Beetle with no body panels on it. After Chet makes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdu0xRmq3AY">a Batman reference</a>, they follow the snowmobiles to a ridge which marks the border between the Morton property and a neighbor, and the Hardys trigger an avalanche. Chet and the owner of the neighboring property, Leo Myint, dig the Hardys out. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After that … well, mysteries like <i>Farming Fear</i> makes me wonder about Frank and Joe’s efficacy. No, even though the initial problems are always ignorable — although maybe only barely — before they investigate, you can’t blame them for the increased violence and destruction. And yes, they solve the mystery … more or less. On the other hand, when Frank and Joe get involved in one of these vague cases, things <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIjISeW8QM">escalate quickly. I mean, they get out of hand, fast.</a></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Nobody gets stabbed in the heart with a trident, of course, but the two snowmobilers Frank and Joe catch in the barn that night attempt the American equivalent: trying to run them through with pitchforks. (Frank and Joe pursue them, but Frank drives the buggy into one of those pesky ponds.) A blizzard hits the area, knocking out electricity and telephone service. A realtor, Patsy Stein, keeps pressuring Dave and Marge to sell their farm so they can build yet another mall in Bayport. (Given commercial trends over the last fifteen years, I think Dave and Marge are doing her a favor.) Frank and Joe get treed by Vic Costello’s dogs, which he claims someone set loose. Someone tries to burn down the barn, and only with the help of Backstrom and neighbor J.J. Zuis do they get it under control. (For some reason, while putting out the fire, they don’t think to use the abundant piles of solid water, a.k.a. snow, to put it out.) The farm’s water tower is sabotaged, collapsing as the teenagers try to draw water for the night. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">All this is dispiriting to Dave and Marge, who tentatively decide to sell out. I mean, they blame “foreign trade” and “market fluctuations” (130), but they admit all the problems are making the modern farming world less attractive to deal with. Iola and Chet are stunned, but Frank and Joe don’t give up. While the teenagers are pulling the buggy from the pond, they spot the snowmobilers, Chet and Iola go for help; Joe drives Frank after the snowmobilers. They discover the two snowmobilers are opposed to each other; one, driven by Costello’s son, crashes, and while Frank and Joe load the teenager onto their buggy, the other returns, firing a rifle. The boys flee, and in a story as old as time, the villain shoots a power line, causing it to snap and crackle, and accidentally electrocutes himself. Oops! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The boys unmask — unhelmet? — the rifleman and reveal he’s Leo Myint, who didn’t want the Mortons or Costello holding up the development because his industrial park is hemorrhaging money. (The other guy who tried to pitchfork Frank and Joe was one of Myint’s employees.) But it doesn’t matter, really; it could have been Backstrom or Stein or J.J. Zuis or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Yeley">J.J. Yeley</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Jonah_Jameson">J. Jonah Jameson</a>. As long as the Hardys caught <i>someone</i>, the mystery can end, they can recover Bernie the sheepdog, and the Mortons can back out of selling their land. (Although at one point I thought Joe might be behind the sabotage — the only time he gets to touch Iola is either when he pulls her out of the way of danger or when he’s comforting Iola with a “sturdy arm” [25].) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In any event: it’s a back-to-basics book, with plenty of emphasis on chores and winter sports and little concern with “investigating” or “thinking.” It could be better, possibly; it most definitely could be worse. As it is, <i>Farming Fear</i> is pleasant, and with only a few books to go, that’s nothing to sneeze at. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-40517788009685335392019-07-05T12:02:00.000-04:002019-07-05T12:02:00.186-04:00No Way Out (#187)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y334yvlq"><img alt="No Way Out cover" title="Is it a ghost, or is Joe tripping on opioids? I can’t decide which is more likely." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y334yvlq" width="250"></a>By the time you get to pg. 3 of <i><b>No Way Out</b></i>, you’ve got a decision to make: Do you reject the reality of a story set on Cape Breton Island and based around a “Mazemaster” named Chezleigh Alan Horton, or do you roll with it? If you decide to roll with it, you’ll have to make the same decision every few pages: Do I care how Frank and Joe have known Ray and Kay, Horton’s twin children, “for years” (2) despite being, well, from Cape Breton Island? Why are mazes celebrated with a RenFaire? Would the opening of a new hedge maze really draw multiple news outlets, and would it draw a raucous crowd who supply thunderous applause? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">A reasonable person would reject this weird reality at some point. As someone very close to having read all the Hardy Boys digests, I do not qualify as “reasonable,” so I marched through <i>No Way Out</i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">You — again, supposing you to be a reasonable person — would expect that since the story begins with a Mazemaster (ugh) unveiling a brand-new maze as part of a maze competition, then mazes would be a key element in the story. Hell, put aside a reasonable person’s expectations: The laws of storytelling demand the maze figure prominently in the mystery. But no, <i>No Way Out</i> mostly ignores the maze and its inherent dramatic possibilities. (This will disappoint anyone who wanted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfpKXa-AhPE">a <i>Shining</i> homage</a> in a Hardy Boys book.) Without the maze, the title is nonsensical; I mean, it’s hard to find a “way out” of a maze if you don’t go in, but that’s a technical distinction reasonable and most unreasonable people overlook. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Instead of the maze, the story piles up other elements that go nowhere and add nothing: codes, espionage, a ghost story, rumors of a lost family treasure, Olympic archers. It’s all so pointless — even more so than the standard Hardy Boys story. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And we never do find out how Frank and Joe know Jay and May. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The story begins, as too many Hardy Boys stories do, with the Hardys meeting previously unrevealed friends in a far-off place, bonding over an unusual hobby. The far-off place is ostensibly exotic but as in reality as dull as the places your parents took you for family vacations; the hobby is supposed to be interesting but is presented in a way that makes a museum on a Wednesday morning seem livelier. In this case, the Hardys have arrived on <a href="https://youtu.be/g0pWTFean0E?t=5077">Cape Breton Island</a>, Nova Scotia, for a maze competition. But just as Chezleigh Alan Horton — he goes by Alan — unveils his maze and announces some medieval competitions, like jousting, that will lead up to a main mazerunning event, someone shoots an arrow into the maze, setting hedges on fire. Oh noes! And while extinguishing the fire, Alan discovers the interior of the maze has been wrecked as well. Double oh noes! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The obvious suspect is Vincenzo Blackstone — of the Roman Blackstones, I suppose. He’s a rival … *sigh* mazemaster who allegedly sabotages rivals to make up for his lack of talent. Unfortunately, no one other than the Hardys can be arsed to figure out whether he’s on Cape Breton Island. Joe hacks into Blackstone’s computer to get background and contact info; Frank copies it into his PDA, an act that is about as early 21st century as a story gets, and it helps distract readers from the improbability of Joe the impetuous meathead being a hacker. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Joe shows his lack of respect for privacy doesn’t extend only to villains’ private info; he also wanders into Alan’s private sanctum without knocking. When Alan snipes that his family knows not to “invade my little den unless they’re invited” (39), Joe says, “I hear you” — and then doesn’t leave or apologize. When Alan’s private phone rings and Alan pointedly holds off answering until Joe leaves, Joe still stands around like a lump. You’re a great houseguest, Joe. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">During another ceremony at the maze’s Renaissance Faire, Alan is attacked on horseback by a rival antiquities collector, Bruce David MacLaren. See, in addition to being a … in addition to designing mazes, Alan has a metric ass-ton of medieval artifacts: “A barrel of gauntlets,” according to Faye, and “crates and rooms full of other stuff,” according to Tay (22). Alan has so many medieval tchotchkes he gives them away as prizes; when Joe wins the amateur jousting competition, perhaps drawing on some of the skills he learned as a knight in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/04/in-crusade-of-flaming-sword-renfaire.html">Crusade of the Flaming Sword</a></i>, he receives a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgonet">burgonet</a>. For fourth place, Frank receives a leather belt with a dragonhead buckle — less cool, but more practical. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Then Alan disappears. His wife says she didn’t notice because she left the festivities early: “I got a headache during the last jousting match” (62). Headache, jousting … I get it — *wiiiiiiiiiink*. Because the area — maybe all of Cape Breton — has only one constable, and he doesn’t seem to care enough to call in provincial or national police forces for help investigate a kidnapping, Frank and Joe have a free hand, leading the search for Alan and the two suspects. Instead of finding the victim or culprit, though, they find an abandoned marble mine and a caretaker’s shack that isn’t as abandoned as it should be. (The Hardys don’t investigate the shack, instead noting the discrepancy and moving on.) Joe is lured into a cunning trap that involves a peregrine falcon, which slices up his calf enough to be dangerous to his health but not badly enough to cause lasting damage. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The constable finds Blackstone and his fire-eating henchman — the man is literally a fire eater — and the latter admits he and Blackstone trashed the inside of the maze. But he denies setting the fire or kidnapping Alan, which leads the Hardys to believe the pair is innocent of that charge. It’s not like kidnapping is a very serious charge, while vandalism isn’t! I can’t imagine anyone perpetrating that sort of deception to divert attention from his major crimes. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So the brothers have to find MacLaren. To find information on MacLaren and Alan, Joe taps into Fenton’s computer, which gives him access to secret information governments had given the elder Hardy. I’m sure all those governments would be thrilled Fenton has given access to a pair of “trustworthy” teenagers!</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Before we get to the end, we have to endure a great deal of nonsense, the sort of nonsense the Hardy Boys books thrive upon: the revelation that MacLaren is an Olympic archer, that the previous owner’s ghost allegedly haunts the estate, that Alan’s house has secret rooms and a secret elevator into the mine, that Alan is a spy who uses his code name, EagleSpy, as the name of his estate (or vice versa; it’s not clear which), that the previous owner’s brother is searching the estate for a hidden treasure, that the brother killed the previous owner, an “accident” during a “physical fight” (136) … It’s an exhausting concatenation of lazy revelations.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Finally returning to the caretaker’s shack with about fifteen pages left in the story, the brothers find John Brighthall, the previous owner’s brother. Brighthall admits killing his brother and covering up the crime, and Frank and Joe seem mostly fine with that — I suppose being siblings themselves, they’ve probably had fantasies / nightmares about such things. Brighthall admits MacLaren caught him at EagleSpy and took his maps of the marble mines as payment for his silence. The brothers cajole / blackmail Brighthall into helping them, forcing Brighthall into offer Joe as a hostage for ransom to MacLaren. Joe will be wearing a GPS, which, despite using satellites, will work perfectly in a mine, and when MacLaren takes Joe away, he’ll lead Frank and the police to wherever he’s holding Alan. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Of course the police are late, forcing Frank to act on his own, but everything turns out fine. MacLaren confesses to everything during his grand villain moment, Frank and Joe easily beat him up, and the police arrive in time to take MacLaren into custody. MacLaren does not say, however, why he attacked Alan in front of a large crowd by charging him on horseback when his plan was to capture the spy and ransom him — something that would have had a much higher chance of success if Alan (and others) didn’t know he was around. Just par for the course for <i>No Way Out</i> …</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Because I am a fair-minded person (HA!), I admit I unironically enjoyed some elements of the story. When Alan goes missing, Frank and Joe take control of the situation, outline what needs to be done, and assigns tasks to each member of the Horton family. Given how often the Hardys have been in this situation — the story specifically points out the boys have had to search for Fenton before, and even though the narration doesn’t mention any specific mystery (*ahem* <i>The House on the Cliff</i>, #2), it’s good to know someone remembers this — they should be able to lead the search efforts in the absence of competent law-enforcement officials. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I also liked the secret rooms and passages in the Horton home. Secret passages and secret rooms are cool. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But none of that is enough to make up for all of <i>No Way Out</I>’s flaws. In the end, the book is a bunch of loose ends hoping — in vain, I think — to ensnare some unsuspecting reader. Better luck next time, Franklin W. Dixon!</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-49985734596193994302019-06-21T11:09:00.003-04:002021-09-17T16:59:09.199-04:00Hidden Mountain (#186)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y3jy3boc"><img alt="Hidden Mountain cover" title="Rocks fall, nobody cares" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y3jy3boc" width="250"></a>I’ve breezed my way through these digests, and by and large, they’ve blurred as I passed them by. Some of them I have a hazy-but-fond memory of, some I vaguely recall disliking, but most blend into a flavorless paste that disappears into the wrinkles of my brain. Occasionally, I have stumbled across something like <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2011/01/secret-of-island-treasure-100.html">The Secret of the Island Treasure</a></i> (#100), one of the best digests, or <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-case-of-psychics-vision.html">The Case of the Psychic’s Vision</a></i> (#177), which spectacularly misjudges what a Hardy Boys book should be. Nothing comes close to the disasters like the original <i>Disappearing Floor</i> (#19) or <i>Flying Expess</i> (#20) or triumphs like the original <i>House on the Cliff</i> (#2) or <i>Mystery of Cabin Island</i> (#8). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><b><i>Hidden Mountain</i></b> is more <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> than <i>Flying Express</i>, but this book is closer to catastrophe than you might think. (Like <i>Psychic's Vision</i>, <i>Hidden Mountain</i> is written by George Edward Stanley, according to the <a href="http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/DG1231.html">University of Southern Mississippi's libraries' archives</a>.) <i>Hidden Mountain</i> doesn’t have <i>Flying Express</i>’s continuity errors or <i>Disappearing Floor</i>’s ludicrousness; rather, <i>Hidden Mountain</i> has a strange idea of what makes a Hardy Boys story a Hardy Boys story. Had this been an adventure of the Generic Teen Detectives — well, if it had been an adventure of the Generic Teen Detectives, I wouldn’t have been reading it, because “Generic Teen Detectives” is a horrible name for a mystery series. But if it had been part of that series, and I had read it, I wouldn’t have liked it, but I wouldn’t have found it so awful either. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">To start off with, <i>Hidden Mountain</i> posits a group of teens who don’t feel like the Hardys and their friends. Neither Frank nor Joe is in a “serious relationship” (1), and they date Callie and Iola only “from time to time” (1). The Mortons live in an older part of Bayport, which I suppose is the new status quo, but it still feels weird — and honestly, I feel the Mortons should live in a newer development, as refugees from rural poverty. At the Mortons’ home, Chet complains about all the food his mother has made, saying, “‘Good grief, Mom!’ Chet cried. ‘You’re not feeding an army!’” (7). It’s a bit like Cookie Monster labeling cookies a “sometimes food” — perhaps for the best, but weird and wrong at the same time. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Plus, Chet owns a shortwave radio. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The shortwave radio used to be a vital part of the Hardys’ crimefighting arsenal, but with the advent of cell phones, the shortwave radio lost its importance; the radio (called a “ham radio,” which is more or less the same) was last mentioned in <i>The Blackwing Puzzle</i> (#82), as far as I can tell. Here, though, the narration reframes radio’s role in the Hardys’ lives: Joe “and Frank had solved a couple of mysteries that involved shortwave, but it was almost always the bad guys who used them” (10). Boo! If Stanley had reframed shortwave as a Hardy thing — Fenton or Gertrude with an old set in the attic, or a childhood hobby Frank and Joe set aside but Chet seems have mastered — I would have been supported or even lauded the decision. But no, shortwave radio is no longer cool enough for Frank and Joe to have ever used. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, Chet gets a message over the shortwave from Darren Wilkerson, a former classmate who left Bayport suddenly with his family. Darren is in trouble in Hudson’s Hope, British Columbia, Canada, and he needs Chet to get a message to Frank and Joe — but the transmission is cut off before Darren can get off more than a request for help. If I had more confidence that this Dixon and his editor knew the series’s history, I would suggest this book was homaging to <i>The Short-Wave Mystery</i> (#24), a book which involved shortwave radio and a trip to Canada. (And during which Frank killed a lynx with a radio antenna, while Chet took up taxidermy. These were two completely unrelated events.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After Fenton pretends to exercise parental oversight over the boys, he gives in, arranging for backup in Hudson’s Hope and buying Frank and Joe hiking / mountaineering equipment. Once the boys’ “school vacation” (13) begins* two days after the shortwave call, they are off to Canada, flying from LaGuardia to Edmonton to Dawson Creek, B.C. — a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_Creek">real city of 11,000</a>, not the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson%27s_Creek">place named after a James van der Beek character</a>. At this point, the book becomes filled with weird details that go nowhere. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Gertrude laments over a friend in Wisconsin whose house has burned down, and the house was uninsured because her husband might have Alzheimer’s. Neither Wisconsin nor Alzheimer’s (or any other form of dementia) come up again; for that matter, neither does Gertrude. Chet can’t come with Frank and Joe because Mrs. Morton has decided to redecorate the house in “New Mexico style” (19), so she’s going to New Mexico and needs Chet to schlep paintings around. Chet frequently has lame excuses to avoid adventures, but this is a strange yet strangely detailed excuse. At LaGuardia, Frank and Joe inexplicably meet their old babysitter, Annie Wilson, who is working for the airline, and she fawns over them; on the plane to Edmonton, two flight attendants (Bonnie and June, rather than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_%26_Joon">Benny and Joon</a>) give the boys an extra meal each and stop barely short of flirting. This sounds like an airplane fantasy, although that may be because I don’t believe an airplane would serve an in-flight meal, let alone a steak dinner with anyone getting an extra portion, after 2001. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Flying through Edmonton reminds me of <i>The Viking Symbol Mystery</i>, #42, a clunker that deserves more vitriol directed at it for having the boys casually rack up 5,000 miles of travel in Canada in less than two weeks, flying from Calgary to Saskatoon to Edmonton to Fort Smith, over and over again. At least in that story, Fenton was supervising them from the same province.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In Dawson Creek — again, a real place — Fenton’s “good friend” (13), Rupert Kitimat, meets the boys when they get off the plane. Rupert is supposed to be a private detective, but the book frequently refers to him as “Detective Kitimat.” That title is almost never used for private detectives; “Detective,” as a courtesy title, is reserved for police detectives. Plus, there’s the question of who’s paying for Rupert’s time? If it’s Fenton, he’s running up a hell of a bill; if Rupert is donating his time, then Fenton must be one hell of a friend. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, the boys and Rupert take a pontoon plane to Williston Lake, a short-but-rugged hike from Hudson’s Hope. This flight disturbs the boys even though they were certified to fly seaplanes in <i>Viking Symbol</i>. Honestly, it’s like this book doesn’t care about the 75+ years of stupid continuity! Frank, Joe, and Detective Kitimat hike into town over rugged hills, encountering a bear, despite perfectly good roads linking Williston Lake and the town. Anyway, when they get to Hudson’s Hope — surprisingly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Hope">it too is real</a>, although it has only about a thousand people — Darren and his family are gone, and a couple of men break into their cabin, shooting at Frank and Joe as the boys flee. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">When the men catch up with Frank and Joe, we learn the meat of this stupid, stupid plot: </p><p>1) The Wilkersons are part of the Witness Protection Program, <br />
2) But their cover was blown in Bayport — the fourth time this has happened — so the family is hiking across the wilderness to the ultra-secret Witness Protection fortress, Hidden Mountain;<br />
3) Hidden Mountain is in Canada, despite being a haven for people in the US Witness Protection Program, which I admit is probably an effective place to hide them — <i>I</i> certainly didn’t expect the US to keep vulnerable, valuable witnesses in a foreign country, because it’s a stupid thing to do;<br />
4) The two men who shot at Frank and Joe claim to be FBI agents, sent to help the Wilkersons to Hidden Mountain, even though<br />
5) They are <i>so obviously</i> not FBI agents, and the Witness Protection Program is run by the U.S. Marshals Service, which is an entirely different agency that predates the FBI by almost a century and a half;<br />
6) Frank and Joe (especially the former) are able to track the Wilkersons through skills gained through a lifetime of summer wilderness programs, including a summer spent in Oklahoma with another of Fenton’s “good friends” (92), a Kiowa lawyer named George Long Bow;<br />
7) When the Hardys finally shed the two fakes, they run into real FBI agents — again, WITSEC is run by the Marshals Service — and Kitimat, but the fake agents blunder into the Wilkersons;<br />
8) Before the Hardys and the FBI agents can put a plan together, one of the FBI agents is “badly mauled” (101) by a bear and the other injured, evidently suffering a head injury so bad he’s amazed by a travois;<br />
9) But don’t worry about the bear — the FBI agents are allowed to run around a foreign country unsupervised, but they aren’t allowed to kill wildlife, so one of the agents shoots the bear with a “special tranquilizer” (101) that puts the bear into “a twenty-four hour hibernation” (101);<br />
10) So while the FBI agent is pulling his mauled partner toward safety, Frank and Joe insinuate themselves back into the Wilkersons’ / fake agents’ group, even though<br />
11) They have no plan about how they’re going to take care of the fake agents, so the boys are inert as they get closer to Hidden Mountain, not attempting to overpower the fake agents or escape them, although I suppose<br />
12) Escaping would be useless, since the villains have the map to the ultra-secret location that was given to the Wilkersons by some moron, and the villains want to kill all witnesses, so<br />
13) Frank and Joe open a sealed envelope the non-mauled agent gave them, which gives them orders that are kept from the readers;<br />
14) But I suppose the subtlety is best kept from the readers, as the directions are “rocks fall, kill everyone,” which is relevant because<br />
15) To get into Hidden Mountain, everyone must climb the mountain, which means, SCREW YOU, DISABLED OR INFIRM WITNESSES;<br />
16) After getting themselves and the Wilkersons to an overhang while rocks do kill the fake agents and gaining entrance to Hidden Mountain, the Hardys need special permission from Hidden Mountain’s “Supreme Council” to be allowed to leave (138), but <br />
17) They gain that permission to leave because even thousands of miles away from Bayport, in the lost wilderness of Canada, Fenton Hardy’s name opens doors, which is good<br />
18) Because I have no idea how the Canadian or US government resupplies a hidden facility, hundreds of miles from a city of any real size, that has a fifty-mile no fly-zone around it (forgot to mention that) and can be accessed only via mountain climbing, but<br />
19) The story isn’t over, because once back in Bayport, the Hardys are followed by organized-crime figures, and once the FBI arrests those, they announce Frank and Joe will be under FBI “around-the-clock surveillance” (153) for the foreseeable future. Hope Iola and Callie find government surveillance a turn-on, or dates with the girls will go from occasional to nonexistent! <br />
</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Hidden Mountain</i> is <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dg-avaa9a_HU&ved=2ahUKEwitxY3_mNPiAhVHs1kKHdkgBjIQwqsBMBB6BAgKEAU&usg=AOvVaw1PCdCtdw1Utso_upsG0ZXU&cshid=1559767297228">intensely</a> <a href="https://youtu.be/6xeRZIwXJuk?t=4017">stupid</a>, but its worst failing is that it can’t commit — like these Hardys, who aren’t in a serious relationship. Detective Kitimat follows the Hardys through the Canadian wilderness, but he does nothing to help them or the Wilkersons. The FBI agents show up, ostensibly to help (or take control — this is their moronic operation, after all), but they ignominiously are forced from the book by a bear attack, having done jack squat. They shoot the bear, but they can’t hurt nature’s killing machine; the agents must use stupid, science fictional tranquilizers that will put bears into hibernation for 24 hours, regardless of the size of the bear. The Hardys aren’t willing to hurt the fake FBI agents as they approach Hidden Mountain, even though they know the plan at Hidden Mountain is to kill them; they could have saved the men’s lives by trying <i>something</i>, but they’re willing to let them die rather than, you know, <i>try</i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I’m sure I’m leaving out a dozen moronic details — in Hudson’s Hope, for instance, the Wilkersons were warned they’d have to leave by a traveling salesman, which would be the opposite of an inconspicuous way to communicate anything in 2004 in a town of about 1,000 people — but I trust you get the idea: <i>Hidden Mountain</i> is a product of a line and era that often feels like watered-down Hardys, but this book’s stupidity is full strength. </p><p>* Which school vacation? The boys are out of school for only about a week, which suggests Spring Break or Easter Break or some sort of fall teacher’s conference, but in Canada, daylight continues until 11 p.m. That must be some time near summer — June, at least — but what occasion results in a week’s vacation from school in June? Even those poor unfortunates who go to school year-round get longer between the end of one term and the beginning of the next, surely.<br />
Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-74960759380831773292019-06-07T12:14:00.000-04:002019-06-07T12:14:05.982-04:00Wreck and Roll (#185)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yxkuoqpc"><img alt="Wreck and Roll cover" title="There's something creepy about those purple hands reaching in supplication toward the flaming guitar ... Vette Smash has created a new cult, and it bodes ill for those who do not rock." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/yxkuoqpc" width="250"></a><b><i>Wreck and Roll</i></b> (#185) is a standard Hardy Boys book. The plot involves Phil Cohen dating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_J-hmyAS6c">a singer in a rock-and-roll band</a>, and — of course — that band is the victim of sabotage, harassment, and light attempted murder. (No one has, as far as I know, ever been charged of attempted murder in one of the digests.) Everything goes about how you’d expect, and although I admit the culprit is better concealed than normally, that’s because the Hardys do little investigating in <i>Wreck and Roll</i>. They react to crises when they’re around the band, but they’re too busy not caring when they’re not around the band. </p><p>If you’ve read a half dozen of these books, you can probably guess the specific nature of the disasters: electrical malfunctions, theater mishaps, vehicular attacks. I’ll admit the sabotage of the band’s bungee jump and poisoning of a pre-show buffet was a bit unexpected, but we can’t be expected to think of every way to try to kill a rock band (but fail). Instead, I’m going to use Internet history as an inspiration and create a FAQ, even though we all know there are no questions about this book, let alone questions that are frequently asked: </p><p><b>1. Who is Franklin W. Dixon for this mystery?</b></p><p>Stephen D. Sullivan again. </p><p><i>1.1. How can you tell?</i></p><p>Sullivan doubles down on his namesakes in this book: BPD Officer Gus Simpson returns for this book, and Simpson’s son, known only as “Simpson,” works as the band’s bouncer. Sullivan also brings back the Browning Theater from <i>Trick-or-Trouble</i> (#175). </p><p><i>1.2. Is that a conclusive identification?</i></p><p>I also <a href="http://hardyboys.us/hbdigests.htm">read it on the Internet</a>. </p><p><b>2. Who is the returning cast for this book?</b></p><p>Phil, who is described as “tall and thin” (78), is the Hardys’ entre into the action. Callie and Iola accompany Frank and Joe to a couple of concerts, although eventually they lose interest. Fenton and Laura show up, lawyer in tow, to pick up Frank and Joe after they are taken into custody for the crime of being attacked. The Cohens appear at the same time. (In the original canon, Mrs. Cohen was in <i>The Bombay Boomerang</i>, #49, but Mr. Cohen never appeared in the canon.) </p><p><i>2.1. Where’s Chet?</i></p><p>He’s helping at the family farm, which is run by Chet and Iola’s grandparents, for a week. For some reason, Chet’s getting school credit for his labor. Iola doesn’t explain how that works; I can’t imagine Chet taking ag classes, but who knows? Maybe he’s getting biology credit, or maybe it’s part of <a href="https://www.skillsusa.org/">SkillsUSA</a>, which I knew as VICA as a high schooler. </p><p>I think this is mentioned to move the Mortons’ farming heritage a generation back — Iola and Chet probably have never lived on a farm any more — and to foreshadow Sullivan’s next Hardy Boys book, <i>Farming Fear</i> (#188). </p><p><i>2.2. Where do Callie and Iola scarper off to?</i> </p><p>They decide spending a weekend at a farm with Chet would be more interesting than hanging around an up-and-coming rock band or watching their boyfriends avert crises. </p><p><i>2.3. Is Phil cool enough to be dating a frontwoman for a rock band?</i></p><p>Of course not. Julie Steele, who performs as “Chrome Jewel,” is a several orders of magnitude cooler than Phil, although Sullivan soft-pedals Phil’s nerd credentials. He’s great with electronics and wiring, but he’s also the guy who drives an aged Toyota plastered with bumper stickers featuring his girlfriend’s band. Julie shows none of the rock passion one might expect, and the band’s lead guitarist actually says “rocked to meet you” (19), but still … by being the bassist and lead singer of a rock band, she’s much cooler than Phil. </p><p>Phil’s also the only significant other who comes backstage with the band, and he always brings along the Hardys. He’s trying too hard, and he’s dragging his own tagalongs backstage as well. Uncool, Phil. </p><p><i>2.4. Does Iola have reason to worry about Joe’s affections?</i></p><p>Not really. The band’s drummer, Jackie Rude, tells Callie and Iola to hold on to their “smart and handsome” boyfriends, or she “might steal one” (20), but she makes no moves on the brothers. Frank was never going to do anything, but Joe also makes no move. I suppose all those hugs Iola gives Joe are enough to keep him from straying … for now. </p><p><b>3. Is a middle-aged man writing about the music the youths love embarrassing or acceptable?</b></p><p>Mostly acceptable. </p><p>Let’s start with the band’s name, which I’ve withheld until now. Vette Smash is an acceptable band name, although the name conjures up the image of a person who would put a brick on the accelerator of a sports car and watch it slam into a brick wall in a beautiful fireball. (But not an expensive European sports car, like a Lamborghini or a Porsche; a Corvette, which suggests a more blue-collar sort of destruction.) I’d expect Vette Smash to be a punk band or a hair band, and while Vette Smash definitely isn’t the former, I can’t rule out the band being the latter. I mean, hair bands had been uncool for more than a decade when <i>Wreck and Roll</i> came out, but Vette Smash is only locally cool. We all know Bayport is stuck in a time warp, so when American audiences were rockin’ to Green Day, Nickleback, Maroon 5, and Evanescence in 2004, who knows what’s popular in Bayport at that time? </p><p>The members of Vette Smash are Jackie Rude, Ken Fender, Ray Chong, and Julie Steele, who — as mentioned — performs under the name Chrome Jewel. Other than the uninspiring “Ray Chong,” these are solid names, and we can excuse Ray because “Ray Chong” is probably his name. </p><p>Vette Smash plays “radical covers of older tunes, power ballads, and original compositions” (17). From what I gather, this is normal for newer acts, and as they grow in popularity, they shift more to their own music. (This may not true; I am not now, nor have I ever been, “hip.”) I’m not sure whether a band in 2004 would play “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv8GW1GaoIc">Riders on the Storm</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cPXwc-5Kw8">Jumpin’ Jack Flash</a>,” classic rock songs from the ‘60s, over more contemporary ‘90s songs. Grunge may be cover-resistant, for all I know, but it’s hard to believe a band looking for a national contract in 2004 would have the courage to play “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrCuMPeSu9s">Deadman’s Curve</a>,” a 1964 song by surf-rock notables <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_and_Dean">Jan and Dean</a>, even if the cover was “hyped up” (17). </p><p>On the unlikely side, the band hangs out at a bar that serves health drinks / food and no alcohol. The bar’s former existence as a gym and clever name (Vince’s Powerbar) almost makes up for that — almost, but not quite. </p><p><i>3.1. But this is definitely a middle-aged guy writing this, right?</i> </p><p>Oh, yeah. </p><p><i>3.2. Can you give me examples?</i></p><p>Sure! He starts the story with Phil telling other teens, “Grab your dancing shoes and prepare to party!” (1). Frank tells Callie and Iola they look “super” (2). Joe calls Phil “<a href="https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/copy-machine/n10022">the Philmeister</a>” (3), years after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Schneider">Rob Schneider</a> left <i>Saturday Night Live</i>. For some reason, he thinks Joe, a noted lunkhead, would know the word “obsequious” and be able to correctly use the word in conversation (61). He calls the band’s version of “Riders on the Storm” a “blazing cover” (63). He picked “Deadman’s Curve” as a song for the and called it an “old classic” (17). This is a man whose knowledge of youth is a little out of date, is what I’m saying. </p><p>He also has Frank and Joe conduct a normal conversation while driving motorcycles. This is preposterous, but to be fair, this is a long-standing Hardy Boys tradition, going all the way back to <i>The Tower Treasure</i>.</p><p><b>4. What about the agents who want to sign Vette Smash to a national contract?</b></p><p>The two agents are Walker Crown, a sexist Texan, and the all-business Kelly Miyazaki. </p><p><i>4.1. Sexist?</i></p><p>Crown always calls Miyazaki by her first name, while she calls him Mr. Crown; more importantly, he uses terms like “little filly” (27) and “little kitten” (36) to address her. I mean, he’s trying to demean her in front of potential clients, but he’s doing that with the kind of language that diminishes women. </p><p><i>4.1.1. So they definitely sign with Miyazaki?</i></p><p>No, they don’t. </p><p><i>4.1.2. They signed with Crown?</i></p><p>They did not. </p><p><i>4.2. Then which agent do they sign with?</i></p><p>Neither! Their manager dithers, and the band stalls, so Vette Smash doesn’t make a choice. And why should they? Nothing can go wrong for Vette Smash! There’s no reason to hurry — none at all! </p><p><b>5. Do Frank and Joe get to use sick martial arts?</b></p><p>Boy, do they! At the beginning, Frank is undone in fights by his reluctance to crack heads, giving Joe the opportunity to use hammerlocks and other boring moves to teach the unruly a lesson. But the Hardys and Vette Smash are set upon by mobs twice, giving Frank and Joe a chance to use their awesome moves to hold off the unwashed hordes until the police can be arsed to do something. </p><p>Frank uses a judo flip and “a quick chop” (118) in one rumble and “sweeping martial arts kicks” (87) in the other. Most likely Joe would have gotten a few good shots of his own — he has to settle for a slamming his fist into a guy’s gut — but he and Frank were busy protecting Phil and Vette Smash. Like when you’re running an escort mission in a video game, the brothers were prevented from doing cool stuff by the need to keep the feebs they were protecting from dying. </p><p><b>6. On a scale from disinterested to incompetent, how would you rate the Bayport Police Department?</b></p><p>Grossly incompetent. They don’t arrest any people who assault Vette Smash; even without Vette Smash pressing charges, the mob caused damage to property, and the police don’t seem to care. I mean, a mob pulled a man from his car and tried to beat him up! If one of those people had been African-American — as far as I know, Bayport doesn’t have Black people — in 2015, the National Guard would have been called out to keep the peace! And when Vette Smash is attacked again, this time by a rival gang, everyone gets arrested, and then … everyone gets released? The police take everyone’s fingerprints, and then nothing happens. </p><p>Nothing happens after Ken is almost killed by a sabotaged bungee cord. Nothing happens when an electrical fault sets the Browning Theater on fire; nothing happens when an electrical fault zaps Julie and her metal costume. Nothing happens when someone steals Ken’s convertible, stuffs Ken in the trunk, and tries to run over Julie with the car. Nothing happens when a rival band’s guitarist gets shocked by a guitar Ken was meant to play. It’s not just — <i>just</i> — that no culprit is captured or identified; I know justice can take time. But it feels like the police don’t ask the important questions: Does the band want protection? Who is out to get the band? Should we send an undercover or uniformed cop to be on top of things if another attempt is made? It’s hard to understate how much the police seem to be ignoring the nearly unignorable. </p><p>Perhaps Frank and Joe are to blame for this. They’re supposed to have “police contacts” (76); maybe those contacts were waiting on the go-ahead from Frank and Joe before doing anything. But the lack of work by the police and the lack of investigation by Frank and Joe does make Bayport seem like a lawless, early ‘90s urban hellhole (absent the hard-core drugs) that had been on the wane for a few years by this point but was still entrenched in the public mind.</p><br />
Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-50497196781694432682019-05-24T12:15:00.000-04:002019-05-24T12:15:01.381-04:00The Dangerous Transmission (#184)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/hardys184"><img alt="The Dangerous Transmission cover" title="Maybe this is a Game of Thrones still?" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/hardys184" width="250"></a><i>The Dangerous Transmission</i> has precisely two things going for it: 1) a surprisingly metal cover illustration, with a raven, the scavenger of battlefields, holding an electric tooth in its beak, and 2) a title that could have easily fit in among the early Hardy Boys canon. (It’s a better title than <i>The Secret Warning</i> and more era-appropriate.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s it, really. And it’s just those two specific elements — the cover itself isn’t great, and the title has flaws. Despite the picture that serves as the not-at-all fictional thrashcore band Electric Raventooth’s logo, the cover itself is dull, giving nearly as much room to the stultifying notebook-and-file-folder trade dress while minimizing the psycho corvid. The cover tag line, “Somebody’s got a sweet tooth for crime!,” is nonsensical, given that no sweets are mentioned in the book; that line has me primed for a criminal who has trained crows to steal either candy or cavity-filled teeth — both, maybe. The trade dress gives much too much room to that phrase for me to ignore it. Similarly, the book has no transmissions, either by radio or as part of an automobile, so it’s impossible to say the transmission is dangerous or perilous or even benign. The transmission doesn’t exist. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">There’s a story that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, <a href="http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2011/02/super-swipes-7-olympics.html">Superman editor Mort Weisinger thought readership would turn over every few years, so he’d recycle popular stories</a>. I have no idea whether <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-london-deception-158.html">The London Deception</a> (#158) was popular — I kinda doubt it, but I don’t have access to Simon & Schuster’s numbers — but the two books’ setups are identical. Frank and Joe are in London for a vacation, forcing an English exchange student who had stayed with the Hardys to pay back the hospitality. Rather than being drawn into the world of the London stage by high-school student Chris Paul, as they were in <i>London Deception</i>, this time they’re staying with London orthodontist Jax Brighton, who had stayed with the Hardys for a semester “a few years earlier” (2) while studying at Bayport College. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Jax isn’t just an orthodontist; he’s also a taxidermist, a pursuit he picked up because of his father, a professional taxidermist. This isn’t the first time taxidermy has appeared in the Hardy Boys: Taxidermy popped up as Chet’s hobby in the original <i>Short-Wave Mystery</i> (#24). In fact, it’s Chet’s second hobby ever, after old coins and the digging for them in <i>The Melted Coins</i> (#23). Setting the course for later stories, Chet makes his usual hemi-glutteal mess of his taxidermy efforts, creating a “lopsided” and “bulgy” (213) deer and then getting two pre-teen boys to finish the job. It would have been nice if the boys had mentioned this: “Boy, our friend Chet sucked at this!” they might have said. “But you’re actually good!” </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Also something Frank or Joe could have mentioned: This is the second time they’ve come to the UK and immediately run into someone whose livelihood is teeth. In <i>The Witchmaster’s Key</i> (#55), Joe starts the book by getting a wisdom tooth pulled by Vincent Burelli, who is a) named after the book’s author, Vincent Buranelli, 2) is the book’s villain, and iii) is also known as “He-Goat.” I think any book would be improved by adding a guy named “He-Goat.” </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Jax is making false teeth for an exhibit on the medieval period at the Tower of London, which means the Hardys get to tour the grounds with Jax and his friend, Nick Rooney, when there are no tourists around. It also means that when the exhibit catches fire and arson is suspected, Jax is politely but firmly questioned. Well, the police question him until Frank and Joe, who keep lurking around as Jax is questioned, drop Fenton’s name, and then that plot thread is snipped neatly off after Fenton vouches for Jax’s character. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But taxidermy and orthodontics aren’t all Jax has to offer the world. No, he’s invented the Molar Mike, which is a receiver / transmitter embedded in a false tooth and not — <i>not</i>, let me emphasize — a male stripper who wows the ladies with his gleaming teeth. Although Jax believes the Molar Mike is his ticket to riches, it’s actually the beginning of his troubles: a break-in that ends with an assault on Frank, a lawsuit from his downstairs neighbor over the Molar Mike’s creation, another break-in that sends Jax to the hospital, the Molar Mike’s theft and ransom for 100,000 Euros. (Euros — or “Euro dollars,” as they’re referred to on pg. 79, are the only currency mentioned; maybe this Dixon or his editor thought the UK had switched to Euros from pounds, because there’s no reason for Frank to pay for his “lemon drink” with Euros. In fact, there’s no reason for Frank to have Euros at all, unless he was going to the Continent later in the trip.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The suspect pool is limited. There’s a soccer coach from Toronto, who is pushy and aggressive but is so obviously a red herring I’m not going to look up his name. There’s also “AA42,” a former Soviet secret agent Frank spots following them in London; the Hardys learn her code name because Fenton tracked her down a few years before, and they have access to his casefiles. She’s eliminated from suspicion because Fenton tells the boys she’s a double agent now, helping … I don’t know, somebody — “basically on our side,” according to Fenton (125). (I doubt she’s an asset to either side; in her home territory, she’s easily spotted and identified by two American schoolboys.) I’m not sure how Fenton knows so much about her or why she’s in her files; maybe he’s still working with SKOOL against UGLI, as he was in <i>The Secret Agent on Flight 101</i> (#46). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Still, a goon is hanging around her, and the thug pulls Frank’s arm hard enough to strain his rotator cuff. This man is never mentioned again as a threat or suspect again. Despite his pain, Frank doesn’t seek medical attention for his injury immediately, setting a bad example for all the boys reading <i>Dangerous Transmission</i>. Instead, he treats his injury with a “tube of medicine” (70), presumably Icy-Hot or Ben-Gay or some other similar brand. He eventually does go to the hospital, but when Joe gets kicked in the ribs and knocked onto the Underground tracks, he too uses the tube of medicine to seek relief. I would say the boys are being too masculine for their own good, but the head injuries might be taking their toll, causing them cognitive difficulties; when Jax is knocked unconscious while retrieving a stuffed raven, falling with the raven on his chest, Frank “smacked the stuffed raven away” (71) like he was afraid the raven would attack him or Jax. Maybe he’d seen the electric tooth on the cover and was afraid it was the raven that was electric.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Oh! When Joe is kicked onto the tracks, the attacker loses his custom-made athletic shoe. This is a clue that goes exactly nowhere. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s because this Dixon has failed to set up that the actual criminal, Jax’s friend Nick, has prescription shoes. I mean, there’s enough in the book for the readers to realize Nick probably isn’t on the up-and-up — he’s the only other person who could have set the fire in the Tower of London, he’s worked all over the world and has “contacts everywhere” (108), and he knows enough karate to take care of the Hardys — but nothing about his shoes. Anyway, Nick is caught ridiculously easily at the ransom drop, so we don’t need to talk about him or <i>Dangerous Transmission</i> again. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Although I will mention plug London tourism. As <i>Dangerous Transmission</i> mentions, you can make brass rubbings in the crypt of <a href="https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/">St. Martin-in-the-Fields</a>; it’s a classy souvenir, and I have a rubbing hanging in my hall. <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/">The Tower of London</a> is also a neat place to see if you’re in London, even if you do have to visit while other tourists are there. I also recommend <a href="https://www.soane.org">Sir John Soane’s Museum</a>, which Frank and Joe don’t visit but should have; that place is chockablock with all the things a 19th century collector would have found interesting, including a mummy. I don’t know what to make of the Black Belt, a fictional karate restaurant Frank and Joe visit. At least I hope it’s fictional; I’m not quite prepared for a restaurant that hosts karate exhibitions and has such an on-the-nose name to emerge from a Hardy Boys book into real life.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-82133529023844962312019-05-10T12:29:00.000-04:002019-05-22T16:28:10.252-04:00Warehouse Rumble (#183)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y5fahs9t"><img alt="Warehouse Rumble cover" title="And now, let's everyone scream in anticipation (and fear) for the All-Rat Choir!" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y5fahs9t" width="250"></a>With only nine more books to go — the last eight, #183 to #190, then first book, #86 — we’re in the home stretch. I’ve read four of those books before, so the end feels even closer than it actually is …</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><b><i>Warehouse Rumble</i></b> is one of those books I’ve read already. I wrote about it a little in my post on the <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/02/top-10-cool-things-hardy-boys-have-done.html">Top 10 Cool Things</a> the <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/02/top-10-cool-things-hardy-boys-have-done_28.html">Hardy Boys have done</a>, and it occurs to me I was a bit unfair in my dismissal of the book — or maybe my reevaluation is a symptom of my Stockholm Syndrome with the series.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In <i>Rumble</i>, Chet entices Joe and Frank with the promise of “fame … fortune … all the usual stuff” (2) if they audition for <i>Warehouse Rumble</i>, a new TV show in which contestants compete in physical and mental challenges against a post-apocalyptic background. Since Bayport High is closed for a teacher conference, Frank and Joe agree. (Callie and Iola would rather work at a food pantry during the school vacation, which is on-brand for early-canon Callie.) Chet also convinces Daphne Soesbee, a friend who has appeared in a couple of previous stories <i>and</i> who also just happens to be nearby, to be his teammate in the competition. The rest of the book focuses on the on-set goings-on, which is more behind-the-scenes skullduggery than a reality TV competition. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Rumble</i> is another of <a href="http://stephendsullivan.com/wordpress/about/credits-books-comics-games/">Stephen D. Sullivan</a>’s contributions to the series, and now that I know what to look for, the signs are clear. He inserts his own name into the narrative via returning BPD Officer Gus Sullivan from <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/trick-or-trouble-175.html">Trick-or-Trouble</a></i> (#175). Daphne mentions her mother and her mother’s bookstore, also from <i>Trick-or-Trouble</i>, and <i>Spy that Never Lies</i> (#163) / <i>Trick-or-Trouble</i> villains / red herrings Jay Stone and Missy Gates make their third appearances. Daphne also mentions her Creature Cards prowess from <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/03/crime-in-cards.html">Trouble in the Cards</a></i> (#165), which spurred a rivalry with a new villain / red herring, Bo Reid.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Another tipoff? The name of robbery victim Ms. Forbeck is a reference to fellow author <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Forbeck">Matt Forbeck</a>; a brief perusal of his Wikipedia page turns up the name of <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ree_Soesbee">Ree Soesbee</a>, and suddenly Daphne’s unusual surname is explained. What’s the connection between Sullivan, Forbeck, and Soesbee? Well, all three have written licensed novels (novels based on IP owned by others); more specifically, all three have written young-adult <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance">Dragonlance</a> novels in the years just before <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> came out. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I’m not sure why <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> made me cast my mind toward the cool things Frank and Joe have done over the years, given that a similar conceit — <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/11/maximum-challenge-132.html"><i>Maximum Challenge</i></a> (#132), in which the Hardys and their chums compete in a TV show with physical challenges — felt like a run-of-the-mill happening in Frank and Joe's life. Perhaps it’s because I prefer <i>Warehouse Rumble</i>’s post-apocalyptic aesthetic to the generic athletic competition in <i>Maximum Challenge</i>. Perhaps it’s because <i>Rumble</i> still feels au courant, and <i>Challenge</i> is an <i>American Gladiators</i> pastiche that was published just before <i>Gladiators</i> went off the air in 1996. I don’t know.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">It certainly isn’t the promise of intellectual challenges. <i>Rumble</i> is scant on the details of the puzzles the contestants have to solve, but it doesn’t skint on describing the physical challenges. In fact, the book is overwhelmingly physical, removing intellectual traces — other than the narrator’s occasional impressive vocabulary word, such as “sardonically” (59) and “decrepitation” (105). The trash talk between the Hardys and their rivals is embarrassing. For instance, Jay Stone call the Hardys, Daphne, and Chet “the Boy Scout Brothers and their twin sidekicks” (7), which is more descriptive than damning. Bo Reid tells Joe, “I got a message for your brother and Morton. … The word is … <i>pain</i>! Too bad it’s your turn to play delivery boy.” Joe responds, “I think I’ll mark this one ‘Return to sender’” (42). This is too wordy and too weak for even a young reader to care about. The little time it would have taken to improve this banter might have improved this book by an order of magnitude, managing to put a little more juice into rivalries with interchangeable / forgettable villains.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">More noticeably, though, Frank and Joe show little interest in unraveling the mystery around them, even when the mystery seems likely to crush them under and metal bricks or electrocute them or give them a megadose of sedatives or unleash an army of rats upon them. Huh, Frank and Joe say, maybe filming in a warehouse abandoned for twenty years isn’t a good idea, and TV / high school rivalries sure can get dangerous! They are right, but their lack of curiosity is disturbing.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The book concentrates on the physicalities. Their athletic challenges on the show get a great deal of attention, as you would expect. Chet brags he’s “strong like bull, swift like eagle” (47), like a latter-day <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Conried#TV_appearances">Uncle Tonoose</a>. The Hardys and Chet get into fights on set as well; Frank uses his “martial arts training” to land a “karate chop” (34) and a spin kick, and Joe uses a full nelson to subdue a villain. Even the first clue is uncovered by Chet smacking his head into a brick chimney during a fight with Bo Reid.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That clue is a skeleton, later revealed to be Joss Orlando, a Bayport man who went out for groceries fifteen years before but never came home. The man might as well have been named “Harry Tanwick,” given how little Frank and Joe care about learning more about him. They show only a scintilla of curiosity about a gold ring with emeralds that Daphne finds in the warehouse basement, even though it’s obviously valuable. I suppose I get it: When you’re competing on a game show on which you nearly die and no one seems to care, you must concentrate on staying alive rather than protecting the property rights of the bourgeoisie. Besides, as Frank says, “Danger is bread and butter to some people” (33), which doesn’t qualify as a bon mot, but works well enough to explain Frank and Joe — even if Frank was talking about someone else when he says that. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">We don’t get to see who wins <i>Warehouse Rumble</i>. We do know it won’t be Frank and Joe; they are eliminated in the semifinals by Bo Reid and Lily Sabatine. Daphne and Chet do make it to the finals, where they will face Reid and a new partner, as Lily is arrested after her victory but before the finals. As a consolation prize, Frank and Joe do receive coupons to local businesses, like the Town Spa (a restaurant) and a $1,000-dollar “scholarship bond” (134), which as far as I can tell isn’t a real thing. Still, it’s nice to see Frank and Joe getting rewarded for what they’ve done, even if they aren’t getting rewarded for solving a mystery. (Fenton says they will get a reward for recovering the stolen goods, which will go straight into their college funds, but we don’t see anyone with money forking over the cash or even making that promise.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Circling around this disaster of a mystery is a pair of outsiders. Clark Hessmann is a local preservationist who wants to prevent the building <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> is filming in from being demolished after filming is over; the building’s owner, Herman Jackson, has a restraining order against him. More annoying is TV reporter Stacia Allen of WSDS, who is always barging into the <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> set and (even though it doesn’t apply) bleating about freedom of press, allowing her to publicize many of the set disasters. (In actuality, WSDS is a Spanish-language AM radio station in Michigan.) If the show’s producer had invested in better security, closed the set, and demanded at least minimal support from a network publicist, the book’s most annoying character and a quarter of the book’s plot points would have been wiped out. (As in <i>The Test Case</i> [#171], <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> takes a dim view of the press.)<br />
<p style="text-indent: 1cm">Also: <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> should have done a better job taking care of the contestants. The show acquires an on-set paramedic only only after a few serious accidents: a collapsed light tower that has sparking electric wires over water, a collapsed catwalk, a collapsed floor, rat attacks, water that changes color from blue to green to yellow-green for no reason. (I don’t know what the latter portends, but it can’t be good.) These are people in an athletic competition inside a dilapidated structure! You need medical staff on set regardless of whether someone is trying to kill contestants.<br />
<p style="text-indent: 1cm">Everyone should also take a dim view of the police, as Con Riley and Officer Sullivan seem more interested in avoiding work than solving a crime. The pair find enforcing restraining orders, court writs, and trespassing laws a headache and wish the people involved would just shut up. They are slack on investigating the stolen ring and notifying Joss Orlando’s next of kin. Only when Ms. Forbeck shows up and claims the ring do the police act, and then they overreact, hauling Daphne down to the police station for a robbery that occurred when she was in diapers. Then the narration says the police “decided to let” Daphne’s mother sit in on Daphne’s interrogation (122). They have to! You can’t interview a minor without an adult present! Worse, Mrs. Soesbee wouldn’t even know her daughter was in custody if Frank and Joe hadn’t snuck away to call her.<br />
<p style="text-indent: 1cm">The rest of Ms. Forbeck’s stolen property is still on set — farther down the chimney Orlando was found in, in fact — but the police can’t find it because it wasn’t in the exact same place Daphne discovered the ring. The people behind the catastrophes on set are siblings Lily and Todd Sabatine, Orlando’s children. (Lily and Todd’s brilliance is described as their ability to give alibis for each other, which shouldn’t have helped; of course they’d lie for each other! The only way this works is if <i>no one cares enough to investigate</i>.) If the police had tracked them down to notify them of their father’s passing or searched the warehouse more assiduously, the case would have been solved and all sorts of menace prevented. Instead — once again — the Bayport PD let a bunch of teenagers do their jobs for them, which in this case involved only showing up to the scene of the crime (the warehouse) at night and beating up a girl and her brother. <br />
<p style="text-indent: 1cm">Which Frank and Joe eventually did. I mean, everyone had to wait until the Hardys found the time. No need to hurry, after all.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-16610250601519707612019-04-26T13:49:00.002-04:002020-09-19T12:31:20.040-04:00The Case of the Psychic's Vision (#177)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y3fq4sar"><img alt="The Case of the Psychic’s Vision cover" title="No tarot cards were mentioned in this story, nor was a crystal ball used." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y3fq4sar" width="250"></a><i><b>The Case of the Psychic’s Vision</b></i> is a weird one, and that’s not meant as a compliment. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">First, it presupposes that psychic powers are real, and not in a nebulous or deniable manner; psychic powers can reveal that which is hidden or forgotten. Real psychics are the rule, although the existence of fraudulent ones is acknowledged. Second, Fenton not only believes in these psychics but thinks they have probative value in investigations, both public and private. (They do not, of course.) Third, the Dixon writing <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> posits that everyone’s latent psychic abilities can be developed. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Edward_Stanley#As_Franklin_W._Dixon_(for_Hardy_Boys)">Wikipedia says</a> <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> was the first of four Hardy Boys digests written by George Edward Stanley, although [CITATION NEEDED]. (The University of Southern Mississippi has Stanley’s papers, and the <a href="http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/DG1231.html">collection lists manuscripts and accompanying correspondence</a> for <i>Psychic’s Vision</i>, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/09/mystery-of-black-rhino-178.html">The Mystery of the Black Rhino</a></i> [#178], and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-secret-of-soldiers-gold-182.html">The Secret of the Soldier’s Gold</a></i> [#182], which would seem to settle the matter for those books; no mention is made of a manuscript of <i>One False Step</i> [#189]. <b><i>ETA on 8 June 2019</b>: The Southern Mississippi archive page also lists <i>Hidden Mountain</i>, #186, as one of his works</i>.) Stanley wrote dozens of juvenile stories, including five Nancy Drew books, the Third Grade Detectives series, and the Spinetinglers series, the latter under the pseudonym of M.T. Coffin. Weld those last two together, and you can see how <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> might have come together. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In an interview, Stanley <a href="https://biography.jrank.org/pages/1286/Stanley-George-Edward-1942-Sidelights.html">mentioned reading Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, and the Hardy Boys as a child</a>, and that inspired him to be a mystery writer. Stanley was born in 1942, so the Hardy Boys books he read would have been the original texts of the canon. That influence is visible in <i>Psychic’s Vision</i>. Chet is back to being a prankster, like in the early days; the author remembers the Hardys live at the corner of High and Elm (which shouldn’t be hard to remember, but, well …). The Hardy name gets a new pal excused for being late to class and causes a Vermont police officer to tell a bunch of kids everything about an ongoing hostage situation. A plot point in which a wealthy man pressures an employer to fire certain employees or risk financial ruin seems straight out of the first decade of the series. The book references early mysteries as well: “We got this airplane-shaped trophy when we solved a mystery at the airport … and we got this car-shaped trophy when we found out who was stealing all of the cars out on Shore Road” (44-45). These are clear references to <i>The Shore Road Mystery</i> (#6) and <i>The Great Airport Mystery</i> (#9), although they received trophies in neither book. Still, it’s a better way to shoehorn references to old mysteries into the book than most. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The psychic angle is an element that could have existed in the early books; certainly the original <i>Disappearing Floor</i> (#19) has events far less believable than psychic phenomena, but on the other hand, a fake psychic seems to be the kind of nonsense the Hardys would fight against — like they fought against a quack eye doctor in the original <i>A Figure in Hiding</i> (#16). But Colin Randles and his family are all good psychics trying to hide their abilities in Bayport. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, except for Colin’s sister, Nellie, who wants to hold a séance to cement her friendship with Iola and Callie. Chet sees this as an opportunity for a prank, and he and the Hardys hide near the Shaws’ gazebo. When Iola suggests they try to contact Roberta Sanders, a former P.E. teacher at BHS who went to South America and “just disappeared” (24), Chet responds. Now, it seems like a former teacher vanishing in South America is right up the Hardys’ alley, something they would have been hired to investigate, but I suppose “South America” is too large an area to search, even for the Hardys. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">While Nellie and Colin’s parents break into the Shaws’ back yard to protest their daughter’s stupidity and people taking advantage of it, something grapples with Frank, drawing him into the bushes as it tries to strangle him. He doesn’t see who it is; he blames Colin, but it plainly wasn’t. But the culprit is never revealed. The only possible explanation, based on in-story logic, is that something supernatural tried to kill Frank. The only possible explanation, based on real-world logic, is that an old rival tried to kill Frank and was scared off by the kerfuffle caused by the Randleses. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Despite this otherworldly visitation, the main takeaway is that Chet went too far and the Randleses are good people — such good people, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Shaw wants to hire the unemployed Mr. and Mrs. Randles to run a new hardware store he just picked up. How fortunate! It’s always nice when capitalism works out for the little people. Everything’s going to be fine! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Except it isn’t. After demonstrating his psychic abilities by probably saving Joe and Phil Cohen from a fatal car accident and teaching the Hardys how to develop their own psychic abilities (!), Colin upsets the pretty, popular little world of pretty, popular girl Melanie Johnson by telling her she had been kidnapped as a two-year-old. This is the plot’s inciting event, but it occurs 55 pages into the book. No wonder this book runs 166 pages! (This is probably the longest book since Simon & Schuster took over the series at #86.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, you make pretty, popular girls unhappy, and you’ll reap the consequences. In this case, Melanie’s boyfriend (and family chauffeur) pummels Colin in a Bayport back alley, necessitating that the Hardys track down Colin’s dumped body before taking him to Bayport General Hospital, the Hardys’ favorite emergency healthcare provider. (Another reason the book is 166 pages: It takes nine pages to find Colin and take him to the hospital.) The assistant principal yells at Colin with unwarranted venom, saying, “I despise people like you” (60). (Frank shrugs off Mr. Brooks’s abuse, which is horrible.) Melanie’s popular friends shoplift from Mr. Shaw’s hardware store, with the police shrugging when the Randleses report it. Pretty standard stuff, really. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But Melanie is pretty, popular, and <i>rich</i>, and when you make pretty, popular, <i>rich</i> girls unhappy, you also reap the economic consequences: Mr. Johnson threatens to call in Mr. Shaw’s loans unless he cans the Randleses. Mr. Shaw caves. It’s always crushing when capitalism <i>doesn’t</i> work out for the little people, which seems like it happens far more often than capitalism working out, although I suppose there’s a bit of confirmation bias there.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Randleses head back to New York, but on the spur of the moment, Frank and Joe offer to let Colin stay at their home. They don’t consult with Fenton or Laura; when Mrs. Randles asks if the elder Hardys will be OK with an unforeseen lodger, neither brother opts to telephone a parent to ask. Sure! say the boys, and sure enough, they’re right. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">With Colin back at BHS, things begin happening. Melanie wants to talk to Colin at her house when her parents are out, and shockingly, it’s not a trap. Melanie kinda remembers the abduction and wants Colin’s psychic help. (She also tells the boys her father told her to date the chauffeur, which is creeeeepy.) Before Colin can deliver any definitive info, the Johnsons come home and find the boys; after Mr. Johnson pulls a gun on them, Colin and the Hardys and escape through the back. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">To up the creepy ante, Mr. Johnson commits Melanie to a psychiatric hospital. The boys track her down, but before Melanie can tell them anything, Mr. Johnson shows up, tries to strangle Colin, then collapses in tears after nurses separate them. The next day, at his law firm — the exquisitely named Stanley, Stanley, and Stanley — Mr. Johnson comes clean: His ex-con first wife gave birth to Melanie after their divorce, and when she started dating a thug, Mr. Johnson abducted Melanie to protect her from a criminal environment. He and his next wife, the current Mrs. Johnson, decided not to tell Melanie the truth. This should be a major scandal — non-custodial abductions are crimes, after all — but a combination of Mrs. Johnson’s indifference (she never filed a missing-person report for Melanie) and Mr. Johnson’s riches means he’ll probably escape all punishment. And all adverse publicity, as the story doesn’t show up in the <i>Bayport Times</i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That puts the book at about 150 pages, but Stanley has more to his story, so on we go. Melanie wants to track down her biological mother, so she asks Colin for help — the psychic, not the private detectives. Colin uses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometry_(paranormal)">psychometry</a> on Melanie’s toy lamb to learn bio-mom is in Vermont; three days of real detective work tracks Mary Davis Sullivan to West Middlefield, Vt. When Frank, Joe, their girlfriends, Colin, and Melanie arrive in West Middlefield, they learn Mrs. Sullivan is being held hostage by her ex-husband. Rather than let qualified police officers handle the deadly situation, the boys decide to butt in. They circle around the block, approach the house from the rear, and use Joe’s plan to pretend to be dopey teenagers who cut Mrs. Sullivan’s lawn, hoping Sullivan will be confused long enough for them to get the drop on him. It’s an intensely dumb plan, and it should end with several shooting deaths, but the power of the plot compels Sullivan to be dumb long enough for Joe and Colin to throw the contents of Mrs. Sullivan’s refrigerator at the criminal. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Evildoer subdued, they manage to announce to the police what has happened without being shot or arrested or both, and Melanie gets a moment with her biological mother. Just a moment — then the kids take off, leaving Melanie’s lamb with Mrs. Sullivan, and the story ends. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Thank Dixon for that. <i>Psychic’s Vision</i> is overlong and nonsensical (and not in a good way). But it’s done now, and we never see that psychic Larry Stu again. That’s something to be grateful for, at least.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-51505590379749206022019-04-05T13:36:00.000-04:002019-04-05T13:36:46.290-04:00Hide-and-Sneak (#174)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y4uu2q4h"><img alt="Hide-and-Sneak cover" title="" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y4uu2q4h" width="250"></a>I have mentioned many times that I find the Bayport-based books that make use of the chums and explore the city are the best Hardy Boys books. <i><b>Hide-and-Sneak</b></i>, despite the mediocre, first-draft name, is another volume that supports my theory. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The story begins with Chet harassing Tony about the use of his boat. The boat’s name is never mentioned, but long-time readers of the series will remember it’s the <i>Napoli</i>. (I honestly don’t know whether Tony’s boat has ever been mentioned in the Simon & Schuster paperbacks.) Tony is too involved with his job at Mr. Pizza and moonlighting as a security guard at night at his father’s construction site to deal with Chet’s nonsense, though. (It’s been a while since the industrious Tony has worked for Prito Construction.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Chet wants the boat because it’s a prerequisite for appearing in a student movie, as advertised in the <i>Bayport Alternative</i>. (Bold for an alternative paper to just label itself “alternative,” although I think a corollary of the Rule of Cool — nothing that labels itself “cool” can be cool — applies here.) Since his appearance in the sci-fi TV show <i> Warp Space</i> in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/09/trouble-in-warp-space-172.html">Trouble in Warp Space</a></i> (#172), he’s caught the acting bug — well, not the acting bug, because he has rejected working with local theater groups, like Frank suggested. I can’t blame him much; if working with the Hardys will teach you anything, it’s that you can’t think small; if you think small, you don’t get to go to Australia or Hong Kong or space. Also, the last time he was in a local play, in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/cast-of-criminals-97.html">Cast of Criminals</a></i>, Callie was almost killed over stolen diamonds. Since being with the Hardys means attempts on your life, again: You can’t think small. It’s the <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-one3.htm">old scene-stealer’s adage</a>: Might as well be murdered for a movie as a play. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, Frank and Joe have the <i>Sleuth</i>, “an older-model Chris-Craft boat that Frank and Joe had bought with their own earnings ad some help form their dad” (3). The <i>Sleuth</i> hasn’t been mentioned in literally years: It last came up in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/02/high-speed-showdown-137.html">High-Speed Showdown</a></i>, which was about six years before <i>Hide-and-Sneak</i>. It may have been even longer since the boys were paid for anything they did; in the original hardcover stories, they were paid all the time, but I’m having trouble remembering any rewards or fees they’ve collected since then. Still pretending their <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/03/sabotage-at-sports-city-115.html">amateur status is intact for competitive purposes</a>, I suppose. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys exist in a world in which money is ignored, which means class is as well — except as a signifier of a person’s worth. This becomes plain when the Hardys sign on for the student movie; no one asks if there’s any money involved for the actors. But for the actors, wealth is a proxy for class; the middle-class Hardys with their older but reliable motorboat are good, while Willow Sumner, who is using her father’s expensive powerboat, is a snobby bitch, and working-class Andy Slack and his friend, who have borrowed Andy’s father’s fishing trawler, turn to crime and treachery at the first sign of difficulties. (They are also so bad at both crime and treachery they come out of things with no money and are forced to switch sides back to the Hardys’.) The production itself has money woes, and the director is eager to smooch the hinder of the first rich person who will give him the time of day in order to increase the budget from shoestring to cruise-ship hawser. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I will give the Dixon full points for making the boys’ chief rivals a trio of girls without a) pairing them off with the boys or b) making one of them the fat one to match Chet / counteract Chet / be a lazy writer. Such arrangements happened occasionally from the ‘60s to the end of the Syndicate books, but they haven’t occurred often in the S&S digests. I mean, Joe takes the opportunity to get to know Willow’s friend Trisha Eads and ask her out — Joe calls her “fiesty” (106), so at least he has a type — but that’s just the way Joe rolls. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The movie, named <I>Hide-and-Sneak</i>, is improvised, lacking a script, to be filmed with digital cameras over three days on Barmet Bay. The actors’ goal is to find and keep the McGuffin, an unwieldy modern art project, while the cameras — one to each boat — capture enough footage to cobble together an interesting 80 minutes. I have my doubts, but that’s what the director and the producer, Joan Athelny, want. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank maintains an arch, cool demeanor throughout the planning stages despite his clear interest in drama. He’s unfamiliar with the term “McGuffin,” but he has seen the Shore Point Players’ production of <i>The Miracle Worker</i>, which featured Willow as Helen Keller, and Fenton and Laura had taken Frank to New York to see improv. (He’s also the one who suggested Chet take to the theater.) Frank works out the power struggles between writers, director, and producer as if he has been reading <i>Variety</i>. Frank obviously has some interest in theater or movies; why else would he have seen the Shore Point Players’ do anything? And yet he has no interest in the stage. He stayed out of the cast in <i>Cast of Criminals</i>, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-giant-rat-of-sumatra-143.html">The Giant Rat of Sumatra</a></i> (#143), and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-london-deception-158.html">The London Deception</a></i> (#158). He doesn’t use the investigation in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/06/reel-thrills-127.html">Reel Thrills</a></i> (#127) to force an entrance into the movie world. What is Frank’s endgame? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Whatever it is, <i>Hide-and-Sneak</i> doesn’t do anything to advance it. Each team gets a doggerel poem leading them to the McGuffin. The clues point toward places like Merriam Island and Shipwreck Cove; the latter is new, but the former — and its lighthouse keeper, whom Joe mentions is now buried on the island — appeared in <i>The Secret of Skull Mountain</i> (#27), as Frank and the <i>Sleuth</i> ended up on the island after running out of gas. The boys also mention the Barmet Shoals, which appeared in <i>The Phantom Freighter</i> (#26). This is pretty tight continuity work for a Dixon who thinks the Hardys live on Oak Street (81). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Because Joe’s attempts to lose the girls’ boat gets the <i>Sleuth</i> pulled over by the harbor patrol, Willow and her friends get the MacGuffin first. The boys climb the cliff at Shipwreck Cove, which is the location of the construction site Tony had been guarding — still was guarding, actually, as he jumps the Hardys’ cameraman. From the cliff, they spot the girls in another cove, but they don’t see the McGuffin; Joe correctly surmises the girls are using it as an anchor, and before dawn the next day, he cuts it loose and steals it for his team. The other two teams tear after the <i>Sleuth</i>, which ducks and swerves between small islands, eventually hiding behind a yacht. But the yacht is deserted, like the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste#Abandonment">Mary Celeste</a></i> (Frank tells the story of the doomed ship as they investigate); when Chet spots the owner swimming nearby, they rescue him, and the story comes to a screeching halt. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Peter Buckmaster — a name truly worthy of the Stratemeyer Syndicate — is the owner of the yacht, a Wall Street bigwig, and the owner of the construction site above Shipwreck Cove. He sweeps up the director and the cast, taking them to his under-construction home, and the director’s obsession with getting more funding for <i>Hide-and-Sneak</i> stalls the production for an entire day — long enough for Joe to ask Trisha out and for Buckmaster’s entire financial empire to crumble. Once the news of his financial misdeeds hits the air, Buckmaster hops on his yacht, which explodes in a fireball before it can get far from the cove. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Suicide? Frank’s not convinced. He thinks a strange woman in disguise has been lurking around the movie, both before and after the explosion, and he’s sure someone’s still skulking around the construction site; he sets a trap, but the intruder escapes in the blinding rain when Chet has to save Joe from tumbling off the cliff. Another trap nets Buckmaster’s ex-wife, who is both the producer and the woman in disguise. She financed the movie to get extensive footage of Barmet Bay, where she suspected her ex-husband was hiding himself (and his money); she suspects Buckmaster faked his death. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">While the Hardys, Chet, and Mrs. Buckmaster search for Buckmaster’s hidden money, they are interrupted by Andy and his friend, who decide to steal Willow’s dad’s boat. Frank uses his “martial arts” to deal with Andy and his knife, but Buckmaster returns from his watery grave with a gun. Andy and his friend throw in with Buckmaster, claiming to be capitalists like him; Buckmaster has Andy tie up his friend, Chet, and the Hardys before pistol-whipping him. “Now you know the first two rules of successful capitalism,” he tells Andy’s unconscious body. “Never do anything you can get someone else to do, and never pay for anything unless you have to” (122). Good advice for a villain too! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">While Buckmaster takes the powerboat, removes the bilge plug from the trawler, cuts the <i>Sleuth</i> loose, and makes his getaway with his ex as a hostage, Chet gets another hero moment: He crawls over to Andy’s knife and uses it to cut Frank loose. After everyone is free, Andy and his pal go for help while Joe retrieves the <i>Sleuth</i> and hotwires its damaged ignition. They set out after the powerboat, but unable to catch up with it, they attract the harbor patrol by shooting a gas can they have tied behind their boat with a flare gun. I would think the flare would be more than enough to attract police attention, but I am not a boy detective! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The combination of the harbor patrol attracted by the explosion and police alerted by Andy catch Buckmaster. Chet, after his two hero moments, takes the Hardys’ advice to try out for a production of <i>South Pacific</i>. Frank and Joe decline to do any more acting, ending the book by telling Chet, “If you’re going to be a star, it’s better to shine alone” (135). It’s good advice, even if Chet will never achieve anything without the Hardys, but at least that exit line allows the book to wrap up more than 10 pages early, just like <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/06/end-of-trail-162.html">End of the Trail</a></i> (#162).</p><br />
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Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-63538650039532174252019-03-15T12:37:00.000-04:002019-03-15T12:37:03.960-04:00Trouble Times Two (#167)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y5o7llx3"><img alt="Trobule Times Two cover" title="Nothing induces children to get excited about reading like a telephone, a ledger, and a Rolodex." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y5o7llx3" width="250"></a><i>First proposition</i>: The title of <i><b>Trouble Times Two</b></i> makes no sense. While the book does contain trouble, I can find no multiplier of said trouble. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Second proposition</i>: <i>Trouble</i> makes more prescient statements than usual, commenting on the decline of unions and newspapers in 2002, years before their collapse had become national panics, and delivers a pointed statement on the lack of protections for whistleblowers. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Third proposition</i>: The main chum (non-girlfriend division) in <i>Trouble</i> is the brainy Phil Cohen, and his opinions are given more respect than usual: When he convinces the others to watch a foreign film rather than an shoot-‘em-up or romantic film, the entire of gang of teens have a great time. Frank decides he should support Phil’s suggestions more often, since this “rare victory” (50) turned out well. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Conclusion</i>: <i><a href="https://youtu.be/yecJLI-GRuU?t=135">This means something</a></i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I don’t know what, though. Whether this is an attempt to inculcate liberal values on the Millennial Generation, or whether this is an attempt to reflect the values of the book’s target audience, or whether I’m just a couple of steps from <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/11/5/7158371/lizard-people-conspiracy-theory-explainer">claiming the world is run by lizard people</a>, I don’t know, but again: This means something. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The book starts with Frank drowsing in social studies class and being kept awake only by Callie flicking paperwads at him, which gives credence to the target audience argument. But later in the first chapter, “big, beefy” (8) Biff Hooper gets punched by troublemaker Tom Gilliam, and Biff is too surprised to fight back; that Biff, a character named after his fondness for punching, doesn’t fight back against an unprovoked attack in his only appearance in the book suggests a desire for pacifistic Millennials. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And then again, Tom gets the nickname “Trouble Boy” (3) and is later promoted to “Captain Trouble Boy” (61). Neither is a nickname real teenagers would tag a miscreant with; if an adult used it, it wouldn’t stick. Maybe this non-normal behavior is a hint about the Lizard People … Later, Joe says “the organization” built by Ho Chi Minh gave the United states a “big headache” (11). Of course the Lizard People would minimize the damage done to their world order — unless Ho was a Lizard Person himself? How deep does this lizard hole go? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(The author later writes a car “backs up” “in reverse” [17], which is either a Lizard Person writing or bad editing. I’ve given you the evidence. Only you can choose to see the truth.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, Trouble Boy gets stuck in a study group with Frank, Callie, Phil Cohen, aspiring newsie Liz Webling, and Kevin Wylie, whose father is Tom’s father’s boss. For the social science fair — which I’m pretty sure isn’t a thing, or at least <i>shouldn’t</i> be a thing — they decide to report on the effects of / on whistleblowers. Frank defuses Tom’s natural surliness and anger by appointing him the leader of the team’s anti-whistleblower group. However, the team is hobbled by Tom’s five-day suspension for punching Biff, and when the other group members show up at the Gilliam apartment, Tom’s father becomes peeved at his son’s anti-whistleblower stance. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Liz is a character who has slipped beneath my radar, a side effect of my skipping around the canon. Liz first appeared in the early Casefiles as Callie’s friend, but <i>Trouble</i> appears to be her first appearance in the Digests. Liz is also in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/kickoff-to-danger-170.html">Kickoff to Danger</a></i> (#170) and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/08/test-case-171.html">The Test Case</a></i> (#171), filling the young snoop role one would expect of the daughter of someone in the newspaper game. (Here, she and her father work at the Bayport <i>Gazette</i>; in <i>Kickoff</i> and <i>Test Case</i>, her father is an editor at the Bayport <i>Times</i>, and she works for the school paper, the <i>Beacon</i>. She also reports for the Bayport Cable News in <i>Test Case</i>.) In <i>Test Case</i>, her reporting alienates the Hardys, and — as far as I can tell — she made no more appearances in the series. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s the boring school stuff. The mystery begins when Joe runs supplies to Fenton, who has staked out Stinky Peterson’s apartment building, posing as a homeless man. Stinky’s a thief — he’s a pro, according to Fenton, despite being nicknamed “Stinky” — but Joe and Fenton can’t stop him from handing off stolen pearls to a fence. The fence tries to kill Fenton as he drives away, which accords with the Bayport police’s reports of a more violent fence, one who is also more efficacious and has a longer reach. This fence is also suspected of murder, a rarity in a Hardy Boys book. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Con says the fence is from a national syndicate, not a “homegrown organized crime type” (29), which is sad; as every Millennial knows, the best criminal organizations are artisanal, bespoke groups that are committed to consuming the profits of their local region. It’s more responsible, you know? And you get a more personal feel when you’re stabbed or mugged. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The next day, Laura is giving everyone — Fenton, the boys, and the readers — the silent treatment and refusing to make breakfast. This is Laura’s only appearance in the story, and her only purpose is to not say anything. She and Gertrude are mentioned a couple of other times, but they are only mentioned to highlight their absence from the home. (Well, Gertrude also gets to pass a phone to Fenton.) The Hardy ladies could be less present in this story, but in books in which the women aren’t mentioned, their absence occasionally is felt as a presence. Here, they do not even register their lack of presence. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">When the teenagers witness Tom’s dad, Russell Gilliam sneaking into Tri-State Express, the shipping company he is an accountant for, late on a Saturday night, the Hardys get suspicious. Frank looks up Russell’s employment history (somehow) and sees he’s had a series of short-term jobs. While Joe thinks he might be “like that famous impersonator guy” (52) — I’m guessing he’s referring to the 1996-2000 TV show, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pretender_(TV_series)">The Pretender</a></i>, in which a genius imposter on the run takes a new type of job every episode — Frank thinks he’s the advance man for the national crime syndicate. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Fenton’s background check reveals something different; Russell Gilliam received a golden parachute, which Fenton calls a “golden handshake” (63), from each of his employers. His peripatetic job history began at Dynodyne — a name that also suggests Lizard Author / bad editor, especially when they could have used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne">Yoyodyne</a> — when his house burned down, he lost his job, and his wife divorced him and took the kid. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Tom and Kevin posture when Tom’s suspension is over, and while Kevin makes abstract threats with a knife, Tom puts a stink bomb in Kevin’s locker that ignites magnesium Kevin kept in it. Joe, who shadowed Tom, gets the fire under control but refuses to rat out Tom, even when the assistant principal threatens his permanent record. Now trusting Joe, Tom comes clean: His dad is a professional whistleblower, getting payouts and NDAs from his crooked employers. After Tom’s mom died, Tom has lived with his father, wandering around the country; Tom worries his father has lost sight of “the line between being an idealist and being an extortionist” (90). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Things go wrong when Tom decides to solicit advice from Fenton. Fenton isn’t at the Hardy home, but the social-science fair group is, so Tom unburdens himself to them instead. Kevin tells his father, who is using his shipping company to fence goods for a silent partner; Mr. Wylie isn’t good at hiding his tracks, as Kevin’s grandfather tried to hire Fenton to investigate his son-in-law months before. Kevin’s father fires Russell, and Frank and Joe are worried Mr. Gilliam will declare “war”: “I guess trouble is Mr. Gilliam’s business,” Frank says (103), echoing the title of a <a href="https://amzn.to/2O4DAfv">Raymond Chandler short-story collection</a>. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Despite this link to tough-guy stories, when Russell is lured into a trap and assaulted by Stinky Peterson, Frank and Joe save him and lament that unlicensed investigators like Russell can’t handle the “rough and tumble” (112) of the PI business. I’m pretty sure an accountant would make a great private investigator, and avoiding assault isn’t part of PI certification; in any event, Russell shrugs it off as a warning. Frank and Joe agree, and if there’s anything they know, it’s violent warnings. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Or maybe they don’t. The Hardys have never been able to tell the difference between warnings and attempted murder.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys can’t prevent Tom from being kidnapped the next day; Joe won’t even stick up for Tom from Kevin’s insults. (I’ve said Joe was a bad friend before; this is just more evidence. It’s always easier to punch down, isn’t it, Joe?) The Bayport police won’t look for Tom for 72 hours, even though he’s a minor and doesn’t have a history of being a runaway, because they’re not very good at their jobs, so the Hardys step up. When the Hardy brothers confront the Wylies at their McMansion, the elder Wylie’s silent backer, Nicolai, barges in with goons and takes everyone to the Tri-State offices, where the Gilliams are already being held. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The prisoners are bound, and Tri-State is set ablaze. (Nicolai really does not care about the fire looking like an accident. He has a very low opinion of American pig-dog police.) With the help of a box cutter Tom palmed, they manage to cut their bonds, break down a barred window, and escape with the help of firefighters. Mr. Wylie turns state’s evidence, Mr. Gilliam decides to give up his silent whistleblowing, and everything turns out OK. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Except as far as we can tell, Nicolai is still free, and his organization will probably threaten the Wylies’ lives. And we’re never told what grade the group received on the project that started this fiasco; Tom refuses to argue against whistleblowing, so Frank says “Phil and the other kids” (149) will work something out. “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98k05_bM2e4">Other kids</a>”? Are you going to give them Werther’s Originals if they do good work? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Or maybe he means, “Phil and the other non-Lizard People.” If so, I was right: this means something. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-74623312941069740732019-03-01T16:11:00.000-05:002019-05-22T16:26:21.159-04:00Crime in the Cards (#165)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6q3bpga"><img alt="Crime in the Cards cover" title="Nothing says excitement like empty cafeteria tables and three random cards." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y6q3bpga" width="250"></a><b><i>Crime in the Cards</i></b> has everything I like about a Hardy Boys story: a new hobby for Chet, a Bayport setting, hints of actual intimacy between the Hardys and their girlfriends, the introduction of a new character who makes more appearances, and a mystery with a blindingly obvious solution. <i>Cards</i> isn’t a perfect book, and it won’t appeal to everyone as strongly as it does to me, but I would put <i>Cards</i> among the best of the digests.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The setup for <i>Cards</i> is that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering">Magic the Gathering</a> is sweeping Bayport High, and Chet is one of the best players. Magic the Gathering is a fantasy-themed collectible card game; that means players buy packs of random cards of various rarities, and by that rarity, the cards may achieve value beyond their utility in the game. Of course, this Dixon isn’t allowed to use the name “Magic the Gathering”; instead, the knockoff product is called “Creature Commander,” which is a good enough name. This Dixon shows enough familiarity with the game to make the allusion clear and show he or she has either played Magic or done enough research to make it seem like he or she has.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">As any adult might expect, playing Creature Commander doesn’t make Chet cool. Callie and Iola are baffled by the game, and even though Frank says, “The game’s fairly simple” (2), neither he nor Joe has any inclination to play. Joe says, “It’s not my kind of game, but …” and then shrugs. Why should they risk their aura of cool on one of Chet’s hobbies? (Although Chet snipes that they have no qualms about claiming to know all about Creature Commander to impress the girls.) More to the point, ex-BHS football player Sam Kestenberg bullies Chet and his competitors while also getting Joe’s goat.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The mystery begins in earnest when Daphne Soesbee’s Creature Commander deck is stolen from her locker. This is Daphne’s first appearance, and she makes two more appearances before the end of the digest series, in <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/trick-or-trouble-175.html"><i>Trick or Trouble</i></a> (#175) and <i>Warehouse Rumble</i> (#183); in those books she fills a role similar to the one she occupies here: a female acquaintance / friend for Chet. Not a girlfriend, but someone who shares Chet’s enthusiasms. I wish she had appeared more often in the books; the Hardys need more people who are in their orbit but not in their core group of chums, like <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/search/label/Jamal%20Hawkins">Jamal Hawkins</a>, and the gender balance of the cast could use some adjustment.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, Bayport High School responds to the theft and the popularity of Creature Commander in the manner of self-important bureaucracies everywhere: with ham-handed stupidity. (Given how poorly the school handles a cheating scandal in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/08/test-case-171.html">The Test Case</a></i> [#171], that's unsurprising.) The cards are banned from school grounds, because what BHS wants more than anything is for the problem to go away with as little effort on the part of faculty and staff as possible. But Chet pulls an awesome new rare card, the Coyote, from a pack he bought, and he can’t resist showing it off in front of his Creature Commander playing friends at school. With the Coyote and Bargeist, another powerful rare, Chet believes he has a chance to win next week’s big Creature Commander tournament. (The Bargeist, if you care, is probably a reference to the barghest, which is either <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest">a monstrous black dog or ghost or elf in northern English folklore</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)">a daemon that can look like a goblin or wolf</a> in Dungeons & Dragons.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Chet is caught with the cards in English class. He is supposed to be caring about <i>Moby Dick</i>, a 19th-century decorative doorstop masquerading as something relevant to 21st-century teenagers. When Chet returns at the end of the day to reclaim his cards, he finds they’ve been stolen from the teacher’s desk. Rather than putting his faith in the police, whom Chet doesn’t believe will take the case seriously, Chet turns to the Hardys. Honestly, it’s hard to blame Chet on this one: I can’t believe a Bayport PD officer would consider little pieces of cardboard could be worth hundreds of dollars. I almost imagine Con Riley blinking and asking Chet how much he could get for the ace of diamonds in his desk.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">To solve the case, Frank and Joe navigate the world of Bayport collectible hobbies, from a mostly reputable hobby shop (the Dungeon Guild) to a slightly dodgy individual dealer (Gerry) to the extremely sketchy Black Knight, who uses the Internet not to sell cards directly but to meet with potential buyers in out-of-the-way places. Gerry also runs a cloak-and-dagger Creature Commander tournament where everyone wears a mask and winners take possession of one of the cards from the loser’s deck. (This <a href="https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Ante">used to be a real Magic the Gathering format</a>, although the card the winner acquires a random card from the loser’s deck, and set aside before the game, rather than a card of the winner’s choice.) The Hardys (and Dixon) wander through the geeky subculture and keep from talking down about the game and its players. Heck, even Callie and Iola pick up the game by the end!</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The girls learn the game even though Frank and Joe have considerable physical contact with them than usual. Their relationships start off on rocky ground; when Frank says he and Joe “have something more worthwhile” than vast amounts of money, Iola “hopefully” asks if it’s her and Callie (3). C’mon, Iola; have more pride than <i>that</i>. Fortunately, their relationships improve: In addition to two hugs and three hand squeezes, there are a total of three — three! — kisses. That might be a record for a Hardy Boys book! Usually, I would delve into the implications of all this intimacy, but this time I was struck by the veneer of normal heterosexual teenage behavior given to these acts. The squeezing is of hands; the kisses are on cheeks. This is, by any real measure, a pair of tepid relationships. So why stop somewhere between <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEJ6tZI7_k">no touching</a> and normalcy? Did the author feel pressure to include such performative signifiers for some reason? Or was Simon and Schuster convinced its target audience would react badly to mouth-on-mouth kisses, and this Dixon was able to push the envelope only so far?</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">If I were in charge of the Hardys, I wouldn’t be satisfied with this sort of restraint. I understand not even hinting at sexuality, sure, but <a href=" https://youtu.be/mv9cWgkpIZ4?t=25">a taste of honey is worse than none at all</a>. And I don’t think snogging hurt Harry Potter at all, even among those in the Hardys’ target age range (8 to 12, according to the back cover).</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">However, if Frank and Joe are unable to meet Callie and Iola’s physical teenage needs, the brothers do treat them like trusted peers in the investigation — not equals, exactly, because the Hardys have considerably more experience at being detectives, and even Chet has helped them more. But Iola and Callie get to participate; sometimes they have to stand up for themselves to get that right, but Frank and Joe acknowledge they have something to contribute rather than insisting on increasing the mystery’s level of difficulty by refusing help. I mean, being the wheelwoman and cutting off avenues of escape with a vehicle aren’t the most exciting ways to help, but they are valuable; they can be crucial. This is a vast improvement; Iola also mentions having to hide in the trunk previously — she refuses to do so <i>again</i> — but the context is left unsaid. Was it for a mystery, or was it to sneak into a drive-in? Maybe to keep Aunt Gertrude from knowing the boys’ had invited strange women into the car?)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Unfortunately, even with the help, the Hardys fail, or at least they fail to meet their deadline, the Creature Commander tournament. Chet shells out a lot of cash — where does he get it all? We never see him work — to buy the cards to compete in the tournament, even though they aren’t as good as the ones he’s lost. Unfortunately, he’s disqualified in the tournament’s second round for accusing another player of using one of Chet’s stolen cards, then punching him. Yes, at the end of the book, Chet gets a special reward from the game’s creator for helping to expose the counterfeiting — wait, is counterfeiting as a crime restricted to currency? Anyway, for helping to preserve player confidence in Creature Commander cards, gets an even cooler card, so as always, being Frank and Joe’s friend is stressful but lucrative for Chet.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys and their friends also tour Bayport while solving the mystery, which I always enjoy. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at S&S ever thought to compile a bible or at least a map for Bayport, and then I realize how silly the idea is. In the Hardy Boys stories, continuity is a bug, not a feature; anything that might confuse the audience, might make readers think they are missing something, is to be avoided. So we won’t be see Old Bluff Road again; that’s no real loss, as the road’s only real purpose is to be a deserted backroad near cliffs, which is the role the Shore Road used to fill. Bayport’s northwest side, where industrial parks have replaced the scrub thickets Frank and Joe knew as children, will be rewritten into something else. The Kiff and Kendall restaurant chain will disappear into the ether, as will the abandoned Benson Mini-Mall be mentioned in further books — and, unfortunately, the new, nearby development of Magus Hills will also cease to exist after <i>Cards</i>.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">This is a shame because Magus Hills makes Bayport about 241 percent cooler. I don’t care whether Magus Hills was named by a fantasy nut, or maybe a fanatical devotee of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fowles">John Fowles</a>; whether the development has streets named after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf">Gandalf</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raistlin_Majere">Raistlin</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magus_(novel)">Nicholas Urfe and Phraxos</a> — or hey, it could be named after either <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magus_(Marvel_Comics)">Marvel</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Warlock#The_Magus">Comics</a> character with that name. I’d even settle for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magi">Zoroastrian sense of the word</a>. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(One place name that continues to be used is Jewel Ridge, Conn. The city is mentioned as the home of the one of the competitors in the Bayport Creature Commander tournament; the state isn’t mentioned, but Jewel Ridge’s location has been established in other books.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The solution is blindingly obvious. Although Gerry, a high-school Creature Commander card dealer who doesn’t play the game, is an obvious suspect, the key clue is the presence of Mr. McCool, a belligerent part-time teacher who teaches kids how to use a print shop. Of course Mr. McCool is connected to the thefts, which he uses to acquire cards to copy in his printing plant. (Kestenberg the bully is pulling the actual thefts, funneling the cards to McCool, and then selling the fakes and real cards as the Black Knight, which was a bit harder to predict.) I find it hard to believe McCool could duplicate the cardstock and finish of the cards, but what trips him up is that he duplicates the ketchup stain Chet soiled his Coyote and White Knight cards with. Seeing the stain on a Coyote card caused Chet to start a fight at the big tournament, but only when the police revealed the stain was printed onto the card does the penny drop for Frank — only 100 pages after it did for me, but hey, we can’t all be geniuses.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(If you think it’s petty and foolish to claim genius status at being an adult smart enough to solve a mystery in a book aimed at pre-teens, well, I don’t care, Judgy McJudgerson.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-18357824213846365632019-02-01T12:18:00.000-05:002019-02-01T12:18:06.982-05:00The London Deception (#158)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ybqcbupe"><img alt="The London Deception cover" title="Is Joe rally wearing his high school letter jacket on a trip to London? And is that frosted tips or snow in his hair?" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src=" https://tinyurl.com/ybqcbupe" width="250"></a>You know, it’s really great the Hardy Boys, those plucky underdogs, get to travel to Europe — </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Oh, that’s right. They just went to Italy in the previous book, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-lure-of-italian-treasure-157.html">The Lure of the Italian Treasure</a></i>. Unlike last time, <i><b>The London Deception</b></i> describes why they’ve been allowed to head abroad without supervision: They’re visiting Londoner Chris Paul, who stayed with the Hardys while he was an exchange student at Bayport High School the previous year. Why haven’t we seen or heard about Chris before? Because Chris came to Bayport <i>last year</i>, and no Hardy Boys books are set last year. Duh! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Also, Chris is boring. His only personality trait is ribbing the Hardys about American inferiority, and we all know he’s trying to mask his inferiority complex. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, while on their two-week trip to Jolly Old, Frank and Joe get roped into helping Chris’s father prepare for the premiere of his play, <i>Innocent Victim</i>. Dennis Paul is directing the play, and he’s cast Chris in the title role. Despite being open about how much the Paul family is involved in the play, he’s trying to hide that <i>Innocent Victim</i> is a vanity production, which the theater world looks down upon, by inventing a producer no one sees. The only glimpse we get of the production is a courtroom scene, putting me in mind of Agatha Christie’s <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witness_for_the_Prosecution">Witness for the Prosecution</a></i>, but that is probably because of my limited knowledge of the theater. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Joe can’t imagine being a performer. “If I was on that stage in front of all those people, my stomach would be doing back flips,” Joe says. “I’d be sweating bullets!” (4). In <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/02/danger-on-air-95.html">Danger on the Air</a></i> (#95), Joe is overwhelmed by the attention he receives after saving a man’s life on TV, so this sort of reaction has been mentioned before. That being said, Joe’s been on stage before, in a minor role as a Baker Street Irregular in the eponymous play in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-giant-rat-of-sumatra-143.html">The Giant Rat of Sumatra</a></i> (#143). (The other actors say he’s not very good.) Frank and Joe had small roles as policemen in <i>Homecoming Nightmare</i>, put on by the Bayport Players’ in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/cast-of-criminals-97.html">Cast of Criminals</a></i> (#97). Joe was part of a “burlesque orchestra,” led by Chet, at their high-school graduation in <i>The Great Airport Mystery</i> (#9); the graduations were ignored, so we should perhaps ignore Joe’s performance. More seriously, he played guitar in a gig at the Hessian Hotel in <i>Track of the Zombie</i> (#71), and the same book mentions he “often” plays guitar in student concerts at BHS. In the revised <i>Flickering Torch Mystery</I> (#22), he’s part of a combo called “South Forty” with his brother and friends; he plays guitar at a folk / country rock gig in that book. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Joe’s scared of something else as well, although it’s hard to tell if it’s Iola or the play’s technical director, Jennifer Mulhall, or women entirely. Jennifer, who is described as “young” but someone who “radiated confidence and commanded respect” (4), singles Joe out for special attention. She also gives Joe a *wiiiiiiink* as she tells him good night at one point. Joe seems to like Jennifer, as Frank says, “I kind of figured you liked being around her” (95), which causes Joe to blush, but that’s as far as his responses go; he does nothing else, not even thinking of Iola, around Jennifer — not even when she saves him from falling off a building. (Admittedly, he does give her a hug when he rescues her, tied up in a closet, but that’s a little creepy; she doesn’t have much say in the matter.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, the production of <i>Innocent Victim</i> has had a run of unfortunate “accidents,” just like you’d expect for a location / business that is used as a locale in the first few chapters of a Hardy Boys book. Jennifer’s assistant, Neville Shah, broke his wrist before the book begins, and he eventually quits. So does the stage manager. In the first chapter, three spotlights blow while Jennifer is leaning off a catwalk adjusting other lights, and she goes over the edge, with only Joe’s strong arm and quick reflexes saving her. Upon investigating, Frank thinks the spotlights’ malfunction “might have been sabotage” (19), which should go unsaid — it’s an insult to the readers’ intelligence to suggest otherwise. Later, a fire (and the excellent sprinkler system that douses it) damage the production’s costumes, and the theater’s sound board is stolen. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The theater’s resident ghost is spotted in the control booth when both the spots overheat, and the theater people immediately bring up the supernatural. (Even Frank has trouble maintaining his skepticism — “Even <i>I’m</i> beginning to think this ghost is for real,” he says [39] — but that’s less a product of the plot and more a result of slipshod writing.) I wanted <i>London Deception</i> to be a full <i>Scooby-Doo</i>: a real-estate scam pulled off by using a supernatural natural legend and a person in a costume. The villainy is centered around a real-estate scam at a theater with a ghost legend; the owner of the theater needs <i>Innocent Victim</i> out so he can sell the theater to a soccer player who wants to open the second location of his restaurant in the remodeled theater in time for the World Cup. But even though the villains have a former circus acrobat amongst their number, they don’t <i>commit</i> to the ghost bit, and that’s disappointing. Perhaps it’s because the ghost, the wife of a former owner of the theater who committed suicide, is just a ghostly presence rather than a true g-g-g-ghost! I understand even villains have to work with what they’re given, but Mr. Jeffries, the owner, needed to start playing up the ghost’s malevolence as soon as he hatched his stupid, stupid plan. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe investigate — of course — and according to a private investigator hired by Jeffries, Frank and Joe “have some fame as amateur sleuths” (43), which is good to know; in the last ten or so books, that’s varied. (The idea their career would be secret never made any sense to me.) Frank sounds like he’s learned some investigative tricks in <i>London Deception</I>; when he questions a member of the cast, he manages to frame his questions to her in a way that doesn’t sound accusatory. Shockingly, that’s a big step forward. Also a step forward, at least technologically: To investigate the theater’s history, Joe “surfs the internet” (38) and searches for the Quill Garden Theater. Joe gets sixteen results, which is both ridiculous and possible for 1999. Using Google today, I found 844,000 results on that phrase (although only three when using quotes around the term), and the theater doesn’t even exist in my world. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Since Frank and Joe are in a foreign country, they get to sightsee — well, they traipse through London landmarks while investigating, which is almost like sightseeing. They go on a Haunted London tour, and they follow suspects to Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower of London, Victoria Park, and the Boleyn Ground (unnamed in the story), the home of the West Ham United soccer team. That’s the way I like to see new people and places: while completely distracted! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I apologize for this digression, but I did research, and by Dixon, I’m going to use it: Footballer John Moeller wants to open his restaurant’s second location in preparation for the next World Cup, which Moeller intimates will be in England, but that doesn’t make any sense. <i>Deception</i> was published in 1999; the year before, the World Cup was in France, while the next scheduled one, in 2002, was scheduled to be held in Japan and South Korea. England hasn’t hosted the World Cup since 1966, and it isn’t among the scheduled future hosts. I think the author was hoping American kids wouldn’t know or care about the World Cup schedule, but that’s playing with fire — given youth soccer participation rates, American kids were probably much more likely to know about the World Cup than American adults. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">However, the author was much more knowledgeable about the Premier League, the top league of English (and occasionally Welsh) soccer. The fictional Moeller plays for West Ham United (“the Hammers”), a London-based team that has generally been mediocre or worse since <i>London Deception</i> was written. (West Ham, as Dean Thomas’s favorite team, is the only soccer team mentioned in the Harry Potter series.) Every year in the Premier League, the three worst teams are sent down to the second-best league (now called The Championship), and three Championship teams are elevated to the Premier League. West Ham was relegated from the Premier League after the 2001-02 season, spending three seasons in the second tier, and then again after the 2010-11. West Ham spent only one year in the less-prestigious Championship that time before returning to the Premier League. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe discover that soccer hooliganism is a real thing. The boys almost get trampled during a scuffle, and they get thrown into the stadium’s detention area, which is filled with hooligans, for trying to approach Moeller after the match. West Ham has links to hard-core soccer hooliganism going back to the ‘60s. Surprisingly, according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Ham_United_F.C.#Hooliganism">Wikipedia</a>, West Ham hooliganism isn’t restricted to fights with opposing fans: They also fight one another, which is only unusual to an American in that these hooligans organize themselves into factions to do their in-fighting. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In <i>Deception</i>, West Ham is defeated by Chelsea, another London-based team. Chelsea has been one of the best clubs in English soccer, a charter member of the “Top Four” group (now the “Big Six”) that has dominated the sport this century. Chelsea has won five league championships in the 21st century, finishing outside of the top four (in a 20-team league) only five times. No wonder West Ham loses! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Back to the story … Despite a lack of brain power — when Jennifer goes missing, Frank and Joe ignore a consistent tapping sound in the theater, and they let Jeffries get the last word in a detective / villain exchange near the end — they catch Jeffries, Shah (aka Anacro, the Human Spider), and the play’s former stage manager with the help of Moeller and the London police. The Hardys don’t even have to resort to karate to catch these effete London theater villains; Frank uses a mannequin’s arm to smack the stage manager, and Joe uses “powerful punches” (145) to knock out Shah. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Of course, <i>Innocent Victim</I> turns out to be a hit, and the most chill powerful West End producer, Mr. Schulander, shows up to dangle funding in front of Dennis Paul. A happy ending!</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-53567614596809459842019-01-11T14:09:00.000-05:002019-01-11T14:09:50.068-05:00The Lure of the Italian Treasure (#157)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ydacc972"><img alt="The Lure of the Italian Treasure cover" title="Nothing says ‘Action’ and ‘Rugged Heroes’ like a chase involving Vespas and what appears to be a mid-’80s Renault." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/ydacc972" width="250"></a>I hope some enterprising writer or editor commissioned / wrote <i><b>The Lure of the Italian Treasure</b></i> as a way of writing off a trip to Italy on their income taxes. I doubt that’s true, although I think someone in the creative process for this book has actually gone to Italy. The details feel right. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">This is the first time Frank and Joe have left North America / the Caribbean in the digest series. They traveled to Canada in <i><a href="http://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/11/cross-country-crime-134.html">Cross-Country Crime</a></i> (#134), and then they went to the Caribbean twice — <i><a href="http://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-secret-of-skeleton-reef-144.html">The Secret of Skeleton Reef</a></i> (#144) and <i><a href="http://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2008/08/caribbean-cruise-caper-154.html">The Caribbean Cruise Caper</a></i> (#154) — but the last book that sent them overseas was <i>Revenge of the Desert Phantom</i> (#84), in which they stopped a civil war in Africa after diverting through Paris. <i>Desert Phantom</i> is so unlike the rest of the series it barely counts, though. If you want a “normal” Hardy Boys book, their last trip out of North America was in <i>The Crimson Flame</i> (#77) — Thailand — and their last trip to Europe was to Germany in <i>The Submarine Caper</i> (#68, also known as <i>The Deadly Chase</i>). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But Frank and Joe don’t make a big deal about their trip to Italy, and even a kerfuffle with customs inspectors in Milan over Joe’s bugging equipment is downplayed as barely worth mentioning (except as foreshadowing). So why are Frank and Joe, average American teens, in Italy, and why should we care, if they’re so blasé? Well, they’re working on an archaeological dig outside Florence. Before you can jump to the obvious conclusion that this is related to Frank’s interests or that Fenton as placed them at the dig to uncover antiquities theft or fraud or some damn thing, we learn that working on an Etruscan archaeological site has been Joe’s dream “for more than a year” (2). Yes, lunkheaded Joe is the one who wants to see Etruscan ruins, and he’s interested enough to not only work as an unpaid student (for credit, maybe, but where?) but to also rope in his brother. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">How did they become a part of this program? Who knows! It’s never explained. If you’re in charge and the Hardys show up, you thank your lucky stars, integrate them into the program as well as possible, and wait for the crime and astounding luck to wash over you. And let me tell you: Hardy-caliber luck really cleans out your pores. (Crime, not so much.) It’s not like you usually pay them — <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-hunt-for-four-brothers-155.html">The Hunt for the Four Brothers</a></i> (#155) notwithstanding — for their normal labor or their mystery solving. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And the Hardys certainly bring the cheap labor and unbelievable luck in this one. Joe uncovers an Etruscan potsherd, which allows the Dixon to go over archaeological procedure and introduce our supporting cast: Cosimo Gianotti, a fellow student whose “English was almost flawless, though he spoke with an accent” (5); Julia Russell, an Englishwoman getting her doctorate at the University of Florence; and Professor Mosca, who is nominally in charge of the dig but rarely makes an appearance. Count Vincenzo Ruffino, whose estate the dig is on, and his daughter, Francesca, also pop up about this time. Francesca flirts a bit with Frank, which perhaps inspires Frank, who one-ups his brother by unearthing a box full of jewelry. Frank gets a quick congratulatory kiss from Francesca as a reward. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Now, a note about the jewelry: Among the pieces are “fibulae” and “agrafes” (16). The former term is the plural of “fibula,” which is a brooch or clasp; the latter also describes clasps, usually on armor or costumes. Also, one might guess that jewelry would make the boys think of their mother, aunt, or girlfriends, but elder female Hardys go almost unmentioned, and the only time Iola’s name comes up is to remark that she gave Joe a handkerchief so he would “think of her when he made an important discovery” (2). Predictably, he never gives her a second thought; at least Frank thinks Callie would appreciate one of Florence’s lovely views. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The box is left in situ so that the find can be photographed in context, but after Joe has a misleading nightmare to inject a bit of excitement into the story, the Hardys awake to find the jewelry is missing, and the man the count placed on guard — Bruno, a former convict, now employed as a gardener by the count — has been chloroformed. The Hardys get off on the wrong foot with the police when an officer sees Frank too close to the crime scene; Frank tells Cosimo to explain to the officer how great Frank and Joe are, but Cosimo declines, saying, “I think we’d better just be quiet. I know the type.” </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And the boys get to know the type as well: Inspector Amelia Barducci suspects the boys of involvement in the theft. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Knox">Amanda Knox</a> and author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Preston#Involvement_in_the_Amanda_Knox_case">Douglas Preston</a> would both learn about this type in Florence.) The bugging device that customs officials found raises her suspicions, and she also finds the timing — the theft occurred two days after the Hardys arrived — suggestive. The inspector also thinks Frank finding and sniffing the chloroformed rag shows he was checking to see if the cloth still smelled of the chemical, and using his knowledge of the moon’s phases to reason when it would be dark also indicates his possible guilt. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Despite the polizia’s suspicions, the brothers are allowed to continue working at the dig; the next day they find a skeleton and a bronze dagger — outstanding finds! Honestly, Mosca’s benign indifference might have uncovered the greatest innovation in archaeology: Hiring detectives. After all, it’s their job to discover what has been hidden. (Detectives who are students are preferred; you can pay them little or nothing at all! Exploitation of young workers for “experience” and “college credit” is standard practice in academia and industry, after all.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Bruno shows them a secret passage, which they conclude the thief used to get away. The police, who find them there, reach the same conclusion; the inspector says the government has ordered her to tolerate the Hardys, but the next time she finds them meddling, she will arrest them. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe can’t let things go, of course, so they take time off their unpaid jobs and dive into the Reprobate Roll Call! (Also, I am not recapping the boring investigation part of the book. Literally, the most memorable part was that Francesca has a horse: <a href="https://youtu.be/_UHn7P3ET0U?t=24">Her name was Lola; she was a show horse</a>.)<br />
<ul><li><b>Francesca Ruffino</b>. Francesca likes to flirt with Frank, even in front of her boyfriend. When she takes the Hardys riding, their horses are spooked by a gunshot and collide. (Both boys are thrown, but Francesca saves the unconscious Frank.) Joe calls her a “mixed-up chick” (72) because she baits her boyfriend by batting her eyes at Frank.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Count Vincenzo Ruffino</b>. The count is having trouble finding the money to keep up his old castle, and selling the jewelry would raise considerable cash. His father was a Fascist under Mussolini, and the count keeps his father’s military gear — including a rifle the same caliber as the one that spooks Frank and Joe’s horses — in a secret room. On the other hand, he’s a non-entity, and I don’t care about him.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Vito</b>, Francesca’s boyfriend. He’s obviously jealous of Frank, and he might not like Americans, but that has nothing to do with stealing antiquities. He was in the area when Frank and Joe’s horses were spooked. He also insults Frank’s face — to his face — with Frank being too gutless to respond with a toothless insult.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Antonio Cafaggio</b>, the count’s friend. Cafaggio runs a shop in Florence, and Francesca is sure he’s taking advantage of her father, who sold Cafaggio a family heirloom too cheaply for Francesca’s liking. But they find nothing incriminating in Cafaggio’s castle warehouse, and Cafaggio does nothing nefarious when he catches the Hardys, Cosimo, and Francesca trespassing in the warehouse, turning them over to the count instead.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Bruno</b>. He keeps finding secret passages around the count’s estate, he served time in jail (for embezzlement), and he makes a joke about killing the Hardys to keep them quiet. (Frank and Joe claim to understand that it’s a joke, but they note the “humor has an edge” [74].) Bruno also leads the boys to the count’s father’s rifle, which Bruno may have used and / or planted.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Phillip Speck</b>, a fence. According to Bruno, he buys stolen antiquities. When Frank and Joe go undercover as buyers, Cafaggio’s assistant, Pino, enters the store and reveals their identities. Speck tries to lead them at gunpoint to Pino’s van, but the Hardys make a break for it and elude both, shaking Pino during a foot chase through Florentine tourist sites. (Both Speck and Pino know where the Hardys sleep, so I’m not sure what good escaping momentarily does.) Pino is captured by police for trespassing, and Speck claims he wasn’t involved with the jewels — but Speck says the count is deep in hock with a loan shark, so maybe the Hardys should look at him?</ul><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After Frank and Joe elude Pina, a car tries to run the Hardys’ Vespas off a cliff. A little later, someone tosses a smoke bomb into their sleeping quarters <i>to scare them off</i>, which makes no sense — if guns and an attempt at vehicular homicide isn’t scary enough, then a smoke bomb would be pretty weak tea. The sprinklers do ruin the boys’ clothes, though, so that’s a victory for the criminals, one as important as any the criminals usually get. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Inspector Barducci is unimpressed by this sequence of events, explaining it all away. But she does extend her warning, giving the boys <i>one more chance</i>. If that’s the way you discipline criminals, inspector, no wonder Italy has a reputation for lax law enforcement. Later, when Frank and Joe try to tell her Vito’s car looks like the one that ran them off the road, Barducci tells them to buzz off, then arrests Bruno. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That night, the dig is robbed again. The Hardys and Cosimo catch Francesca wandering around; they force her to admit Speck and Vito are the masterminds behind the thefts. They also make her wear Joe’s bugging device, which is classic crime drama stuff. There’s a lot of scrambling, Frank says “there’s no time” to call the police (130), and the Hardys rush off, putting a young woman’s life at risk for their pride, I think, more than to find stolen antiquities. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The stakes increase when Speck and his men stuff Francesca and Vito in the trunk of their limo and drive off. When Frank and Joe run to get the cops — the same cops Cosimo stayed behind to call — they are caught by Speck’s men. It was a trap, you see. Francesca ratted them out with a note slipped to the villains, and Speck and Vito — actually a con man named Claudio — played it perfectly. Stupid Hardys! That’s what you get for not actually planning! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">However, Speck and Claudio make the classic blunder: Getting involved in a land war in Asia. No, wait, that’s not it. They taunt Francesca, demeaning her intelligence, telling her she’ll never be able to go home again, and laughing at her falling for Claudio so easily, more easily than they had hoped: “You plant seeds, and some turn into beautiful flowers. I never thought this one would be so easy to pick,” Speck says (136). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Speck, Claudio, and their thugs take Frank, Joe, and Francesca into the woods to kill them, but Speck abandons his co-conspirators with the goods. Claudio turns on the thugs, leaving them as well as the Hardys tied up in the wilderness. But Claudio inexplicably spares their lives. Another classic blunder! Remember the classic hiking maxim: <a href="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/outdoors/tips-and-solutions/take-only-pictures-leave-only-footprints">Take no chances; leave no witnesses</a>. Or something like that. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank and Joe round up the thugs, and despite their near escape, the Hardys are not too harried to lecture a somewhat contrite Francesca. The police quickly sort out who’s who and who deserves prison; Speck is quickly arrested off-page by the police, and the artifacts are recovered, delivered to the Hardys by an officer who thinks the jewelry is too ugly to steal. (Claudio gets away. A loose end!) Bruno is presumably released, although maybe not — maybe he’s the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_of_Florence">Monster of Florence</a>. And no one pays Frank and Joe anything!</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-7813937383076261762018-12-07T10:32:00.000-05:002018-12-28T14:23:38.437-05:00The Hunt for the Four Brothers (#155)<p><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yaeojgmz"><img alt="The Hunt for the Four Brothers cover" title="" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/yaeojgmz" width="250"></a>Three (mostly) made-up dialogues about <b><i>The Hunt for the Four Brothers</i></b>:</p><b>The pitch meeting</b>:<br />
<br />
<p>So what great idea do you have for me for Hardy Boys #155?</p><p><i>I want to send Frank and Joe to a summer resort — </i></p><p>We just did that four books ago — <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-rocky-road-to-revenge-151.html">The Rocky Road to Revenge</a></i>.</p><p><i>Oh … OK. Wait — they’ll be </i>working<i> at a summer resort in the mountains. </i></p><p>The resort was in the mountains in <i>Rocky Road</i> — </p><p><i>Which state? </i><br />
Colorado.</p><p><i>Aha! This time they’ll be in North Carolina. </i></p><p>Mountains in North Carolina are better than <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-chase-for-mystery-twister-149.html">a small town in Oklahoma</a>, I suppose, or <a href="http://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/10/sidetracked-to-danger-130.html">a train station in Indianapolis</a>. So what’s the mystery?</p><p><i>It starts out with someone stealing soap from the resort bathrooms, and the victims see a wolf-like animal nearby at the time. This leads to whispers of a werewolf —</i></p><p>Ah, that’s better! You had me worried about this soap stealing. We’ve done the werewolf thing in <i>Night of the Werewolf</i>, but that was almost a hundred books and twenty years ago. How are you going to resolve the werewolf legend?</p><p><i>Oh, I’m going to drop it immediately. This is the Hardy Boys, not </i>Scooby-Doo.</p><p>Then why bring it up — you know what? Let’s let that go. What are Frank and Joe going to be doing while a not-werewolf is stealing soap?</p><p><i>Lots of things! Lawn mowing! Picking up — and burning — trash! Dishwashing! Carrying luggage! </i></p><p>Those are things they do for their jobs, right? Not part of the investigation?</p><p><i>Well, their jobs become cover for their investigation, like always. The actual investigation will include more exciting things like airport codes and parking fines and stolen soap and a civil war. </i></p><p>A civil war could be interesting. Haven't done one of those in a while. Where?</p><p><i>Kormia. </i></p><p>OK. I’ll ask again, where?</p><p><i>Kormia! </i></p><p>*sigh* Where is Kormia? Is it in Africa? Eastern Europe? Asia? </p><p><i>Almost certainly! </i></p><p>Well, as long as that’s the only major non-American place mentioned in the book, that should be OK.</p><p>*silence*</p><p>Let’s move on. What are the villains trying to get away with? Maybe with a high-stakes crime, we can still polish this coprolite.</p><p><i>Gem theft, looting a country’s cultural heritage, and smuggling. </i></p><p>Now you’re talking!</p><p><i>But the Hardys won’t know the gems exist until about pg. 110 out of 151, and the other crimes are incidental to the main gem theft. </i></p><p>*deep sigh* So what about their chums? Will anyone from Bayport be working at this resort with them?</p><p><i>Oh, sure — Chet. </i></p><p>Why Chet? Not that I’m complaining — Chet’s always a great addition to the story — but why him instead of, say, Biff?</p><p><i>The Hardys will need someone to do investigative work for them when their elsewhere. They’ll need someone to cover their shifts when they’re investigating and someone to pressure into following them into danger so we can see how courageous the Hardys are. And in this case, they’ll need someone to steal soap for them. </i></p><p>So basically you’re saying the Hardys need someone to push around, and no one else would take their crap?</p><p><i>Exactly! I mean, at one point, the Hardys essentially work Chet so hard he gets only two hours sleep in 48 hours! </i></p><p>So Chet will be there. What about their girlfriends?</p><p><i>No. Why would they want to spend the summer with Frank and Joe? Besides, it would cramp Joe’s style. There’s a girl, Katie Haskell, at the resort who has a major crush on Joe. </i></p><p>That has potential. What happens between them?</p><p><i>Absolutely nothing! Joe mostly ignores her, but she’s there to loan him her car when he needs it to run errands and save his life when he’s stung 65 times by white-faced hornets. </i></p><p>Sixty-five times? That sounds like it would require a long hospital stay. Is that part of the climax?</p><p><i>No, they can take care of 65 hornet stings on an outpatient basis. I don’t think you have to stay overnight until, like, 90 or 105 hornet stings. </i></p><p>Huh. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?</p><p><i>Yes! And they use cutting edge stuff in this book — like the Internet and fax machines! </i></p><p>Fax machines?</p><p><i>Yes! You can send </i>a whole page<i> to a single person over phone lines! Grainy, black-and-white pages on horrible paper! It’s wonderful! </i></p><p>I know what a fax machine is. I was questioning whether … you know what, let’s skip that. What are you thinking about calling this soap-stealing extravaganza?</p><p><i>The Hunt for the Four Brothers</i>!</p><p>The four brothers? What are the four brothers?</p><p><i>The gems! </i></p><p>You mean the ones Frank and Joe don’t know exist until almost ¾ of the way through the book?</p><p><i>Of course! </i></p><p>Are you sure you don’t want to go with something like <i>The Great Mountain Gem Caper</i> or <i>The Mystery of Mountain Resort</i> or even <i>The Soap Smugglers</i>?</p><p><i>Nope! </i></p><p>You know what? Fine. I’m going to start my whisky break now.</p>*****<br />
<br />
<b>Continuing a discussion on investigation management</b>:</p><blockquote>“What in the world is going on down there?” Fenton asked. …<br />
“Everything’s under control now, Dad,” Joe assured him. “I survived the hornets, and they got the shrapnel out of Frank’s leg.” <br />
Fenton paused. “You call that being ‘under control’?” (p. 109)</blockquote><p>“Yes, Dad. This time we had actual medical professionals treat our relatively minor wounds. In the past, I’ve been knocked out more times than I can count (literally — I think those concussions have done something to my brain), been kidnapped, electrocuted, tied up, gassed, almost drowned, attacked by more vicious predators than I could shake a stick at, starved, shaken sticks at vicious predators, been shot at, was shot with a freeze ray and frozen for 36 hours, wandered into the middle of violent revolutions, been hunted as the most dangerous game, struck by lightning, buried alive, and poisoned, all while wandering around with no supervision and only the occasional medical attention. Later I plan to careen down a mountainside and fight a giant Russian in river rapids. But yeah, I think we have matters under control for the moment.”</p><p>“You have a point, son. Carry on, then — just let me know if I need to plan a funeral.” </p>***** <br />
<br />
<p><b>How a discussion on geography should have ended</b>:</p><blockquote>“I have a hunch about was in those pet carriers you saw … Siberian huskies, and I mean <i>Siberian</i>.”<br />
“What?” Joe asked. <br />
Frank held up a printout he had pulled off the Internet. “The airport code IEV is for Kiev … in Russia!” (p. 70)</blockquote><p>“But Frank, Kiev is nowhere near Siberia — not really.”</p><p>“What?” </p><p>“It’s hundreds of miles from Kiev to the Ural Mountains, which are the western border of Siberia. It would be like saying Omaha or St. Louis is in the Rocky Mountains.” </p><p>“But —”</p><p>“Eurasia is a large landmass, Frank. You’re the smart one. You should know this.” </p><p>“But it’s — I mean, it’s the Russian connection. I know Russia is a big country, but I just got confused.” </p><p>“Well, you say that, but that’s working under the assumption that Kiev is in Russia. I know for almost the first half of your life Kiev was part of the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union doesn’t exist any more. Kiev is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, which is an entirely different country.” </p><p>“Not part of Russia?” </p><p>“No. Ukraine borders Russia, and it used to be part of the USSR, but it’s been independent for almost a decade now.” </p><p>“Gee, thanks, Joe! If you hadn’t corrected me, I would have spent the rest of the adventure saying Kiev was in Russia, making the Russian who’s lurking around the obvious suspect. That would have been humiliating!” </p><p>“Yes, and just think if the adults around us didn’t correct us — think of how embarrassed they would be!” <i>*wiiiiiiink*</i></p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-13422552868557375262018-11-30T12:55:00.000-05:002018-12-27T16:40:54.154-05:00Eye on Crime (#153)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6vcbnlj"><img alt="Eye on Crime cover" title="Three people in three different scenes." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y6vcbnlj" width="250"></a>I picked up <i><b>Eye on Crime</b></i> while killing time in a northern Virginia mall — Crystal City? — half a year after the book came out (December 1998). It was the first of the post-Syndicate digests that I had read, and I wasn’t that impressed by any aspect of the book. Still, I remembered the general plot: A TV variety-show host, alternately described as “fast becoming one of the hottest” things on TV by the narrator (1) and “two-bit” (110) by the Hardys, hypnotizes teenagers into enacting various action scenarios, which are then edited into security footage to implicate the teens for jewel robberies. It’s ridiculous; that’s the reason I remembered it. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Rereading <i>Eye</i>, though, after covering my gaps in the original canon and reading dozens of digests and other Hardy series, I am fascinated by the dynamics between the Hardys and their girlfriends. The first fifteen pages or so are portraits of teen relationships that are somewhere between normal and careening toward disaster. (Although from what I remember, “careening toward disaster” is pretty normal for teenage dating relationships too.) Frank and Joe have taken Callie and Iola to a taping of the <i>Monty Mania</i> TV show, which is hosted by the aforementioned hypnotist. The boys start by ignoring their girlfriends to read the newspaper (<i>Bayport Times</i>, this time). Frank apologizes, blaming the front-page news, but Iola (of course) asks, “And this excuses your poor behavior now?” (2). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And rather than taking this as a hint to socialize, like a normal teen — hell, a normal <i>person</i> — Frank and Joe immediately go back to the newspaper. I thought Iola had Joe under some sort of control, but obviously not. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Later, when Iola and Callie complain about how Frank and Joe’s mystery solving cuts into their relationship time, Joe decides to play relationship chicken: “Are you getting jealous? … Do you miss us that much?” (4). Iola snickers at the idea, but the boys are convinced it’s true, even after both girls decline Frank’s offer to include them in crimesolving. The discussion (from Frank and Joe’s POV) / argument (from the girls’) ends as “Callie and Iola sneered at the brothers, putting on their grimmest we-don’t-find-you-funny looks” (5). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">During the show, Callie and Iola volunteer to be hypnotized, even though they’ve been told audience members who appear on the show will have to stay after the show, and the foursome have agreed to meet Chet and Tony at the Pizza Palace. Frank’s solution? He and Joe will abandon the girls, letting Callie and Iola catch up with the rest of them at the Pizza Palace. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank … Frank, Frank, Frank. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Your girlfriend has just complained about not seeing enough of you, about your being emotionally and physically distant. The correct answer is you call the Pizza Palace on a payphone or your cell phone to let Chet and Tony know you will be late, then WAIT FOR YOUR GIRLFRIENDS. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Then Frank pulls another weird move, as if he’s already trying to shift the blame for the failure of the relationship: When the host of <i>Monty Mania</i> asks Frank and Joe if he can “steal” their girlfriends, Frank says, “Seems to be the theme of the day” (9). This is the first time anything like this has come up! And anyway, other than kidnapping, you can’t really steal a romantic partner. Women and girls have agency, Frank. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Then Frank and Joe participate in Iola’s and Callie’s hypnotic humiliation, with Joe saying the girls should be made to impersonate their favorite animals. Later, while still under hypnotic control, Callie and Iola admit they are envious of Frank and Joe’s crimesolving activities and wish they could be more like the brothers. That’s kinda creepy — or it would be if the text (and most of the other books) indicated this were true, but nothing in the rest of <i>Eye on Crime</i> indicates they want to be like Frank and Joe. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Joe wants to use this admission against Callie and Iola — “rub it in a little” (13) — but Frank tells him not to. Joe: relationships are frequently a power struggle. You can’t use your ammunition willy-nilly. You have to save it up — and given Iola’s strong will, you’ll need all the help you can get. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Or maybe discretion is better: When Iola comes home late and Joe hopes “everything is OK,” she says, “I’m fine” (26). The next day, when Frank and Joe express concern, Iola asks, “What could possibly be wrong?,” and Callie says, “Nothing is wrong” (28). If you have to ask, you’re already doomed, Frank and Joe. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Speaking of creepy, while on the subject of relationships: Chet and Iola’s father “looked like an older version of his son,” while their mother is “a dead ringer for her daughter” [23]. Did the Mortons procreate asexually, like through mitosis or by budding?) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And that’s about the only glance we get at the Hardys’ romantic relationships. We learn Callie and Iola are friendly but not close friends (a characterization that clashes with previous books), and Callie and Iola are more emotionally demonstrative (embraces) than usual after the boys come to their investigative rescue. But that’s not enough to satisfy the reader’s appetite after the glimpse we get — not that I buy all that we are told, but it’s interesting nonetheless. </p><p>*****</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The rest of the story isn’t much. Footage of the hypnotized Iola and Callie is spliced into security footage of a robbed jewelry story, just as it was for a pair of baseball players at rival Shoreham High, who are also accused of being jewel thieves. Frank and Joe are slow to catch on, but while sticking their beaks into crime scenes and other people’s private property, the Hardys realize TV host Monty Andrews and his hypnotism is a key element to the crimes, as is the robbery victims’ reliance on Eye Spy Security. After Frank and Joe saves Andrews from a pair of goons, Andrews tells them he’s a patsy. He owes a lot of money at high interest to Ronald Johnson, the owner of Eye Spy and a loan shark, and Andrews’s hypnosis scenarios, focusing on teen audience members, were dictated by Johnson. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys’ solution? Allow themselves to be hypnotized, and then … profit? Iola and Callie are supposed to keep an eye on Frank and Joe and give them an alibi (probably?), but hypnotized Joe disables the girls’ car, and the Hardys disappear for the night. (They don’t have Chet and Tony, who wait at the Hardy home, or Fenton do anything.) Frank and Joe are arrested for robbing a furrier, with evidence planted in their van, but after smirking at the cops, making bail, and snooping at Eye Spy, they figure out the next target and watch Andrews’s goons rip off another jewelry store. The Hardys and their friends follow the goons back to their hideout, and even though Chet and Tony are captured because they don’t follow Frank and Joe’s orders, Frank and Joe get the goons to confess the entire scheme, and the teens capture the goons. Iola even whacks one of them over the head with a lamp. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Even though no direct evidence links Johnson to the crimes, the teens are all in the clear. Frank and Joe are back at school the next day, ready to play Shoreham. Before the game, Shoreham’s exonerated players offer Frank and Joe an autographed baseball and bat. It’s a bit of shade thrown at the boys in addition to a thank you: The items are autographed by the defending state champions from Shoreham High School. </p><p>*****</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Although I commend the Dixon for his / her relationship work despite Simon & Schuster’s romantic strictures, she / he shows some inexperience with the series and how high school works: </p><ul><li>In <i>Eye on Crime</i>, Tony is a waiter at the Pizza Palace, rather than a manager at Mr. Pizza; interestingly, Pizza Palace was mentioned in the revised <i>Mystery of the Flying Express</i> (#20), but many digests have used Mr. Pizza as a setting: <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/02/danger-on-air-95.html">Danger on the Air</a></i> (#95), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/spark-of-suspicion-98.html">Spark of Suspicion</a></i> (#98), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/spark-of-suspicion-98.html">Terminal Shock</a></i> (#102), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-prime-time-crime-109.html">The Prime-Time Crime</a></i> (#109), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/06/rock-n-roll-renegades-115.html">Rock ‘n’ Roll Renegades</a></i> (#116), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-mark-of-blue-tattoo-146.html">The Mark of the Blue Tattoo</a></i> (#146), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/trick-or-trouble-175.html">Trick-or-Trouble</a></i> (#175), and probably others. Mr. Pizza is also mentioned in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/dungeon-of-doom-99.html">Dungeon of Doom</a></i> (#99) and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-case-of-cosmic-kidnapping-120.html">The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping</a></i> (#120), <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-crisscross-crime-150.html">The Crisscross Crime</a></i> (#150), and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/10/kickoff-to-danger-170.html">Kickoff to Danger</a></i> (#170). Mr. Pizza has been in too many books to ignore, is what I guess I’m saying.<br />
<br />
<li><i>Monty Mania</i> is filmed at WBAY, which was a rock-format radio station the only time it was previously mentioned (<i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2011/04/program-for-destruction-87.html">Program for Destruction</a></i>, #87). WBPT is Bayport’s main TV station, featured in <i>Danger on the Air</i>, <i>Spark of Suspicion</i>, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-prime-time-crime-109.html">The Prime-Time Crime</a></i> (#109), and <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2011/03/beyond-law-casefiles-54.html">Beyond the Law</a></i> (Casefiles #55).<br />
<br />
<li>Shoreham started baseball practices a week before Bayport. When schools can start their practices is almost always set by a state athletic committee, and any coach who didn’t start his or her own practices with a few days of that date would be seen as derelict in duty to their students and employers and / or incredibly lazy. The latter seems likely; the day after Bayport’s first baseball practice, Bayport is scheduled to play Shoreham … and then play them again the day after that. High schools don’t normally have games on back-to-back days, especially against the same team, unless they are in a tournament or similar competition.<br />
<br />
<li>Unlike in <i>The Crisscross Crime</i>, Biff is not the Bayport catcher. As far as the text goes, he isn’t on the team at all, although previously unseen characters Michael Shannon (catcher), Novick (pitcher), and Gitenstein are.<br />
<br />
<li>Chief Collig is paranoid about teenage gangs infiltrating Bayport, going to extraordinary lengths to curb the Shaws’ and Mortons’ free speech and right to association. (I’m pretty sure the police don’t have the authority to institute a gag order by themselves, but I admit I may be wrong; New York or Bayport may have some gang / organized crime statute on the books to prevent accused criminals from talking to those who might be able to help with their defense.) But if teen gangs are appearing in Bayport, it would not be a new development. <i>The Mark of the Blue Tattoo</i>, which came out the year before <i>Eye on Crime</i>, was entirely about teen gangs in Bayport High School, and although Frank and Joe are seen as a power nexus within the high school cosmology, they were clearly not seen as a gang per se.<br />
<br />
<li>When Chet tells Joe to let nothing happens to Iola and Callie, Joe says, “Never have” (34-5). Obviously, that’s not true in the Casefiles, in which Iola was killed in the first book; in that light, I’d say Joe’s comment is an ironic statement. </ul><p>*****</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">This Dixon also has a proclivity to get too clever with names. BHS’s baseball coach is Coach Tarkanian; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Tarkanian">Jerry Tarkanian</a> was the basketball coach for UNLV from 1973 to 1992, winning an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_NCAA_Division_I_Men%27s_Basketball_Tournament">NCAA national championship in 1990</a>. (He also briefly coached the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs in 1992, then returned to the NCAA with Fresno State from 1995-2002.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">One of the wrongly accused Shoreham players is named Pepper Wingfoot. The surname is really strange; the only place I’ve ever seen it before in the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four">Fantastic Four</a></i> comics from Marvel, where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Wingfoot">Wyatt Wingfoot</a> is a friend of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Torch">Human Torch</a> and the Fantastic Four. Given that association, I wonder if “Pepper” came from Iron Man’s secretary / on-and-off girlfriend, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_Potts">Pepper Potts</a>. On the other hand, I have no idea where the name of his partner-in-non-crime, Roberto Rojas (Robert Red?), comes from. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">This Dixon also named a goon “Spicolli,” which I thought was a tribute to the character in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Times_at_Ridgemont_High">Fast Times at Ridgemont High</a></i>. But <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/sean-penn-fast-times-at-ridgemont-high">that character’s name</a> was spelled with only one L, and given that his partner in goon-itude was “Zybysko,” it’s more likely the names were chosen for wrestlers <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Zbyszko">Larry Zybysko</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Spicolli ">Louie Spicolli</a>, who feuded in the mid- to late ‘90s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Championship_Wrestling">WCW</a>. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">There is a limit to the Dixon’s cleverness: One of the robbed jewelry stores is “Golden Palace,” which sounds like it should be selling Chinese food instead. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-71723333249842720522018-11-23T13:29:00.001-05:002018-12-21T22:14:19.087-05:00The Rocky Road to Revenge (#151)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y99f43ro"><img alt="Rocky Road to Revenge cover" title="This scene didn’t really happen, although Joe does ALMOST fall to his death from a ski lift." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y99f43ro" width="250"></a>My first disappointment with <i><b>The Rocky Road to Revenge</b></i> is that it contains no revenge. I admit: The title is a good one, but it doesn’t fit the story. The only attempt “revenge” in the story is a botched extortion scheme that ends up with the blackmailer abducted and nearly murdered. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The second disappointment is that <i>Rocky Road</i> is a clear attempt to cash in on the <i>X-Files</i> craze in the late ‘90s, yet nothing about the title or front cover gives any indication of that. It’s a waste, even if the back cover copy does try to get the UFO angle in the book across … although even the back cover botches the details, as the second paragraph starts, “It begins with a strange green light in the sky.” No, the book clearly says it’s an <i>orange</i> light: “The color reminded Joe of a Halloween pumpkin” (7). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The mystery involves abductions in Colorado, where Frank and Joe are spending part of the summer with a classmate, Terry Taylor, who is working at a resort. (I don’t think many parents who would allow their teenage sons to visit a classmate of the opposite sex more than halfway across the country without adult supervision, but we know Laura and Fenton trust / have abandoned all responsibility for Frank and Joe.) <i>Rocky Road</i> pushes the theory that the victims were taken by aliens, linking the disappearances with the bright <i>orange</i> light seen in the Colorado skies during the first chapter. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Rocky Road</i> hits most of the highlights of UFOs and UFO abduction that any <i>X-Files</i> fan would know: electrical failures, lost time and fuzzy memories of the abduction, abandoned vehicles on deserted roads, bright lights. Frank and Joe debate the alien-abduction theory, with lunkhead Joe pushing the idea, and Frank batting it aside. Disappointingly, the experts they talk to don’t hit some of the points real experts on UFOlogy would; <i>Rocky Road</i> doesn’t mention the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal">“Wow!” signal</a> when discussing evidence of alien life gathered by radio telescopes, no one mentions the words “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia">panspermia</a>” or “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox">Fermi paradox</a>” (although Joe describes both ideas to bolster his claims), and the word “probe” is never once mentioned in relation to alien abductions. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The final disappointment is that <i>Rocky Road</i> plays the alien angle too straight. This is a Hardy Boys book, not a serious novel, and no one should expect a Hardy Boys book to be rooted in strict reality. I wanted a winking acknowledgement that the orange light or the mysterious night hobo who always wore sunglasses had something alien about them; I wanted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxwQEaKVey4">Alex Trebek as a man in black</a>. Instead, <i>Rocky Road</i> drops both the light and drifter, referencing the light on the final page in the same way the original <i>Disappearing Floor</i> (#19) picked up the mystery of its beginning pages, ending with the boys promising to find <a href="http://hardyboys.us/bt28.htm">Harry Tanwick</a>.</p><p>*****</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After the orange light in the sky gets the attention of the Hardys, Terry, and everyone else at the Silver Crest resort and the nearby town of Parnassa, Colo., the Silver Crest’s owner, Clay Robinson, disappears, his jeep abandoned on the side of a lonely road. Local UFOlogist (and former SETI scientist) Alistair Sykes takes down eyewitness accounts of the lights, exposits the basics of UFOlogy to the Hardys, and plays up Robinson’s disappearance as a possible alien abduction to the local press (such as it is). Soon after, though, Sykes vanishes as well, and that means it’s time for a Reprobate Roll Call: </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><ol><li><b>Myra Hart and Bev Kominski</b>, two former employees of Silver Crest and “drifters” (12). Robinson fired them for stealing from his office, and the two bear a grudge against him (and Terry, who reported seeing them exit Robinson’s office at the time of the theft). After denying the theft through most of the book, Myra and Beverly eventually claim they were only getting compensation for overtime Robinson declined to pay them. They also have no regard for anyone’s personal safety; they puncture a raft so that it will cause problems in the middle of the rapids, and while riding bicycles, they swing wide on a blind curve, causing Frank to either plow into them or drive off the cliff. (He uses his amazing driving ability to put Robinson’s jeep into a controlled sideways skid instead.) Myra also strands Joe and Terry on a ski lift for a while.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Max Jagowitz</b>, general store owner and local crank. Jagowitz is opposed to Robinson’s plan to create a ski resort called the Golden Dream. As a member of the local council, he’s steamed that Robinson managed to get the votes for the approval of the Golden Dream despite his opposition. (He essentially accuses those who voted for Robinson’s development of corruption. Democracy!) Jagowitz lies about his family history, claiming they emigrated to America in 1889 from Yugoslavia, even though Yugoslavia didn’t exist until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles">Treaty of Versailles</a>, thirty years later, and didn’t exist when the book was written either. He also keeps accusing Joe of stealing a bag of potato chips, although to be fair, Joe should have waited Jagowitz to ring up his purchase rather than just dropping a couple of quarters on the counter.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Clay Robinson</b>. Clay’s a genial fellow, and Stella, his dog, loves him, but he’s ruffled a few feathers getting the Golden Dream project approved. Sykes doesn’t like him either, making cryptic comments about Robinson stealing moonstones. Also, Robinson tells the Hardys, “When Clay Robinson gets it into his head to do something, by golly, he does it. Always remember that, boys. Stick to your guns, no matter what” (6). Frank says it’s good advice, and I know it sounds that way in a “never give up on your dreams” sense, but taken to its extremes, it becomes delusional or psychopathic. Sure, he disappears early in the book, but he could be staging his abduction for nefarious purposes.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Alistair Sykes</b>, a scientist / UFOlogist. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence let him go after their funding was cut — according to him — and now he’s working from his home, with a radio telescope and equipment he paid for himself. He too has an (unspecified) grudge against Robinson, so perhaps he abducted a man he doesn’t like to play up the alien-abduction angle and even used his own abduction to drum up publicity and the funding he needs for his work.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Aliens</b>! No, not really — but what’s up with that weird guy who keeps wandering around at night in sunglasses? </ol></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After Robinson disappears, Frank and Joe uncharacteristically agree to call the cops, but Sgt. Bunt and his team inspire no confidence. Terry asks the Hardys to investigate, even though she claims she’s not supposed to know they’re detectives. “Word gets around school,” she says, and the narration claims, “They tried to keep it quiet” (32). This is in contrast to <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-ice-cold-case-148.html">The Ice-Cold Case</a></i> (#148), just three books before, when even a classmate’s father knows they’re detectives. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Speaking of uncharacteristic, Frank is the B&E King this book rather than Joe; Frank uses his lockpicks to break into a couple of places, setting off the burglar alarm in one location. Also uncharacteristic: When their raft is sabotaged, Frank gets dumped into the water, which causes Joe to pity him: “It could have happened to anyone” [30], which is the Hardys’ version of “Don’t worry: It happens to all guys.” Perhaps he should pity Frank — he and Joe were outstanding white-water rafters in <i>The Roaring River Mystery</i> (#80], so falling out of a raft is a huge step down for him.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">They visit with Sykes and learn that despite all his fancy equipment and learning, he’s decided that an invented language, known only by him, is the best way to communicate with aliens, and he almost concludes a powerful Mexican radio station playing salsa music is an alien signal. Later, after a possibly alien-caused electrical outage at the Silver Crest, he disappears, with only an open window to suggest where he went. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Not uncharacteristic is Joe’s ability to put himself in danger. Joe and Terry visit Moondance Peak to sightsee and give themselves something to do while Terry exposits to Joe about the area and Robinson. (There’s no romance here, no, no! Joe has no hormones — or at least not the ones that would cause a teenage boy to react when alone with a female classmate in a beautiful setting.) While Joe and Terry are on the way down, Myra, the ski-lift operator, shuts the lift down; Joe tries to climb down a nearby pole but nearly falls to his death instead. The lift starts up again soon after. This almost exactly like what happened in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/10/carnival-of-crime-122.html">Carnival of Crime</a></i> (#122), when Joe almost falls to his death getting out of his gondola on a stalled Ferris wheel to help a kid who doesn’t actually need his help. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Because of his belief that the government is concealing proof of aliens, Joe cashes in some of Fenton’s chips with his friend, General Radman. Radman sets up a meeting with General Webster at NORAD, who essentially tells the boys to stop grasping at straws and act like rational adults rather than conspiracy freaks. Joe is more or less satisfied, and we all have to agree as taxpayers that this hour-long conference, soothing the paranoia of a teenage boy, is a great use of a military officer’s time and expertise. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">On their way back to Silver Crest, Frank is forced to stop on a lonely road by a bright light. After a “quick jab of pain” (107), Frank loses consciousness; when he awakens, Joe is missing, and he claims something had hit him over the head. (Nothing hit him in the head; he was jabbed with a knockout drug.) Frank and Terry immediately confront Myra and Bev; Frank thinks they are “downright mean and capable of just about anything” (113), and I can’t decide if that’s a damning statement from Frank (he’s seen a lot of crimes) or if Frank’s imagination is so limited he can’t think of anything truly awful. Terry bluffs and gets Myra and Bev to admit they stole a moonstone necklace from Robinson’s safe. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Then Joe shows up on a bicycle after Bev and Myra slip away from the interrogation and, without consulting his brother, puts Bev in a headlock. You know, as one does. It’s not like he has any reason to suspect the ladies. He woke up in a cow pasture with Robinson, then ran into Frank and Terry. He only beat up on a woman because it looked like she and her friend were fleeing, and if that’s not an allegory for modern police practices, I don’t know what is. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Neither Joe nor Robinson remembers anything helpful. Despite the lateness of the hour, Robinson goes to complete the task his kidnapping prevented him from completing days before: talking to his lawyer. That’s a good idea, because Frank — after a visit to Jagowitz — works out that Robinson is behind everything. When Sykes saw Bev wearing a moonstone necklace that had been stolen from his mother decades before, Sykes realized Robinson had been the thief and tried to blackmail him. Robinson decided not to take extortion lying down, staging his own kidnapping before abducting Sykes (and later Joe). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I must admit: I very much admire how Frank figures out the motive, working through an <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_A.B.C._Murders">A.B.C. Murders</a></I> setup. At first, he conjectures Robinson was the true target, and Sykes and Joe were taken to muddy the waters. When Joe and Robinson turn up, he switches gears — Sykes was the real target, and Robinson and Joe were kidnapped to obscure the real motive. Frank shows he’s the intelligent one, for once, rather than Dixon just telling us. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys track Robinson and his dog, Stella, to a mine — Frank finds the hidden door to the abandoned mine after he “ran his flashlight over the mountain” (134), which … wait, the <i>entire</i> mountain? — and after leaving Stella outside, they find Robinson about to blow up the mine to kill Sykes. Frank tries to convince Robinson he’s not a killer, but Robinson reminds Frank of the advice he gave Frank at the beginning of the book: “I said once you’ve got it into your head to do something, you stick to your guns” (145). Fortunately, Stella wanders into the mine — Joe didn’t actually tie her up or put her in their vehicle or anything — and Robinson can’t bring himself to harm his dog. He’s put in jail for his stupid, stupid crimes. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-2853081970945843362018-11-09T12:37:00.000-05:002018-11-13T19:59:02.276-05:00The Crisscross Crime (#150)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8xpoed7"><img alt=" cover" title="" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y8xpoed7" width="250"></a>For the hundredth book in the Hardy Boys series, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2011/01/secret-of-island-treasure-100.html">The Secret of the Island Treasure</a></i>, Simon & Schuster brought back Hurd Applegate, a character from the first Hardy Boys book (<i>The Tower Treasure</i>) and a recurring character in early books. I was hopeful S&S would do something unexpectedly retro with book #150, <i><b>The Crisscross Crime</b></i>, but I was disappointed. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The book does have touches that recall earlier mysteries. The title is similar to <i>The Crisscross Shadow</i>’s (#32), although the plots have nothing to do with each other. Bayport’s reservoir is important, like in <i>The Secret of Skull Mountain</i> (#27), but the reservoir in <i>Crisscross Crime</i> appears to be a new reservoir, as it isn’t located at Skull Mountain. (It's probably the same reservoir from <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/03/dungeon-of-doom-99.html">Dungeon of Doom</a></i> [#99].) The biggest rush of nostalgia comes when Fenton’s international crimesolving <i>just happens</i> to interlock with Frank and Joe’s Bayport case (<i>The Mystery of Too Many Damn Times to Count</i>). Still, I wish there had been more explicit references to the Hardy Boys’ past in <i>Crisscross</i>. If, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hardy_Boys_books">Wikipedia suggests</a>, <i>Crisscross Crime</i> started out as Hardy Boys Casefiles #130 before that series was cancelled, it’s a miracle the book fits with the Digest / original series as well as it does. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, I suppose you can count Joe being a headstrong moron and Frank being a plodding dullard being references to the series past — but I’ll get back to that. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The story begins on the baseball field — that’s something else that hearkens back to the good ol’ days, but Frank and Joe were playing baseball for the Bayport Bombers in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/02/danger-on-diamond-90.html">Danger on the Diamond</a></i> (#90) as well, so it’s not unusual. Now, if they’d brought back baseball-loving chum Jerry Gilroy, who hasn’t been seen since 1966, then that would have been awesome. Anyway, Joe’s pitching, Frank’s at shortstop, and Biff takes Chet’s old spot behind the plate. The Bayport Bombers are an out from a win with runners in scoring position; Joe hangs a curve, but a diving catch by Frank seals the Bomber victory. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Rather than head to Mr. Pizza, Frank and Joe need to pick up their mother’s car from the shop. While Frank pays, Joe spots a break-in at a nearby bank. The robbers take off when the alarm sounds, and when Frank drives by in Laura’s car, Joe hops in with their video camera and tells Frank to follow that car! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The chase ends in a junk yard, where the robbers abandon their vehicle. But Frank drives Laura’s car into a car crusher — oops! — and as the car is turned into a cube, the boys narrowly escape with their lives and the video camera. I realize this is probably a traumatic moment for them; it would be for me. But our heroes are Frank and Joe Hardy, who have been in traumatic situations from (literally!) Australia to Zurich and everywhere in between, so why do they do so many stupid things afterwards? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">For example:<br />
<ul><li>Joe’s first act after the car is destroyed is to break into the junkyard’s office and snoop around.<br />
<li>Frank and Joe delay telling Laura that her car is no more, and she learns about it by watching the video Joe shot of it turning it into a large die.<br />
<li>When the boys want to learn what happened at a successful robbery that happened just after the break-in they witnessed, Joe poses as a reporter for the Bayport <i>Globe</i> and grills the bank manager, even though the police have <i>told the bank manager not to blab</i>. Why not ask the usually cooperative police, Joe?<br />
<li>When a suspect doesn’t want to talk to the boys, Joe’s reaction is to immediately hop her large wall to force her to talk to them.<br />
<li>When Frank tells his brother to call the cops if he isn’t back from checking a potential bank robbery in ten seconds, Joe’s reaction is to get a couple of baseball bats, give one to Biff, then try to beat up the robber(s), <i>who have guns</i>.<br />
<li>When Frank and Joe are captured by the villains at the end of the book, and Frank realizes the criminals are more likely to kill the boys the more they learn about what the Hardys know, Joe keeps blabbering, letting the criminals know exactly how much the boys have learned.</ul><p style="text-indent: 1cm">On one hand, the Hardys have always put justice above property rights or personal safety. On the other hand, Joe might be a nihilist thug, rushing headlong toward the hospital or the grave. (He might have discovered what all those concussions mean for him later in life and be determined not to suffer through the <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy/symptoms-causes/syc-20370921">symptoms of CTE</a>.) I realize the above acts are (somewhat) normal for private eyes in fiction, but Frank and Joe are kids with no reason to not cooperate with the police, given how willingly Con will feed them info. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But Frank and Joe never call the police! I’ve joked about the boys considering themselves a law unto themselves, but it’s hard to remember a case on which they have snubbed the five-oh so blatantly. After Laura’s car gets crunched and the boys break into the junkyard office, Frank and Joe don’t call the cops — even though it takes about three hours between the car’s destruction and the arrival of a concussed Biff to pick up the brothers. (A time warp might explain the abnormally long time it takes for a car chase and poking around a room or two, or the boys might have fallen into an alternate timeline: Joe calls Biff “Hoop,” and Biff’s drives a hatchback instead of his usual jeep.) Frank and Joe are determined to investigate, and it takes Frank’s near arrest — the boys’ van was spotted near the botched bank robbery — to get them to hand over their video of the chase. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But they don’t hand over the tape until after they’ve given it to Phil Cohen, who shouts “Enhance!” at his computers a few times and gets a clear look at the license plates. C’mon, guys! If TV has taught me nothing else — and it’s possible that it hasn’t — it’s that the police have a whole unit dedicated to shouting “Enhance!” at video, even though it’s impossible to improve a video past its original resolution. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I suppose the lack of police involvement cuts both ways. When Joe vaults the fence at a ritzy house on tony High Street — the same street the Hardys live on, although the book doesn’t mention that — and are caught, Frank and Joe don’t feel the need to use the police to justify their presence. Fortunately, the suspect lets them out of the trees in which her Dobermans have chased them and doesn’t call the cops herself. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Collig tries to give the boys their comeuppance, yelling at the Hardys for charging into a bank robbery with baseball bats, but his dressing down is interrupted by a grateful bank manager, who tells Collig the boys saved all that federally insured money and only drew a couple of bullets that hit only one bat. Still, Chief Collig gets his momentary revenge at the denouement: When Frank and Joe reveal the villains’ real, final target, he sneers at them, and his officers laugh. Serves you right, boys.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(This antagonism between Collig and the boys makes more sense if the book was originally a Casefile; Collig’s animus against the boys is much greater in that series.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on Frank and Joe. After they describe the initial robbery attempt and chase to Fenton, Fenton tells the boys to call Collig “if they find anything concrete” (30). Fenton: They are <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frelling">frelling</a> eyewitnesses to an attempted bank robbery, and they have videotape of the criminals escaping. I’m not sure your sense of responsibility is everything it should be. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The independent streak he inspires in his sons ends up biting him in the ass, though. When Frank and Joe find the counterfeiter Fenton has been hunting is in Bayport, they ask for Fenton’s number; Laura says she has already spoken that day to Fenton, who said he’s returning to Bayport, and boys decide their information can wait. Sure, why not? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">And the boys definitely get their cavalier regard for information sharing from their father. When Frank and Joe try to “soothe” Laura and their Aunt Gertrude after they see Laura’s car being crushed, the women tell the boys to call the police (36). The boys refuse. No reason to listen to hysterical women and their completely legitimate concerns about your safety and the modern crimefighting apparatus! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Because Frank and Joe don’t share info with the police, it’s hard to blame Collig for his reactions. He thinks he’s figured out the pattern in crimes — or more accurately, he figures Frank has figured out the pattern, which he shared with the police in a rare moment of cooperation. Well, the book claims Frank figured it out, but let’s see if you can figure it out yourself. First, as Frank and Joe were getting their mom’s car crushed and the police were responding to the triggered alarm, a bank downtown was robbed. A day or so later, while Joe and Biff foiled the bank robbery with their wooden bats, the police were responding in force to an alarm triggered at a bank on Bayport’s outskirts. Frank’s cognitive breakthrough? He “explained the hunch he and Joe had about all the real targets being downtown and all the false alarms being on the outskirts of town” (108). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s not a hunch. That’s <i>recapping what had happened in the book so far</i></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Now, what don’t Frank and Joe share with Collig? In the junkyard office, Frank and Joe find detailed maps of Bayport’s utilities, including the sewer lines and storm drains. Also, Fenton is investigating a counterfeiting case for the government, and the printing plates and ink have already been stolen; one of the suspects tells them the paper U.S. currency is printed on is stored in Bayport. (Seems like Fenton should have been on top of that, really.) The boys — well, Frank, really — put 2 and 2 together, and even though they don’t bother to check whether they should be adding or multiplying, come up with the 4-1-1: The criminals are using the storm drains to move around town, and the last bank robberies will be a double fake. The real target will be the armory where the paper is stored. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">While the police are responding to a decoy robbery downtown, the robbers use jackhammers to break into the armory from below, which our crack troops can’t hear. They then escape through the storm drains on jet skis. It’s unusual; I’ll say that, at least. After Frank viciously “clocked” a criminal <i>with a tire iron</i> and steals his jet ski (138), the boys chase the other robbers to the reservoir, survive being tied up to drown in the storm drain (Frank flexes his wrists to escape his wet bonds), and pursue the last of the criminals onto the bay, where they prevent international counterfeiter Herve DuBois from escaping onto his speedboat and the open sea. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">At no point do they call the police, but the Coast Guard does show up in time to keep the criminals from drowning. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The book ends with Laura and Fenton showing up at the boys’ next baseball game in her new car; Laura cheerfully tells her sons they will “never” drive it (150). Finally — consequences for Frank and Joe! </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-61684959162189255742018-11-03T03:02:00.000-04:002019-07-29T13:56:55.867-04:00The Chase for the Mystery Twister (#149)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y9bwmmwr"><img alt="The Chase for the Mystery Twister cover" title="If Frank and Joe are such great detectives, why can’t they find the tornado that’s right behind them?" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y9bwmmwr" width="250"></a>The Hardy Boys mysteries are usually set in fictional places — Bayport is fictional, the small towns around Bayport are fictional, and the small towns across the world the Hardys wend their way to are fictional. They do spend time in real places, of course; New York has always been a staple of Hardy Boys crimesolving. But mostly the Hardys are not visible from the world outside your window. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">For many years, I rarely thought about this practice, but lately it has been bothering me. Bayport and its fictional environs are fine, I’ve decided: The milieu created for the absurdly powerful crimefighting family could hardly be mixed up with the real world. But when they wander into some fictional town in an identifiable part of the real world, it feels strange. The Hardy Boys books aren’t the most subtle and incisive observers of humanity, and these fictional places give leave to the authors to abandon reality and make somewhere real into something unreal, where stereotypes and bizarre characterizations dominate. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Take, for instance, Lone Wolf, Okla., where most of <i><b>The Chase for the Mystery Twister</b></i> takes place. Allegedly, all these things are true about Lone Wolf:<br />
<ul><li>It is large enough that a television station is located in the town.<br />
<li>The TV station thinks its audience is learned enough but also bored enough to care about atypical tornado debris patterns.<br />
<li>It is small enough that the town’s sheriff also holds a full-time job as a barber.<br />
<li>It is large enough that people remark about how long it takes to get from one side of the town to the other.<br />
<li>It is small enough that there is only one motel in a 25-mile radius of Wolf Gap.<br />
<li>It is the self-declared Tornado Capital of the World, even though it is part of “Twister Alley,” rather than “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Alley">Tornado Alley</a>.” This title seems to bring no tourism to the town, as evidenced by the one motel. <br />
<li>The air is so clear and the land so flat that vehicles can not only be seen more than a mile away (and their relative size distinguished), they can be seen despite the lessened visibility created by storms and tornados.<br />
<li>Somehow a Hispanic man who introduces himself to newcomers with a hearty “Buenos dias” has been elected sheriff in the largely white community in rural Oklahoma.<br />
<li>The early spring corn in Lone Wolf is tall enough to block Joe’s view of a thresher, despite corn being barely shoe-top level until some time in May in most of the Northern Hemisphere.<br />
<li>Joe is able to practice bilocation, being at a bank and a barnraising at the same time.</ul><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The most amazing fact about Lone Wolf, though, is that <i>it’s a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf,_Oklahoma">real place</a></i>. Or at least the Lone Wolf in <i>Mystery Twister</i> is based on a real place — the 500 people who lived in the real Lone Wolf in 2000, two years after <i>Mystery Twister</i> was published, wouldn’t have been able to support the two rival insurance agents / scamsters that are at the heart of the book, let alone have a television station or a sheriff. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(I was also shocked to learn that the <a href="https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/">National Severe Storm Laboratory</a> is a real thing. I mean, National Severe Storms Laboratory just sounds fake. But no, it’s a real part of the <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a>.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The real Lone Wolf also presumably doesn’t expose homoerotic urges like this book suggests. When Joe grabs Phil with his “muscular arms,” “Joe knew there was no time to be delicate”; there’s also mention of Phil being “roughly yanked” and of putting body parts in hole (54). The scene is supposed to show Joe rescuing Phil from a fire, but you have to read between the lines. I think Joe is carrying Phil to the fire … in his pants. Later, when an attacker pins Joe against the dirt, words like “wriggled,” “bucked,” “tried every move he knew” and “got a hold of the man’s hair” are used (88). Sure, it’s supposed to be a fight, but it seems ... charged, you know? By the time Phil urges, “Get it up, Joe!” (127), I was blushing at the explicitness. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Lone Wolf is a place and a state of mind. What is <i>The Chase for the Mystery Twister</i>?</p><p>****</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">It’s a bad book, that’s what it is. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I’m not going to suggest an editor slid a worn-out VHS copy of <i>Twister</i> to this book’s Dixon, said “Go wild,” and then belched instead of giving the author an outline — heavens no. But if you’d like to make a little bet on the matter without letting the authorities know, then you know how to contact me. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">During Spring Break, Frank and Joe fly to Lone Wolf — fly commercial, mind you, like <i>peasants</i> — to meet up with Phil Cohen. What’s technophile Phil, who was complaining about going out in the cold in the <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-ice-cold-case-148.html">previous mystery</a>, doing in BFE Oklahoma? Why, he’s working for a team of stormchasers, a pursuit he has never showed any interest in before. Phil has been in Oklahoma for a while, much longer than a mere spring break internship would allow — has he already graduated high school, or are his grades good enough that he doesn’t have to show up for classes? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Phil and the other stormchasers work for Lemar Jansen, who apparently doesn’t have a doctorate in meteorology or anything else (everyone calls him “Mr. Jansen”). His team is opposed by Greg Glover, a former colleague who has his own team. Glover’s team has corporate sponsorship, but Janson’s doesn’t because he “doesn’t want anyone pressuring him or telling him what to do” (109). This raises questions: What kind of businesses sponsor stormchasers? What do they get out of the deal? What do they pressure stormchasers into doing? And why — why sponsor people who drive after tornados? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">No — asking “why” never gets anyone anything but a headache. We’ll press on. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><b>(NOTE: I apologize for not knowing the evil rival tornado chasing team comes from the movie <i>Twister</i>, which <i>Mystery Twister</i> is obviously based on. I should have done the research, but I thought <i>Twister</i> was an excuse to watch wind destroy buildings and pick up cattle and didn't bother with a “plot.”)</b></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Jansen and Glover’s teams are fascinated by a house that a tornado has leveled near Lone Wolf; the debris left by the tornado has been strewn in an atypical pattern. Jansen and Glover have seen this anomaly once before, but like the previous time, they find no clues as to what caused the strange pattern — all the local weather radars were jammed, and evidently NOAA has no interest at aiming its weather satellites at a probable tornado event. Poking around the house’s wreckage, Joe finds a piece of the owner’s “Ming vase” (35), but the shard is stamped “Occupied Japan” (40). Bayport’s education system must be lacking severely if Joe thinks a vase labeled “Occupied Japan” could be a genuine Ming. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Anyway, Frank, Joe, and Phil find other clues that the homeowner was defrauding his insurer, which is poised to pay out more than a million dollars, although the homeowner’s insurance agent doesn’t seem too concerned. At the same time, Lone Wolf’s other insurance agent disappears, causing suspicion to fall on the Cherokee grandfather of the absurdly named Snowden Parlette. While investigating the fraud and disappearance, Joe pressures Phil into breaking into every place with a locked door. Frank performs a <a href="https://youtu.be/FN2SKWSOdGM?t=36">Buster Keaton impersonation</a> at a barnraising, then Joe has his sexually charged fight before fleeing from a thresher that corners like a rally car. (Joe ends up hiding under a tractor rather than climbing over or through the tractor. What a farm noob!) When the man with the destroyed Ming vase shows up with the sheriff in tow, accusing the brothers of “slander and threatening him in public” (90), Frank and Joe are nice enough to not point out that slander is a civil crime, outside of the purview of a sheriff. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">A videotape of the tornado that left the weird debris patterns — dubbed the “mystery twister” by Frank — shows up without provenance or credit; Frank and Phil debunk the video after Frank steals it from Glover. While Frank is realizing the homeowner and his insurance agent are colluding on their scam, Joe gets Phil into trouble by breaking into the villains’ semi; Phil is knocked out, and when yelling for help while the truck is roaring down the highway predictably fails, Joe manages to knock down the rear door with a “huge” tractor (118). (If you think a huge tractor will fit in a semi-trailer, you too are a farm noob, sadly uninformed about tractor sizes.) The tractor is part of the fraudsters’ insti-tornado kit, which they used to knock down the house with the weird debris pattern; I think the amount of damage the kit would have to pull off in a short time is only a little more believable than a supervillain keeping his lair secret when it has been constructed by a crew of hundreds. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Even with the tractor, Joe can’t get the door down until the semi is going over a cliff; Phil and Joe implausibly jump free of the trailer and tread water in the quarry pit until they are rescued hours later. In the last ten pages, the boys are chased by an F5 tornado on the way home, capture the fraudsters, prove the missing insurance agent was in on the scam, exonerate their friend’s grandfather, and recover most of the money stolen by both corrupt insurance agents. Also in the last ten pages: Joe runs at a monster truck that is driving toward him, leaps on its hood, and subdues the truck’s driver, so it’s pretty clear the Dixon just threw up his hands, said “Screw it,” and crammed everything he needed to into the last few pages without regard for pacing or logic. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">It's a poor ending, but then again, it’s a poor book. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-67950536994447751522018-10-26T11:13:00.000-04:002018-11-13T17:56:28.750-05:00The Ice-Cold Case (#148)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ya6l7wlq"><img alt="The Ice-Cold Case cover" title="Your stylish orange jacket won’t help you this time, Joe!" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/ya6l7wlq" width="250"></a>So I took it pretty easy on the last book, <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/10/trial-and-terror-147.html">Trial and Terror</a></i>, giving it some leeway because it seemed to be attempting to deal with a touchy subject with some subtlety. <b><i>The Ice-Cold Case</i></b>, on the other hand, will not get the same benefit of the doubt, even though its title correctly used a hyphen in a compound adjective. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Why?, you might ask. It’s simple: Frank and Joe are morons. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">As the book begins, Frank and Joe drive Phil, Chet, Callie, and Iola to Sarah Kwan’s birthday party. (This isn’t what makes Frank and Joe morons; just give me a moment.) Now, given Hardy Boys’ depictions of East Asians and Asian-Americans, having a friend of Asian descent is kinda a milestone for the Hardys, especially since they don’t have any members of the Kwan family cross-dress to make their girlfriends jealous or Chet horny, like <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8x5vkgb">they forced Tom Wat to do in <i>Footprints under the Window</i></a> (#12). No, in this case, Frank and Joe attend a party at the beautiful lakeside home of the prosperous Kwan family, and —</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Ha ha, no. Frank and Joe don’t attend the party. Mr. Kwan immediately dangles the possibility of investigating a series of robberies around the lake, and Frank and Joe are off like a shot — ignoring the party, their friends, the birthday girl, and even their proposed skating race. They get in the middle of a squabble between unruly hockey players and ice fishermen. The cops are called, a football teammate of Joe’s who’s a bit of a jerk but basically good <i>freund</i> is arrested, and the Hardys scarf down burnt burgers before taking off. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Now, this is usually where I would insert a reprobate roll call, but I’m not going to bother this time. The obvious suspects are obvious; since Frank and Joe waste their time on investigative avenues that are unlikely to pan out, the brothers come across as dullards. What are they overlooking? Very soon in the investigation, it becomes clear the thieves should meet certain criteria:<br />
<ol><li>They must have access to the lake without motor transportation because the Kwans would hear a vehicle driving by;<br />
<li>They must be around the lake frequently, since the thieves react quickly to what the Hardys do; <br />
<li>They must be from out of town or have out-of-town connections, as the stolen goods haven’t shown up in any local pawn shop or with any fences; and <br />
<li>Their robberies are, for some reason, concentrated in the winter months.</ol>Who meets those criteria? Not Ray Nelson, the jerk who played football with Joe; he has alibis for too many of the robberies, and besides, Ray claims to have helped the Hardys “find that kid who ran away … [and catch] Rob Dee stealing stuff from the gym lockers” (15). (We haven’t seen Ray before, but since Frank and Joe don’t contradict him, we should believe him.) Since Ray didn’t do it, his friends, John and Vinnie, are similarly in the clear; besides, they work at Burger World, which I don’t think any self-respecting teen thief would subject himself to. (Burger World: Circumnavigate your taste buds with Burger Flavor!®) The idea that the culprits are the Kwans, peripheral characters introduced only to serve as an entre for the Hardys into the case, is laughable. None of the fishermen are fleshed out enough to be the villain, except for chief ice hole Ernie Tuttle; however, Ernie is not a criminal — just a cranky old man who runs (and lives in) a fishing shop on the lake. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So who do these clues fit? Tuttle’s grandkids, Neil and Stu, who come up from Maryland every winter to help their grandfather with his fishing shop. They fit all the criteria. In my notes on the book, I’d decided they were the culprits before p. 20. But the Hardys take half the book before focusing on the Tuttles, and only on p. 132 does Frank admit “hesitantly” admit Ernie might have nothing to do with the crimes. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Come on, guys! You’re supposed to be good at this! I think it’s time to play the <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/phil/fnordchan/dhenry/gambit4-review.txt">Moron Game!™</a> (modified version). Joe Hardy, why are you a moron? </p><blockquote>“Joe wasn’t going to let go of the investigation for the sake of a birthday party” (20). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, that’s more inconsiderate than stupid. What about your opinion of the housesitter you beat up after breaking into the home he was watching? </p><blockquote>“‘You think with all that’s going on around here, he’d be more appreciative that we were trying to protect him,’ Joe grumbled.” (48) <i>Also: after the boys beat up the housesitter, Joe says,</i> “He seemed to have an attitude” (52). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s … an unrealistic reading of the situation, Joe. You can’t expect beat up someone and have them thank you. It just doesn’t work that way.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Maybe you can show your wit (or lack thereof) through humor, when Phil offers to help despite his aversion to being outside in the freezing cold? </p><blockquote>“‘You know I’m available to help,’ Phil said. <br>
‘I thought you hated the cold,’ Joe said. <br>
‘I told you I can fix the heat in [the van],’ Phil said. <br>
‘I meant the cold on the lake,’ Joe said, and they all laughed” (118). </blockquote></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s not a joke. That’s the result of carbon monoxide leaking into the van’s passenger space. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, we’ve always known Joe was the intellectual weak link. So, Frank, are you a moron? When someone might be shooting at the house you’re in, what do you do? </p><blockquote>“Frank threw open the door and flew out in a spiral” (103). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">There’s a fine line between stupid and incomprehensible, and that sentence lands on both sides of the line. I can’t imagine how a human being can run in a spiral, let alone fly in one — does he spin out of the house like a thrown football, or is he trying to run in overlapping circles to confuse the shooter? (Think about walking out your front door and walking to the street or mailbox “in a spiral”; you’d look like a total nimrod.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Well, what about when Joe asks, “How many [nightspots for partying] are open ... late?”
<blockquote>“‘Not too many,’ Frank said. ‘Let’s check them later’” (69). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So you’re telling me that a city of 50,000 doesn’t have a plethora of spots where people can come <a href=https://youtu.be/Xz9KVcLCUek?t=66">to your town and help you party it down</a>? And more to the point, you want us to believe you know anything about those places? (The boys find Officer Con Riley hanging around the Dew Drop Inn, which probably has an active nightlife. I’m assuming it’s a little redneck-looking joint and that Con is waiting for a scuffle involving <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVL1Zs6WTw">a longhaired hippie chasing five big dudes, including a faithful follower of Brother John Birch, around the parking lot in his mag-wheeled, four-on-the-floor Chevrolet</a>.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Let’s expand this to the Hardys chums. Chet Morton, why are you a moron? </p><blockquote>“Chet was a longtime friend of the Hardys and was used to such abuse from them” (23). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Abuse! Come on, Chet, have some pride, and just walk away from them! You’re more than just a reliable vessel for their horrible comedy stylings. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Hey, Phil Cohen, what do you have to say when you and your friends are almost run down by a stolen truck, which misses Frank by inches? </p><blockquote>“Do you think they were really trying to kill us?” (111). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank doesn’t believe so, but as we’ve established, Frank may be a moron! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">What about the cops? Con Riley, why are you a moron? </p><blockquote>“Frank hoped Riley wouldn’t realize he was being grilled and clam up on them” (18). </blockquote><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Riley doesn’t realize a pair of teenagers are transparently pumping him for information, and he gives the boys an update on the investigation without getting anything from them. Later on, he equates a broken van window in severity with arson. On the other hand, he’s getting teenagers to do his work for free, so maybe he’s not as big a simpleton as I think. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">***</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">It all ends up fine, of course. The Tuttle kids are captured, Ray is cleared, and he and Joe “gave each other big football-player hugs” (143). (I … I don’t think that’s a thing football players do, usually, but I admit I never played high-school football.) The Kwans throw an old-school party to celebrate the Hardys’ success, and since Frank and Joe don’t have to share the spotlight with a character who will never be seen again, they are quite willing to be part of the festivities rather than looking for something more interesting to do. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The book does have a bit of drama; when Joe manages to fall through thin ice — the brothers claimed to have been lured onto the thin ice, but they have no one to blame but themselves — the author manages to put some real drama into his rescue and recovery. Joe is dragged to the Kwans’ house, where Mrs. Kwan, a nurse, treats him. Part of the treatment involves submerging Joe in a warm bath, and Mrs. Kwan insists Joe remove all his clothes before going into the bath. This may be the first time a non-blood-related female has seen either of the brothers naked. A milestone! And honestly, I figured both brothers were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK6_5HhrKHU">never-nudes</a>, taking showers in their jean shorts. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Later, Joe’s hanging around the Kwans, waiting for his clothes to dry while dressed only in a bathrobe and heavy socks. Joe “had an embarrassed look on his face … ‘I feel weird hanging around here in a bathrobe,’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s a girl from school here’” (99). It’s good to know that even though he had a near-death experience, his shame reflex is still strong. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">After the EMTs arrive, Joe declines to go to the hospital based on Mrs. Kwan’s recommendation: “I think he’ll be fine,” she says, despite Joe having been submerged in freezing water for three minutes (98). Joe, you don’t deserve the sort of treatment a hospital would give you until you catch the criminals! In the meanwhile, rub some dirt on your frostbite, you pansy, and you’ll be fine. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">***</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Also: for those of you who are wondering, Bayport is located at latitude 40 degrees north, latitude 73 degrees west. That’s south of Long Island and east of New Jersey in the Atlantic, located in international waters. If you accept that the minutes and seconds have been left off the degrees, then it’s on Long Island. (West of New York City is 74 degrees west; almost all of Connecticut is 41 degrees north.)</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-28017551308317014312018-10-21T01:18:00.000-04:002018-11-12T19:17:35.462-05:00Trial and Terror (#147)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y7lhdzgv"><img alt="Trial and Terror cover" title="If you think Frank’s attempt to make the Hardys into the next Wallenda family went badly for him, it went worse for Gertrude." style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/y7lhdzgv" width="250"></a><i><b>Trial and Terror</b></i> is an awful title. First, there’s no real terror in this book. Secondly, Cliché-Bot’s brother, Mystery Cliché-Bot, suggested “Trial and Terror” for every single <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Simon">Simon & Simon</a></i> and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder,_She_Wrote">Murder, She Wrote</a></i> episode in the ‘80s, and it’s still bitter about every rejection. I mean, I can see why Pocket Books gave in on this one — half of all robot uprisings start when Mystery Cliché-Bot gets frustrated and starts trying to kill humans — but that doesn’t make it less of an awful title. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><i>Trial and Terror</i> is set during Christmas break, that most terrible time of the year; for the Hardy Boys, Christmas means crime. (That would have been a better cover tagline — not a good one, but still better than what the book ended up with.) <i>Trial and Terror</i> begins with Frank touring New York’s criminal courts for a civics class, with Joe tagging along because, well, it’s not like he’s got any ideas about what to do with himself. The idea that Frank needs to learn how the justice system works is offensive on many levels: after 147 books, we know the Hardys <i>are</i> justice, Fenton must have drilled the legal system’s basics into his boys, and Frank should have testified in dozens of trials. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Later in the book, Frank has to explain to Joe what Sing Sing is, which is so wrong — Frank and Joe have probably sent dozens of men there. The brothers should be getting fan mail from Ossining on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gertrude even had a penpal there!) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I mean, I get it: This Dixon portrays the Hardy brothers as beginners to the justice system to make the writer’s exposition less awkward. I understand. But everyone in the Hardys’ orbit, from their closest friends to their high-school principal and part-time employers, should at least have testified in a trial and probably should have been involved enough to want to watch one from beginning to end. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But I shouldn’t criticize the book too harshly. <i>Trial and Terror</i> has some ambitions past showing school-age kids the rough workings of justice in America, and it needs all its subtlety for that. Because what <i>Trial and Terror</i> wants to show readers is what happens when the justice system has something rotten inside it; can justice be found then? </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Nick Rodriguez is accused of the attempted murder of his girlfriend, soap ingénue Karen Lee, and Frank and Joe just wander into his trial. (It’s hard to believe there would be any open seats for random lookie-loos, but I suppose we must suspend our disbelief somewhere.) Joe deals with the case entirely on a surface level; seeing the nattily groomed defendant, he says Nick “doesn’t look like a murderer” (2), but after the prosecution’s first witness, he’s sure Nick did it. (Although, as Sideshow Bob reminds us, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/attempted-chemistry">attempted murder is barely a crime</a>.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank isn’t so sure, and to make sure Nick gets a robust defense, he offers the brothers’ services (for free!) to Nick’s twin sister, Nellie, and Nick’s defense attorney. Nellie says she has “nothing to lose” (16), but that’s not true: If the Hardys destroy or confuse forensic evidence, it could hamper Nick’s defense or appeals, and if the Hardys harass witnesses or commit crimes in their investigations, the judge could censor the defense, putting them in a hole. Myers, the defense attorney, accepts them on the strength of their first day’s work, but he doesn’t bother to ask for references. Perhaps he’s not the sharpest lawyer; his entire defense of Nick includes only character witnesses, which, uh, isn’t the strongest of evidence. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Frank realizes that finding another suspect would be the best way to inspire reasonable doubt in the jury — although Frank, expert in civics, thinks the threshold is “some doubt” (18). So he and Joe rustle up a Reprobate Roll Call! </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm"><ul><li>Nick himself. Although it would be unexpected if the Hardys’ client were guilty — it blew my juvenile mind when Frank and Joe’s client was the guilty one in <i>The Masked Monkey</i> (#51) — Nick is not above reproach. After Karen breaks off their engagement and relationship, he can’t let it go; he persists in trying to re-establish their relationship for months afterwards. After he confesses his continued love of Karen to the Hardys with a flourish of fist pounding, Joe (again) thinks Nick is guilty, and the prosecutor forces Nellie to admit that a month before the attempted murder, Nick said to Karen, “Sometimes you make me so mad I want to kill you” (76).<br />
<br />
<li>Alex Steel, the super in Karen Lee’s building and owner of an awesome name. Frank and Joe suspect he might have attacked Lee on behalf of the building’s owner, who is trying to get elderly residents of the building’s rent-controlled apartments to leave so he can renovate and charge more for the apartments. Karen, who used to work in the prosecutor’s office, organized the resistance to the owner’s tactics. Also, Steel is an unpublished writer who writes murder mysteries, and his bloody titles make the stars of <i>Trial and Terror</i> suspicious. Fortunately, Frank and Joe don’t try anything so stupid as to try to find scenes similar to Karen’s attack in Steel’s writings. <br />
<br />
<li>Fred Garfein, the owner of Karen’s building. If he didn’t get Alex to attack Karen, he could have hired someone else. He’s rich, and he doesn’t believe in rent control. It’s unfair to building owners! He’s obviously not a supporter of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_Is_Too_Damn_High_Party">Rent Is Too Damn High Party</a>.<br />
<br />
<li>John Q., an obsessed fan of Karen’s. He sends her fan mail that insists they are “fated to be together” (46), he talks to his TV when Karen is onscreen as if she can hear him, and he attends the trial incognito. At least he doesn’t call himself her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGwDmCTha8">number one fan</a>.<br />
<br />
<li> “Lunatic” Lucy Velloni, a reporter who has an exclusive in with Karen. Her tabloid colleagues denigrate her, which Velloni believes is because she doesn’t restrict herself to traditionally feminine topics. (Given that her “crazy” actions tend to be non-feminine, action-junkie pursuits like running into a burning building and jockeying her car through New York traffic like a taxi driver, I’d say she has a point.) After she attempts to save a girl from that burning building, Frank and Joe mostly drop her as a suspect — even though Frank and Joe have to complete the rescue, and she did attempt to murder Frank by pushing him off the top of a building. (She later protests she didn’t realize the edge of the building was there.)<br />
<br />
<li>Mystery suspect!</ul></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The first helpful item that Frank and Joe discover is that prosecutor Patricia Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence — evidence uncovered by the police or prosecution that might tend to exonerate the defendant — from the defense. In this case, it’s that Karen had a key to Nick’s apartment with Nick’s name on it, which disappeared around the time of the attack. This might have allowed another person to plant evidence in Nick’s apartment. (Although this is the Hardy Boys universe, and a key isn’t necessary; lockpicking isn’t an uncommon skill.) <i>Trial and Terror</i> tries to sell the idea that this kind of misconduct could get a prosecutor imprisoned, but that’s extremely unlikely, even for a prosecutor who, like Daggett, makes a habit of withholding exculpatory evidence. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Just like in <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/10/carnival-of-crime-122.html">the last book I recapped</a>, Frank and Joe get a lot of mileage out the excuse that they’re working on a school assignment; they even use that excuse to see busy developer Fred Garfein. (He doesn’t really listen to them, to be fair.) Other investigative tactics used include Joe picking the lock on a suspect’s apartment to get access while he’s gone (illegal methods that would be a good reason why the defense might not want to hire the brothers) and Frank using Fenton’s name to get some carpet fibers tested by the police. (The evidence room officer admits Fenton got him out of some “jams” (83) — and we know what that means. *Wiiiiiiink*.)</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Since this is Christmas time, Frank stops into a New York jewelry store and purchases a cheap enamel ring with a butterfly on it for Callie. Joe doesn’t make a purchase; ostensibly, he has already acquired a present for Iola, as he says, “If you mess up with a girlfriend's present, it’s not a pretty sight” (62). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">(Joe, if Iola is violent around you, it’s not your fault — even if she says you’re making her do it. Just … <a href="https://www.thehotline.org/">reach out and get help</a>, man. This is not a joke.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">While rifling through Karen’s letters, the brothers come across a letter from an inmate at Sing Sing. The brothers head upstate and learn that Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence in his case, and Karen overheard an argument about that between Daggett and an investigator. (The inmate wanted Karen’s help in his plea to Daggett’s boss — a less confrontational way of attempting to get justice than the traditional lawsuit / appeal, and one that is not likely to succeed. But he might as well try all avenues, I suppose.) From this bit of evidence, Frank and Joe decide Daggett is guilty of the attempted murder of Karen. Daggett sends an arrested criminal to threaten the boys, promising him leniency for thuggery against the brothers, but it backfires, because no one can intimidate the Hardys. In a bit of courtroom drama, Frank tries to produce a Perry Mason moment from the witness box, claiming that an unidentified piece of evidence is part of Daggett’s crappy enamel ring — just like the one that Frank bought Callie! — which broke during Daggett’s attack. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The gallery goes wild. The judge dismisses the case, which would be unusual if this were the real world, and Nick is freed to keep foisting his emotional neediness upon Karen; Karen apologizes for thinking this guy who just couldn’t let their relationship go might have attacked her. Apologizes! And then she’s forced to celebrate with Nick, Nellie, and their lawyer! Poor Karen. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Now, there are a few problems with the justice system that this Dixon glosses over. The prosecutor introduces information that an objection overrules; the jury is supposed to forget the information, but that’s impossible for a human to do. Also, a crime-lab technician identifies the hairs found in a ski mask found Nick’s apartment and testifies they are Nick’s; although he initially prefaces his testimony with “in my opinion,” he later says hair samples “can be matched with almost as much accuracy as fingerprints” (10) and that the odds that the samples aren’t Nick’s are “a million to one” (11). Although DNA can be found in some hair samples, that’s not what the lab technician is saying; he’s saying when he looks at the hair in a microscope, he can visually compare and match them with precision accuracy, and that’s just not true. (To be fair to these fictional lawyers and the fictional lab tech, that sort of forensic overstatement goes on all the time in courtrooms, and it passes unchallenged.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The important thing, in the end, is that Joe realizes how important it is that everyone gets “the best possible defense” (118). Why is this? Because at different points during their investigation, Joe thought every suspect was guilty, and their investigation proved not everyone wanted to kill Karen Lee. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">But remember: In Joe’s eyes, they are all guilty of <i>something</i>. We are <i>all</i> guilty in his eyes. Someday, Joe won’t be satisfied with punishing the guilty in just Bayport. He will convince more and more citizens to outsource the dispensing of justice to him, until the entire country — the entire world — will be forced to grovel and pray for a merciful Joe. </p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4534017347808205122.post-55110473355194363692018-10-12T12:26:00.000-04:002018-11-12T14:23:03.398-05:00Carnival of Crime (#122)<p style="text-indent: 1cm"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ycxswn8k"><img alt="Carnival of Crime cover" title="The bumper car driver is cosplaying Mike Ditka imitating a car grille. Interesting choice!" style="border: none; margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 1em; float: right;" src="https://tinyurl.com/ycxswn8k" width="250"></a>So, a <i>carnival</i> of crime, you say …</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The Hardys have danced all around the entertainment-industrial complex, but I don’t think they’ve investigated a carnival before. Automobile stunt shows in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/05/fear-on-wheels-108.html">Fear on Wheels</a></i> (#108), the circus in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/06/three-ring-terror-111.html">Three-Ring Terror</a></i> (#111), a demolition derby in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-demolition-mission-112.html">The Demolition Mission</a></i> (#112), an amusement park in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/06/danger-in-fourth-degree-118.html">Danger in the Fourth Dimension</a></i> (#118), and a Renaissance faire in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/04/in-crusade-of-flaming-sword-renfaire.html">Crusade of the Flaming Sword</a></i> (#131), but not a carnival. Admittedly, the Hardys had worked for a carnival in the original <i>Clue of the Broken Blade</i> (#21), and Chet worked for Solo’s Super Carnival in <i>The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo</i> (#47), but no Dixon working on the digests remembers those hardback books. Also, there’s a <i>winter</i> festival in <i><a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-cold-cash-caper-136.html">The Cold Cash Caper</a></i> (#136), but that’s later in the series, and a winter festival has a whole different set of crimesolving issues. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">You might not be able to guess the plot of <b><i>Carnival of Crime</i></b> from the title alone. The name suggests the carnival is propagating the crime, like Marvel’s Circus of Crime. (A <a href="http://thefwoosh.com/index.php/2016/06/untold-legends-ringmaster-and-his-circus-of-crime/">Ringmaster with a hypnotic top hat</a> would be completely optional.) Instead, it’s Hardy Boys Digest stock plot 1b, in which a business is in trouble because of “accidents” that look like sabotage but might not be (but totally are, because this is a Hardy Boys story). Once you know that, the story pretty much tells itself: a standard Reprobate Roll Call (I’ll get to that later), a crooked carnival game, and set pieces in the Tunnel of Love, Fun House, and Mirror Maze. You’re smart; you could’ve thought of this, although you might have had the sabotaged ride be the more exciting roller coaster rather than the Ferris wheel, and you might have laughed at your editor when he suggested a dangerous bumper car attack instead of dutifully trying to put menace into the least menacing attraction at a carnival. (I mean, even the “Guess Your Weight” guy can have an element of fat shaming to his attraction.) But that’s you; you’re principled, and you know what works. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">I mean, a carny yells, “Hey, Rube,” at one point to set other carnies against the Hardys. It’s that sort of by-the-numbers book. I’m not saying you could’ve done better; I don’t know the quality of your prose and transitions. But with a professional editor, I’m not going to say you’d do worse. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So, as to the story itself: After Frank and Joe “just finished <a href="https://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-mystery-in-old-mine-121.html">that business of the mine fires over in Pennsylvania</a>” (35), the operator of Fairs to Go, Susan Bowman, calls the younger Hardys to investigate problems at the carnival, having heard of the Hardys through an unnamed friend. This “friend,” of course, is probably someone on the carny circuit who passes around the names of people who work for free. Fairs to Go is hemorrhaging money and Susan is a teenager who just took over the carnival because of her father’s heart attack, so it’s not like she has many options to combat the alleged sabotage. The Hardys do work for free, but they don’t bother to return Susan’s call; instead, without knowing who Susan is or what she does, they randomly run into Susan when they attend the Bayport Fair, which Fairs to Go is working. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Despite their being the same ages, Susan has to ignore Joe’s skepticism that she’s responsible enough for the job; Joe is unacquainted with responsibility, as being a teen detective is a pastime that carries no responsibility, not even the responsibility to not cause harm to your client’s interests or to take normal efforts to preserve your own life. But that seems like a small price for Susan to pay. In Joe’s defense, Susan claims to be “carny born and bred” (29), an unfortunate turn of phrase which calls to mind unsavory and probably unethical breeding practices involving sideshow performers, and she completely botches any chance Frank and Joe have to keep up their cover identities. Not that their cover identities — students writing a term paper about the carnival business, in this case — would ever fool anyone, let alone a group as legendarily suspicious of outsiders as carnies, but there are forms to be observed, you know? Just like we all pretend corporations are responsible citizens and ignore their rapacious need for profit — until we’re absolutely forced to stop ignoring it.</p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">So who is sabotaging Fairs to Go? Here’s the Reprobate Roll Call:<br />
<ul><li><b>Ricky Delgado</b>, Susan’s stepbrother. A business school dropout, Ricky thinks he should be running Fairs to Go. He has two goons, Boomer and Kenny. (I had to look up Kenny’s name because I keep wanting to call him “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomer_Esiason">Esiason</a>.”) Ricky and his goons confront Frank and Joe a time or two; during one confrontation, Joe gets offended when Ricky calls them “boy detectives” (45), a totally accurate description of the Hardy boys, and “turkeys” (67). Later, Frank discovers Ricky is shaking down the booth operators, building a “war chest” that will allow him to revitalize the carnival after he ousts his stepsister in a putsch. (He doesn’t say he plans to have Susan <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/leon-trotsky-assassinated-mexico">assassinated in her Mexico City exile</a>, but honestly, he doesn’t have to: That’s implied. History has shown us that’s the inevitable course of carnival power struggles. Or is it Communist power struggles? I get confused sometimes. The one with more clowns.) <br />
<br />
<li><b>Raoul Duchemin</b>, former Fairs to Go strongman. Injuries have reduced Raoul to a general laborer, but Raoul is unhappy because carnival show business is the only business he knows. He’s also a moron, but there’s no evidence that that makes him unhappy. He has a “crush” (33) on Althea, the Ferris wheel operator, and he glowers at any man who looks twice at her. That was probably supposed to be a menacing (to the Hardys) plot point in 1993, when <i>Carnival</i> was published, but a quarter century has made his attempts to control the romantic life of a woman who has no interest in him into something incredibly creepy.<br />
<br />
<li><b>Cecil Farkas</b>, who runs the shooting-gallery game. Frank and Joe expose his rigged game almost as soon as they enter the carnival — he feeds chipped BBs into the rifle, making it almost impossible to hit the target, so I learned something about gaffed games — and of course he’s going to hold a grudge after Susan gives him his walking papers.<br />
<br />
<li><b>The four Fratelli Brothers</b>, a clown family. They are almost always in character, which means “amusing” disinterested people who just wish they’d go away. I don’t think I need to say more than that, really. <br />
<br />
<li><b>Mystery culprit.</b></ul><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Since Ricky is too obvious a villain, you will be unsurprised to learn that “mystery culprit” is the winner of the Hardy Detecting Sweepstakes. (For those of you who were wagering, Mystery Culprit pays $25 to win, $10 to show, $3 to place.) This Dixon does give the mystery a twist by having Ricky’s goons betray him to work with Morris Tuttle, Susan’s father's partner / business manager. Tuttle had been cooking the books for years, and to conceal his crime, he was sabotaging the business and siphoning money from Fairs to Go to pressure Susan into selling her family’s interest. He also put a hose through his office window to destroy the business’s computer and claimed he had no backups. (Of course he had backups; of course the boys find the “diskettes,” which is perhaps the most ‘90s thing about this book.) </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Given that the villain is a middle-aged guy who projects an aura of benign concern throughout, how is the menace delivered in <i>Carnival</i>? Joe avoids the deadly threat of the aforementioned bumper car attack. When the Ferris wheel is stopped, Joe momentarily slips out of his gondola to try to prevent a young boy, whose lap bar didn’t lock, from winning a Darwin Award, but he fails at the rescue attempt, never reaching the child, and has to leap back in his own gondola. (The kid didn't really need rescuing, so the three-page “action” sequence was pointless.) One of Ricky’s goons attacks Frank in the Fun House; Frank defends himself, but he doesn’t use his “well-honed martial arts instincts” (143) until they’re needed to capture the culprits at the end of the book. Boomer shoots a Roman candle in the Tunnel of Love at Frank and Althea — </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">No, it’s not like that. You <i>know</i> it’s not like that. Frank would never canoodle with a girl other than Callie. Althea suggested the Tunnel of Love as a place to privately discuss Ricky’s perfidy. (The attack works, frightening her into silence.) However, Joe would totally take a girl other than Iola into the Tunnel of Love, and Iola’s reaction would have given the book a believably terrifying element. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">In the final move by the villains, Joe gets sapped while investigating Kenny and Boomer’s trailer. (Joe’s rationale for the B&E? “Uninvited visits always pay off,” he thinks as he picks their lock [106].) The villains dump him in the Mirror Maze with an unconscious Ricky, then set the maze is set on fire. It’s not a bad plan, as far as it goes; Frank and Joe were suspicious of Ricky, and the bound Joe next to Ricky might have given investigators the idea that Ricky had abducted Joe and both had been the victim of an accident. I don’t think any real investigator would believe that — it’s too convenient — but this is Bayport. I can’t imagine the Bayport Police Department has a great reputation, given how much of its work it outsources to teenage boys. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">On the other hand, angering the Great and Powerful Fenton Hardy by harming / killing one of his sons seems less like tempting fate and more like demanding one’s own destruction from an angry and powerful god.</p><p><b>*****</b></p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">Usually, this is where I’d end this post, but this Dixon makes a major misstep I have to talk about. </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">When you’re dealing with circuses and carnivals, you have clowns. It’s difficult get rid of them, and no matter how much you spray or put out traps, the best you’re likely to do is drive them into a neighbor’s property until that neighbor drives them back. But given the near-mandated presence of clowns, a writer should use creepy clowns, a reliable threat that readers and protagonists will respond to. Even though this Dixon doesn’t want to lean into the shifty reputation many carnies have — Susan calls them “friendly, honest people,” even though carnivals “attract a few crooks” (30) — you can’t cover clowns’ inherent creepiness, no matter how much clown white you use. Early in the book, Dixon uses that creepiness as a plot point, when Joe sees a clown through the Hardys’ kitchen window: “a ghostly white face with exaggerated, brightly colored features. It’s huge red lips were fixed in a demonic grin. … a clown from a horror film” (35). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">That’s a solid hook, and it would be genuinely frightening if that clown kept popping up, leering at the boys and doing something violent or frightening. In this case, the clown lures Joe into an IED: a firework under a metal can, triggered by a tripwire. No one is hurt, and the bomb — powerful enough to toss Joe “into the air like a dead leaf” — is accompanied by a threatening note with a pun. Con Riley and the police show up, but they cede their authority to Frank and Joe. The boys, showing their usual legal acumen, hold on to the evidence (for no real reason) and decline to press charges (because vigilante justice is the best justice — who needs the authorities mucking things up?). </p><p style="text-indent: 1cm">The horror clown plotline is mostly forgotten, though — Frank glimpses the clown later in the book, and Joe finds clown white in Boomer and Kenny’s trailer. Other than that, the brief promise of something genuinely frightening without being too kid-unfriendly is forgotten.</p>Raoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12444352850267522540noreply@blogger.com0