Hardy Boys Digests

Hiatus

2011-05-05T11:47:00.000-04:00

I’m going to stop posting to this blog for a while. I don’t know how long, but hopefully it will not be as long as the last hiatus, which was about two years long.

So I’ll be back. In the meantime, keep reading those Hardy Boys books!

Program for Destruction (#87)

2011-04-28T16:54:00.002-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe investigate sabotage at Arnold Stockard’s CompuCar Company.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe mention they’ve taken Callie and Iola to the Bayport Diner, and Joe enjoys its banana cream pie. Joe claims its in a residential neighborhood close to their home, but the previously mentioned Bayport Diner was on the edge of town, bordered by woods in The Night of the Werewolf (#59). The Bayport Diner also appeared in The Vanishing Thieves (#66), The Outlaw’s Silver (#67), and The Track of the Zombie (#71). In The Secret of the Lost Tunnel (#29), Shorty’s Diner, a downtown establishment, was mentioned, and Mike’s popped up in The Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28). An unnamed Bayport diner owned by Nick Papadapolos appeared in The Mummy Case (#63). Tom and Mary’s Diner was located on Shore Road outside Bayport in The Mysterious Caravan (#54).

Laura Hardy’s car is described as a failing station wagon — “on the verge of falling apart” with a broken radio and odometer. Laura had never been specifically given ownership of a vehicle before; the family had owned a sedan (The Disappearing Floor, #19, and The Yellow Feather Mystery, #33) as well as other unspecified models in the past.

The Hardys have a home computer, and Frank admits to doing a “little tinkering” with it. It would be important in later mysteries, but prior to this, there was little mention of home computing. In Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84), Chief Collig sells the boys “surplus computer parts” at the same time he gave them their supervan, and in The Skyfire Puzzle (#85), there’s a computer in the van.

The boys tune in rock station WBAY while in their CompuCar. Previously, the only radio station mentioned in the Bayport market is WMC in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20). WBAY has been a CBS affiliate in Green Bay, Wisc., for half a century. WMC is used by a TV and AM and FM radio stations in Memphis, Tenn; the AM station has been WMC since 1923.

The March of Technology: This is a book reliant on the idea of pushing the frontiers of technology. CompuCar Co. makes cars that are, to a degree, voice operated — drivers can command the car to accelerate, slow, or change the radio station. Although voice-operated driving hasn’t arrived yet, cars have been able to change the radio and deal with other electronic devices, like cell phones, for a few years now, making Program for Destruction only about two decades ahead of the times. Taking its cue more from Knight Rider than Car and Driver, however, the car can talk back to its users. That automated systems can talk to users is a coincidence; the CompuCar can say “You’re welcome” to the user’s “Thank you” and has other responses that seems to indicate a higher level of intelligence than today’s electronics.

At one point, the Hardys loaner CompuCar starts having random failures. After the car almost kills the boys — the author cannot resist having the computer say one of the Hardys’ commands “does not compute” — they remove its “program disk” for analysis. Where do they analyze it? In their home PC. Frank says, “I just hope it’s compatible” before … before they “slid the CompuCar computer disk into the machine.” Which leaves the question of how they were interfacing their computer with the program disk. Is it a standard 3½" or 5¼" floppy? The “slid” seems to indicate it wasn’t hooked up through cables, which you could do with a pair of hard disks. Perhaps they remove their computer’s hard and put the program disk in its place. That would explain why Frank is not worried about the computer virus the program disk has infecting their home PC. (Frank acts as if “virus” is a new term, which surprisingly, it is — the term began being used for self-replicating computer programs only in the early to mid-80s. Of course, what Frank is describing today is probably better described by the general term “malware,” since he has no evidence of the program’s virus-like replication.)

The Hardys do have a “car phone” — not yet called a “cell phone” — in the far-flung year of 1987. When their car fails, however, they have to use a pay phone. A pay phone! Ha!

Who do you think Henry Ford was?: One of Stockard’s former employees gives this condemnation of ex-boss: “Stockard’s supposed to be a genius, the next Henry Ford, but he only cares about making money; he doesn’t care about the people who work for him.” In the ‘80s, was the public opinion of Ford as a mechanical genius who was also a humanitarian? Because that’s not what we think of him as today. He was a man who wanted to make lots of money, and he made it through using a manufacturing process that streamlined automobile assembly. It’s said he wanted to pay his employees enough that they could afford the cars they were assembling, but he sure fought the unions hard.

We remind you: Joe is not a lawyer: Joe notices one of the suspects has a brochure for Rio de Janiero, and Joe’s immediate thought is that the suspect is planning to leave the country. “If Krisp broke the law in America and fled to Rio,” Joe thinks, “he couldn't be arrested and brought back to the United States.” This is very wrong; America has had an extradition treaty with Brazil since the ‘60s, which would allow the U.S. to request Brazil to arrest and return citizens who have committed certain crimes to the U.S. To be fair, Krisp might be considering vanishing in Brazil, but that’s not what Joe’s thinking about.

You never know: Frank says he’s read about the CompuCar in “my” car magazines, which indicates to me that he’s a subscriber (or regular newsstand buyers). I wouldn’t think of Frank as the kind of guy who would buy car mags, but I usually think of them as having scantily clad women leaning on hoods of cars. Probably the kind Frank subscribes to has in-depth reviews of cars — Car and Driver, that sort of thing. Frank has catholic tastes when it comes to knowledge anyway.

Are you sure you’re a detective?: When their top two suspects are assaulted, Frank and Joe reconsider who might be behind the sabotage. They also have to figure out why someone crept into a house to knock them over the head. Collig decides it’s a warning, something to shut them up. The boys reject that sort of simplistic analysis and decide it’s so they’ll be unseen at a time when sabotage is occurring at the plant. Good enough, as far as it goes … except they assume the sabotage won’t happen at midday, when the pair are clubbed, but that night, after the two have had several hours to recover and establish an alibi … with, say, the police or a doctor, which are the people you consult with after you’ve been assaulted.

The culprit reveals Collig was, of course, correct.

Opinions: For an ‘80s cybercrime mystery, Program for Destruction is pretty impressive. Interoperability issues aside, the idea of a virus not only sabotaging the computer in a car (although straight failures would be more likely than switching functions) but corroding worldwide banking is an good idea. On the other hand, the investigation is simplistic — actually, “simplistic” insults the simple among us — and the reader will likely figure out the culprit while Frank and Joe are still trying on fanciful theories of assault. There are only five possible suspects in the entire book, and once you figure out the red herrings and decide to drop the unlikely ones, there’s only one person left.

It was refreshing to return to the digests after so many Casefiles. Early in the book, Frank assumes Joe is too much of a screwup to walk a letter to a nearby post office for their father when the van isn’t working. In the Casefiles, Joe would really have been too lazy to walk a few blocks; in the digests, Joe has not only walked to the post office but picked up Laura’s dry cleaning. And Frank apologizes. I know which series is more realistic, when it comes to the behavior of teenage boys, and I know which series is more pleasant to read.

Grade: B-. Simple but sweet.

Mission: Mayhem (Casefiles #93)

2011-04-22T02:17:00.004-04:00

Plot: At Space Academy, Frank and Joe space-investigate a series of space-accidents that may or may not have targeted terrestrial actor Greg Fontana.

“Borrowing” from the past: The Hardys are no strangers to space exploration. In The Skyfire Puzzle (#85), the last digest before the year-long hiatus that presaged the beginning of the Casefiles, the Hardys actually went into space on the space shuttle Skyfire. It was a logical development; after going to Easter Island and Antarctica, two of the most remote places on Earth (as they did in The Stone Idol, #65), where else is there to go? The Hardys trained and took off from Kennedy Space Center in Skyfire; they visited Kennedy Space Center in Sky Sabotage (#79) as well.

Frank and Joe both identify themselves as pilots in Mission: Mayhem, although they don’t actually fly. Frank’s flying experience is listed in Power Play (Casefiles #50); in addition, Frank claims to have “dead-stick landed” a plane without engine power. I have no idea whether that has been shown in the books, though. A précis of Joe’s experience can be found in In Plane Sight (#176).

Just in case you care: Frank and Joe are six feet and six feet, one inch tall, although Mission: Mayhem makes it vague about which brother is which height. Joe’s skills: While watching other students perform a mock shuttle launch, Joe watches a “pretty young woman with blond hair, not much older than he was” perform her complicated mission-control duties. Joe’s first thought? “At seventeen, Joe knew he wasn’t ready for a job like this.” Come on! Joe’s looking at a pretty girl. He shouldn’t be thinking about, you know, complicated stuff like life and a career.

Later on, however, Joe does raid the lockers in the girls’ barracks, trying to pick the locks. So that’s something … and by “something,” I mean “creepy.”

Frank’s skills … : Are, of course, nonexistent. He sneaks off late at night with one of the female students, but it’s to compete against her on the multi-axis trainer — a sort of a gyroscope that spins students along all three axes. He tells himself he doesn’t know why he would do something so stupid; he suggests it will allow him to get to know her better or perhaps he wanted to succeed at the challenge the trainer presented. He does not suggest the most likely rationales: hormones, adrenaline rush, or competition with the girl. This is a boy who is repressing something, and that “something” is likely “adolescence.”

Joe suggests Frank wanted to “soften up the ice queen.” I’m not sure what dirty, dirty thing “soften up” is youth slang for, but I am interested in finding out.

Excuses, excuses: Laura and Fenton allow the boys to “take time off from school” to complete the week-long program. This ranks among the weakest excuses Frank and Joe have ever used to get out of school to do whatever they wanted; the only one that comes close is the revised Short-Wave Mystery, in which Fenton just writes the boys an excuse to show the school for the three days they miss. Yes, heating breakdowns, a collapsed school roof, and teacher’s conferences are extremely convenient, and the Hardys have had more summer and winter vacations during the theoretical year of high school most of the mysteries take place than I ever had. But at least the writer was trying; it wasn’t just, hey, let’s go to Space Camp instead of school.

Do you want space fries with that space burger?: “Space” is an adjective that, if this book is to believed, is used so often in Huntsville that it loses all meaning. There’s Space Camp, of course; Frank and Joe are enrolled at Space Academy, which is a physically and mentally tougher course for older students. (Today, what Frank and Joe are doing is Advanced Space Academy, which is for high schoolers; Space Academy is for the junior high set.) They watch movies in the Space-Dome, and there’s also a Space Museum. There are others, too — I just stopped paying attention after the Space-Dome. They watched the movie Speed there — not the one with Keanu, but one that talks about how perception of speed has changed over the centuries.

While at Space Academy, Frank and Joe pass by the space shuttle Pathfinder. The Pathfinder is fictional, of course. The U.S. space shuttles were Columbia (1981-2003), Challenger (1983-6), Atlantis (1985-; last flight planned for June 28, 2011), Discovery (1984-2011), Endeavour (1992-; last flight planned for April 29, 2011), and Enterprise (1974-; never capable of space flight and now an exhibit at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian). As mentioned above, the Hardys went into space on the space shuttle Skyfire.

Let us take a moment to remember America’s space shuttle program, which will come to an end soon after 30 years. Hopefully it will not take another 30 years before America sets its sights that high again.

Wrong, Brainiac: Two allegedly smart people make dumb mistakes in this book. When a fire breaks out in student barracks, Frank tries to beat it out with blankets and then a mattress, both attempts failing. Another student wisely uses the fire extinguisher, which Frank “completely forgot.” Well, it was a crisis situation, so you could forgive Frank if he didn’t face crisis situations every couple of days. The other one is worse, in its way, especially since an astronaut teacher lets the mistake pass uncontested: Maria Galewski, class know-it-all, claims “Frank could graduate from college in the time it would take to travel to Mars.” No — it would take less than a year to get to Mars (about nine months), and the round trip would take less than two. We all know Frank is brilliant — as he himself immodestly says, “I know a lot about a lot of things” — but I don’t think he could finish a college degree in a year or even two.

Physically phit: Joe complains that running two miles in twelve minutes will mean he will have to average six minutes a mile. Well, Joe’s good at math, but not evidently at running; six miles a minute isn’t that impressive for a high school athlete. I was not a very good cross country runner when I was in high school, but I could almost do that over more than three miles. (Not quite, but I was the worst varsity runner on the team, eighth on a team of eight.) Whatever happened to the vaunted Hardy athletic ability? They’ve participated in five school sports and are “star athletes”; they’re also top sprinters and track stars at Bayport High (as per The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, #37, and The Demon’s Den, #81). In Game Plan for Disaster (#76), Frank and Joe were completing five-mile runs, although admittedly the book didn’t say they were completing them with any sort of speed.

Casual sexism is the best sexism: When the Hardys’ team leader says trainees are divided into six-man teams, Maria, one of the female students loudly clears her throat, forcing the former astronaut team leader to acknowledge that yes, females can be interested in being astronauts. Not so surprising for a book from 1994; not so surprising now, really. On the other hand, Dixon makes a point that Maria is a hyper-motivated jerk; when an asthmatic student collapses during a two-mile run, her first words to the student are, “You should keep yourself in better shape.” She also locks Frank into the multi-axis trainer until he succeeds at the replicating the sequence of flashing lights that are flashing at him. Frank almost passes out but succeeds; Maria says he needed the proper motivation.

Glory!: I have made the point that in the real world, the Hardys would not be very good investigators, as they have little or no conception of basic rights and seem to be more interested in their own glory than actually protecting people. Mission: Mayhem continues that theme. When their trainer gets booted from the program without a chance to defend himself, Frank is indignant, although basic Constitutional rights have never been a major concern of his before — and this is just an employment situation, rather than a criminal investigation. When Frank has an opportunity to get a suspect booted from the Space Academy premises — a move that would likely save lives, if the suspect was guilty, or clear the suspect, if more “accidents” happened. However, Frank wants to expose the malefactor, so he keeps Barron near.

Such is fame. A teenage actor is inserted into Space Academy to study for his next role; he tries to convince everyone he’s famous, but no one is buying it since his fame came from his role as a child. When he and his personal assistant are expecting everyone to recognize him, Joe shrugs. So what if he’s an actor? Will his name — or the name of his father — keep him out of jail in any state or in several other countries? No. No, it will not.

Snark: While Frank is trying to get info from a counselor by sounding sympathetic, Joe keeps butting in with his own comments, which are decidedly unsympathetic. Frank gives Joe a sharp look to keep him from talking: “Joe’s opinion he could get any time. … He hoped Joe would get the hint and either get with the program or stop talking.” This is one of those times I sympathize with Frank; even though he didn’t fill Joe in on what the plan is, Joe should have figured it out.

Whatever happened to Scott Randolph?: Another actor is mentioned as a potential rival to the actor at Space Academy; his name is Scott Randolph. Randolph Scott was a famous movie actor from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, mostly famous for his more than 60 Westerns. He was also rumored to have had an affair with Cary Grant, but that claim is hotly disputed.

Generic equivalent: Joe compares an instructor with bulging muscles to “the cartoon character made out of car tires that he’d seen in commercials.” Afraid to invoke the name of the Michellin Man, Joe? Is it out of some prurient, anti-commercialism? Or are you afraid that if you think the name too forcefully, the Michellin Man will emerge out of thin air and take you (or your soul) to France? Yes, it’s a horrible fate to contemplate, but it won’t really happen. The Michellin Man looks like a lumpy, horrifying beast called up from some mephitic abyss, but he’s really just an advertising icon. There’s a subtle but identifiable difference.

Boffo?: Frank says the villain was hoping for a “boffo climax.” Joe wisely pretends not to understand what “boffo” means, as no East Coast teenager should ever admit to knowing that word.

Opinions: The culprit is obvious, the story ignores some of the Hardys’ more unforgettable adventures, but there’s something about Mission: Mayhem that I like. There’s a female character who is more than the equal of the boys, although she’s a bit aggressive about it; the Hardy Boys books have never been subtle. The “accidents” are (mostly) plausibly seen as accidents, although everyone seems to overlook the arson incident. Space Academy is a place the Hardys could logically get into and that Frank might be logically interested in. (Why Joe attends is a question best left unexamined.) Most importantly, there isn’t anything that makes me want to hurt Franklin W. Dixon. This is a Frank novel, as most of the challenges are mental rather than physical. Joe looks like an idiot for most of the book, but his stupidity is plausible for a 17-year-old boy. Somewhat implausibly, Joe doesn’t distinguish himself on the physical challenges, but there aren’t that many to deal with. The message is clear: space is a place where the mentally tough will distinguish themselves. Grade: B-. Unexceptional and inoffensive.

Deadly Engagement (Casefiles #90)

2011-04-14T18:26:00.005-04:00

Plot: Fenton’s too busy to look for a missing young man in New York, so Frank and Joe are dispatched to get to the bottom of a Rajesh and Juliet story.

“Borrowing” from the past: Like many stories, Frank and Joe visit New York, and like many other stories, the brothers take an exotic, vibrant foreign culture and distill it into a few curio shops and spicy dishes (including a food allergy). In Deadly Engagement, they combine the two when Frank and Joe spend time in the Little India section of Manhattan; in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39), they visit Chinatown. In The Clue in the Embers (#35), they go to Tony’s deceased uncle’s curio shop in Greenwich Village. (I know, I know; it’s not an ethnic neighborhood; on the other hand, given Tony’s immigrant past, when I remembered Tony’s uncle had a shop in New York, I expected it to be in Little Italy.) Other than those visits (did I miss any?), the boys tend to miss New York’s distinct neighborhoods.

Frank bugs some phones with listening devices designed by Phil Cohen. (Phil doesn’t actually appear in the book, however.) Since the advent of computers, Phil’s been on the forefront of hacking / electronics for Dixons who don’t think Frank should be good enough. In The Mysterious Caravan (#54), Frank says Phil is “good at that sort of thing,” which evidently means sneaking and eavesdropping. The Serpent’s Tooth Mystery (#93) portrays Phil as a “high-tech” genius, an electronic engineering geek. He builds an electronically controlled display case for serpents in that book. His engineering genius nearly gets everybody burned to death in The End of the Trail (#162), when he tries to monkey with an old telephone exchange. In A Game Called Chaos (#160), Phil is a hacker. In Plane Sight (#176) has him as a computer expert.

Adding to the past: Frank and Joe are catsitting for Fenton’s “good friend,” Mr. Scheer. He’s such a good friend that no one has mentioned him in the past, and no one mentions his name in this book either!

Where Is Bayport?: It’s less than two hours to Manhattan by van. No other details are given, though. This would tend to suggest Bayport is on the central to southern end of New Jersey’s coast (around the appropriately named Barnegat, N.J.) or around New Haven, Conn. Unfortunately, this clashes with the description in Beyond the Law (Casefiles #54), which puts Bayport somewhere in New Jersey, not far from New York. Of course, any time you mention where Bayport is in reference to other places, it’s going to contradict another book.

March of Technology: At one point, Frank and Joe call Fenton, trying to find out who a phone number belongs to. Fenton promises to search the NYPD computerized reverse directory, then calls the boys back. Today, there are many Web sites that will allow you to do the same thing — admittedly, the accuracy will be less, but the access is free, and you don’t have to hang up the phone (usually) to get the info.

Convenient: The brothers are spending a week in the Big Apple without female supervision because their girlfriends, Callie and Vanessa, are “still on vacation.” This raises a host of possibilities in my mind. I’m sure we’re supposed to believe both girls are on vacation with their families, but the way Joe phrases it, it sounds as if the girls are on vacation together. Which is possible; high-school friends do go on vacation together. It even happens in the Hardy Boys’ Universe, as seen in Panic on Gull Island, when Iola goes on Spring Break with a friend. I prefer to think, however, that Callie and Vanessa needed a vacation from Frank and Joe; having had enough of their boyfriend’s neglect, suicidal tendencies, and reckless endangerment, each decides they have to get away before they just snap. It’s probably something Callie used to do with Iola before, well, you know.

Laura is annoyed by this lack of female or parental supervision while in New York. At first, she seems merely overprotective, giving the boys reminders and curfews despite the boys being completely able to ignore both. But when she learns they’re going to be investigating while they’re in Manhattan, she sighs “in annoyance.” She just knows some sort of wacky crap is going to happen, and she’s probably going to get a call in the middle of the night asking for money or from some damn emergency room or from the police or a ransom demand or something, and it’s going to ruin the peace and quiet she deserves, dammit.

That’s the way business cards work, Fenton: Although he remembers meeting faux client Biju Kumar at a party, he doesn’t remember giving him a business card — although Kumar says he did. Fenton acts annoyed, although God knows why. You give business cards to people who might hire you, like people who run jewelry stores (targets for robbery, millions of dollars in inventory), but you don’t necessarily have to account for each card. They’re not precious or even coupons, Fenton: you give them out as frequently as is polite or useful.

It’s funny, but only in a coincidence way, not in a punny way: Biju Kumar is a jeweler. His first name is very similar to the English word “bijou”; nowadays, it’s used mainly as the names of movie theaters, when you need an old timey name for a movie theater, but the word means “jewel.”

$10,000 is a lot of money, back now: A shipment of gold jewelry for Kumar’s store is stolen. In today’s terms, that’s not much gold; at the present price of nearly $1,500 per ounce, that would be less than seven Troy ounces of gold. Of course, that’s assuming the jewelry was the nearly pure 24 karat gold but not considering the workmanship that went into the gold. (18K gold is only 75 percent pure, if you’re wondering.) In 1994, when Deadly Engagement came out, that would have been more gold — the average price was below $400 at the time.

He doesn’t love her for her fashion sense: During their investigation, Frank and Joe track down the missing man’s girlfriend, Nikki Shah. He’s described as wearing a “black sleeveless shirt and a yellow miniskirt printed with bright red parrots and was carrying a big, black shoulder bag.” I know it was the ‘90s, and young people in college are going to experiment with personal fashion, but that’s pretty awful. Interestingly, given this interesting color palette to work with, the cover artist chooses to portray Nikki wearing a pink tanktop and dark blue / purple miniskirt.

I despair for you, Joe: You would think, having solved crimes for more than 65 years at this point and encountered different cultures for nearly as long, Joe would be able to do either with some skill. But no, Joe handles witnesses and clients with the aplomb of a man trying to make enemies. At least he keeps his thoughts to himself when he realizes Biju Kumar, his “client,” is “annoying,” but he makes a hash of the rest. He can’t believe two families — the Kumars and Shahs — would allow a feud to last for a century; just because the Hardy family erupted fully formed from the heads of Edward Stratemeyer and Leslie Macfarlane doesn’t mean other families don’t have histories. Joe spooks a potential source by trying to pump him for information about a mysterious local fence with a reputation. And when Nikki talks about her love for Sanjay, Joe blithely suggests Sanjay could have been murdered and that Nikki doesn’t know much more about love than he does. Nikki doesn’t quite realize how she’s been insulted, although she does get it when Joe repeatedly tells her her uncle is likely the one who kidnapped Sanjay. When he actually does it to the man’s face, at least he’s confronting the person he’s accusing.

Of course, Frank has problems of his own: namely, his modesty, or lack of it. When the NYPD detective on the case explains where he got tripped up and the boys didn’t, Frank says “modestly,” “You would have found him eventually.” It’s hard to imagine a more patronizing dismissal from an 18-year-old. Sure, you would have found him eventually. He might have become a drug addict in New Dehli before you found him; he might have been a skeleton who fed the fishes at the bottom of the Hudson River. But I’m sure you would have cracked the case eventually.

Charity begins in the waste bin: Frank throws away aluminum cans in a public trash can, rationalizing someone else could use the money for turning them in. I was more interested in the can redemption than Frank’s trickle-down economics; I had no idea that people had been getting a nickel a can in New York state since 1983.

EMTs to the rescue: Joe discovers he is allergic to cardamom in the usual way, by having an allergic reaction after consuming some. EMTs arrive and give Joe a shot of adrenaline, then leave. That seems a little cursory. Today, the adrenaline is called epinephrine, but victims are generally kept under observation for hours to a whole day because of the possibility of biphasic anaphylaxis — that is, the recurrence of the allergic reaction without exposure to the allergen.

That’s magnanimous of you, Nikki: The climax of the story happens at a block party hosted by Indian Business Association. Nikki reluctantly invites the boys, but given that the party is being advertised on posters all around Little India, I doubt they need your permission to attend, Nikki.

Does he have furry feet?: Like a hobbit, Joe indulges in second breakfast from time to time. In Deadly Engagement, the meal is a very hobbit-appropriate eggs and toast.

Says you, pal: When the NYPD finally gets involved, a detective tells Frank and Joe they “can’t go around questioning people as if [they] were the police.” That’s what you think, buddy — Frank and Joe have made a career of doing it, and they’ve done it over the objections of better cops than you.

Off his game: Nikki joins the boys’ investigation, and Frank leaves Joe and Nikki alone together. Joe isn’t sure he likes that idea, which is weird; usually Joe is all about the ladies. It could be that she has a fiancé, but as he suggested more than once, Sanjay could be dead, and that would technically mean that Nikki is available. And we all know how Frank and Joe feel about technicalities when they benefit the Hardys. It could have something about how he “accidentally” attacked her in the dark and she wouldn’t even accept his hand to help her up, though.

Frank thinks it has something to do with Nikki’s personality: “Joe sometimes had trouble with strong and smart women, and Nikki was both.” I don’t think Frank realizes this, but it makes Joe sound like a date rapist: he has trouble with women whom he can’t physically overpower or trick / bully / cajole into having sex with him. I know that’s not what’s intended, and I don’t even think it’s funny, but it would go along with the stupid, slightly vain, birddogging jock archetype Joe’s later incarnations hew to. Joe does move in for the clinch when he sees Nikki emotionally vulnerable at a friend’s betrayal, putting an arm around her and trying to comfort her.

Emotional responses: After finding out a friend betrayed Sanjay to have a romantic chance with Nikki, she wonders what her response should be: should she be flattered or angry? The answer, of course, is angry — cartoonishly, freakishly enraged that a man thought that all he had to do to win her was remove the man she loved and plotted to send him into exile until he did win her hand in marriage. Yes, angry does it.

Opinions: The most disappointing part of this book is that this particular Dixon takes a colorful immigrant community in New York City and boils it down to jewelry, Curry in a Hurry, arranged marriage, and an old feud. Think of all the details a modern-day Macfarlane would have strewn throughout the narrative; think of the feasts, which would have had no pointless allergies. (Is cardamom that exotic? Wouldn’t Joe have run into it somewhere before?) Religion isn’t even mentioned, despite the Shahs and Kumars coming from part of India near the partition with Pakistan. (OK, religion might be too controversial for the Hardy Boys — but this is the Casefiles! You can blow someone up, surely you can have Hindus and Muslims hating one another without killing each other.) As for the case itself, Frank and Joe fail to zero in on the obvious suspects despite his blinding obviousness. Oh, well — that’s not much different from normal. Grade: C+. At times, I had the feeling Dixon was really trying.

No post this week

2011-04-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry there was no post this week — gardening and taxes got in the way.

Next week, the book will be Deadly Engagement, #90 in the Casefiles. The next two books after that will be Mission: Mayhem, #93 in the Casefiles series, and Program for Destruction #87 in the digest series. I haven’t decided on the order yet, though.

A Killing in the Market (Casefiles #18)

2011-03-31T17:43:00.005-04:00

Plot: Aunt Gertrude’s new boyfriend is murdered, leaving Gertrude the prime suspect.

“Borrowing” from the past: This is not the first time this blog has seen Gertrude’s love life, as unpleasant as it might seem. In Past and Present Danger (#166), an old friend — reporter Clayton Silvers — mentions Gertrude was once engaged to a local business owner, who died before the wedding. (The engagement was first mentioned by Fenton in The Phantom Freighter #26.) In A Killing in the Market, Gertrude is romanced by investment banker Cyril Bayard (real name: Henry Simone). I don’t want to say anything about Gertrude, but a couple of men have already died to get out of relationships with her. If it happens again, it’s a pattern.

Killing mentions a few locations in Bayport, such as the Cliffside Heights neighborhood, Archer Street, Bay Road, and the Shore Inn, but none of them have appeared in the original canon. Nearby towns such as Bridgefield and Kirkland (destinations for trains from New York through Bayport) are also new, although Bridgeport and Bridgewater have popped up in the past.

Lives of the American privileged: As I mentioned in the review of Past and Present Danger, books that focus on Gertrude tend to shuffle Laura off the stage at an early spot. In Killing, Fenton takes Laura on a month-long vacation, and when Fenton returns to investigate Simone’s murder, she’s shuffled off to the neighbors’ house.

Good in a crisis: After Gertrude is arrested, Frank and Joe fall back on their all-purpose solution: investigation! A more practical course of action might be to a) call Fenton, who is on vacation with Laura, and b) to get a lawyer for Gertrude. The latter might be a result of the Hardys’ family prejudice toward lawyers, as Fenton doesn’t advise Gertrude to talk to a lawyer, even when she seems about to confess to murder.

But given how quickly Fenton gets results, you can only guess that Frank and Joe just wanted a rest from Gertrude — just a few moments of peace and quiet, and if she has to be incarcerated for them to get it, then by God, Gertrude’s getting prison time. One can see the direct link from this lack of human compassion to a relative in need to the boys’ insistence on investigating “their case,” in the face of nuclear annihilation, in The Pacific Conspiracy (Casefiles #78).

On the other hand, perhaps Joe just doesn’t give a damn. He says Gertrude’s too old for love — not to her face, of course, but to Frank. (Frank rightly calls him a “rotten nephew” a few pages later.) He runs down Cyril / Henry just because he’s an investment banker, since “the papers are full of stories about swindlers — guys who work for these big-and-mighty companies and steal clients’ money left and right!” Joe is right, but that’s hardly helpful, since Gertrude’s money is already gone. When Cyril / Henry’s house is ransacked and Cyril is gone, Joe says “maybe” he’s still alive.

Lying to the police, in this case, is considered a blessing: When asked about her last evening with Cyril / Henry by Officer Con Riley, Gertrude says, “We went for a long walk the night before last. Please, you’re not going to ask what we talked about, are you?” Because she’s not going to think up a lie quickly enough, since there was little talking during the activity “walk” is a euphemism for (Lothar of the Hill People knows the euphemism well, although Lothar was a couple of years after Killing was released).

Sentences that have never been seen in a Hardy Boys book before: “‘You’re awfully quiet, Aunt Gertrude,’ Frank finally said as they stopped for a traffic light.”

Is it weird that I find normal male / female interaction in a Hardy Boys book odd?: In Killing, there is a moment of genuine, indisputable romantic contact between a boy and a girl. It isn’t a playful peck, or some cheeky “reward” for lifesaving. Frank “wrapped his arms around [Callie] and touched his lips to hers.” The description lacks passion or artfulness, and the scene is interrupted by Joe, doing his little brother duty, honking the van’s horn and mocking his brother’s moment of intimacy.

You don’t measure up, Callie: Despite a male member of the Hardy family showing his approval for Callie by touching her, Gertrude pointedly asks Callie to stay in the van while the police question Gertrude about Henry’s murder because “it’s family business.” Well, it’s an investigation; of course that’s family business. I suppose dating Frank for 60 years isn’t enough to qualify Callie for membership in the Hardy clan, though. You’ll just have to wait for that ring, Callie! Of course, Callie’s waited so long even Miss Havisham would say, “Really, I think you’d better move on, dear.”

But still, she’s subject to the will and whims of the Hardy family. When Frank and Joe head to Henry’s funeral, Joe is afraid Callie will follow them; Frank says that won’t happen because he “had a long talk with her.” Of course; she wouldn’t dare disobey you, Frank.

Girls! If they’re not getting blown up, they’re bossing you around: After a day of investigation, Frank finds a message on his answering machine from Callie, who wants to know how their day went. Joe jokes, “So she can tell us how we could have done it better!” It seems an incredibly defensive thing for Joe to say; perhaps he misses having someone to share his adventures with.

Do you pay attention to where you live?: Greenwich Village reminds Frank of a “citified Bayport.” Really — a citified Bayport? The middle and upper-class nature of both make sense, but the Village has a bohemian, liberal, arty reputation, which Bayport does not. Bayport is the crime capital of the East Coast, and even its better-off part of the city is infested with criminals.

Opposite reactions: When Frank and Joe poke their nose into the murder investigation, two suspects have completely different reactions. Dodgy accountant Justin Spears hands over his clients’ confidential information with barely a demur, while swindling stockbroker Norman Fleckman offers them tobacco products, then tries to kill them. Fleckman also tries to go the bribery route before the murder attempt, dangling such well-known enticements as “jazzy clothes” and a “hot new car” in front of the boys. Joe claims he just “panicked,” but those are the sort of reactions one has to extreme intimidation, but it’s not like Frank and Joe are burly thugs waving guns and / or indictments around.

Premature exultation: While the boys are in New York, the boys use a ticker-tape parade for the World Series champs as cover for their getaway. However, no New York team won the 1988 World Series — in fact, neither New York team won the Series between 1986, when the Mets beat the Red Sox in seven, and 1996, when the Yankees took their first championship since 1978 (their longest drought since the team won its first World Series in 1923). In 1988, the Yankees finished fifth in a mediocre American League East, 3 ½ games behind the Red Sox; the Mets won the National League East, but lost in the playoffs to the eventual champions, Los Angeles, in seven games.

Always be prepared: When Gertrude is accused of using one of her knitting needles to kill her boyfriend, she protests, “Why would I bring a knitting needle on a walk?” Con Riley doesn’t answer, logically enough, that she always seems to have her knitting needles, even when she and the boys investigate Cyril’s ransacked house.

No wonder the boys have so little respect for civil rights: Fenton has no ideas what Constitutional protections offer people. When the Bayport police are exploring theories of the murder, Fenton protests that they must enter into the investigation assuming Gertrude was innocent until proven guilty. Well, no, Fenton; the police can formulate theories that lead them to believe a suspect is as guilty as sin. It’s the press, judges, and juries who must make that assumption. Riley is too polite to tell Fenton he’s an idiot.

That makes no sense: When Joe is firing up the van to pursue a suspect, Frank cautions Joe to drive more carefully: “A little less speed will get us there as fast.” I’m not sure what science classes Frank has taken, but evidently physics wasn’t one of them.

I do envy your skills, Joe: To foil the criminal, Joe makes a not-very-convincing attempt to switch briefcases that involves the cooperation of a random woman stopped on in a traffic jam. The trick works, and after the criminal is arrested, the woman slips Joe her business card, then gives him a wink and a smile. This is remarkable, as the woman is probably — given her business paraphernalia — at least five years older than Joe, who had involved her in a situation with a gun-wielding murderer who set fire to his own motorcycle to show how serious he was.

Opinions: A story about crooked investment bankers is even more relevant today than it was in 1988, and if anything, the story makes the cheats seem a little too innocent (except for the murder attempts). Yes, these guys are bilking people out of their money, but no one in this book is Bernie Madoff; additionally, nothing these people are doing is likely to bring around a worldwide financial crisis. It’s just mainstream financial malfeasance, and as a warning to the young that Wall Street is not to be trusted, Killing works well. One has to think the book was partly inspired by the Black Monday crash the year before (October 19, 1987).

This one would be a good mystery except for the people in it. There’s a murder, the cops reach the logical conclusion, and there is a point in the book, about two-thirds of the way through, when it’s obvious who the murderer is. But the characters … Joe is a massive jerk, the suspects are nervous and insane, going from 0 to murder in about ten seconds. The chief suspect burns his own motorcycle to destroy evidence, blames Frank and Joe, then when the police show up, he claims it was childish high spirits and declines to press charges. Insane.

But Gertrude is the biggest disappointment. Faced with the largest challenge she’s ever seen in a Hardy Boys book, she crumbles. That seems alien to those who have read the series from the beginning. Gertrude falling to pieces seems so out of character; she should be sniping at the police, sarcastic, giving them a hard time, and telling the boys to do something useful. Maybe she gets a little weepy once or twice; maybe not. I’m not inflexible. But Gertrude falls apart early and stays useless through the rest of the story; the only non-weepy acts she undertakes are lying to the police and acting guilty. The last time we see any spirit from Gertrude is when she’s angry with Henry for standing her up, and she tells Con Riley that if he’s alive, she’ll kill him. Con says she’s “upset and confused,” which is polite; we all know she’s just Gertrude, but unfortunately, she’s not the real Gertrude for long.

Grade: C-. Dixon probably just panicked.

The Pacific Conspiracy (Casefiles #78)

2011-03-24T12:49:00.001-04:00

Plot: Skipping ahead to the third book in the Ring of Evil trilogy, Frank and Joe have infiltrated the Assassins, working within a terror cell to discover their evil plan.

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much here. The Hardys have fought a lot of different scary animals, but I have to admit, I’ve never seen a komodo dragon in one of the books before. Kudos, Franklin W. Dixon! Frank is also rescued by the most convenient snake bite ever, as the snake attacks the Assassin who is about to inform his superiors about Frank’s true identity. The snake isn’t identified — it has black and gray stripes — but it kills quickly. (Sort of like the Vietnamese Two-Step Viper, except quicker.)

Real places: The Assassins try to detonate their world-altering nuclear bomb — a real Bond-villain plot — on Mount Agung. Mt. Agung is a real volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali; it last erupted in the early ‘60s. The Mother Temple of Besakih, a Hindu temple, is located on the slopes of the mountain.

That’s one way to put it: The narration says, on page 2, that the Hardys have infiltrated the Assassin cell through a “remarkable series of events.” Although the narration eventually fills in readers, such as me, who skipped the second book, I think I would have left it at that — actually explaining things doesn’t help at all. I prefer to take it on faith that I would find the explanation preposterous rather than to find out that I’m right.

One of the more idiotic aspects of this infiltration is that Frank and Joe don’t even bother to come up with aliases. Now, Frank and Joe have clashed with the Assassins before; in the first book, Dead on Target, the Assassins were even hired to kill Frank and Joe. Not all Assassin operatives will likely have heard of that utter failure, but you have to imagine that Frank and Joe are fairly well known in certain circles. It’s eventually revealed that the Assassins are playing with Frank and Joe — that they’ve known the entire time that Hardy boys are, in fact, the Hardy Boys — but it doesn’t make Frank and Joe (or the Network) seem any smarter.

Using their superpower of stupidity: Even beyond the idiocy of using their real names, I have, in my notes, many notations of Frank and Joe’s (mostly Joe’s) stupidity. When Joe is pursuing one of the Assassins on Mt. Agung, the Assassin invites him to come, unarmed, to fight him at the top of a ladder. Of course, the assassin waits and stomps on Joe’s hands when he gets to the top. When Joe’s not-girlfriend Gina reappears, miraculously alive, in the middle of an armed standoff in an Assassin camp despite being “killed” in the previous book by Assassins, Joe allows her to disarm him easily before he can get suspicious. Frank knocks a gun away from an Assassin and suddenly thinks he’s evenly matched with the man; the Assassin immediately begins kicking his butt until Frank’s final punch wins the fight.

Perhaps with Joe this is a priority of brainpower. When he’s pulled out of a canal with concrete boots, his first comment (on the escape of the Assassin who put his feet in concrete and tossed him in the canal) is, “Good riddance. The guy was nothing but dead weight anyway.” Not a great pun, but it is impressive when you consider how close to death Joe had just been.

Hail Mary bomb: Young supergenius (and nuclear bomb builder) Dr. Krinski is photographed in a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt with the #12 on it. That’s probably a reference to quarterback Roger Staubach, who retired in 1979. However, since the Cowboys don’t retire numbers, it could refer to other, lesser players who have taken that number since.

The March of Technology: When Krinski says he needs to check some calculations for his project, Frank volunteers to help. When Krinski asks for his qualifications, Frank mentions some computer programs he’s worked with. Just out of curiosity, what programs, commercially available in 1993, would Frank have used and be useful for modeling dropping a nuclear bomb through lava or constructing a nuclear bomb? Perhaps more pressingly, why the hell would Frank have used them? Modeling the trajectories of bullets, perhaps? Or pieces of shrapnel? Other than extreme crime scene recreation, I have no idea.

Your case. Really: When the Network and the Gray Man sensibly try to send the Hardys home, Joe complains it’s their case. Never mind that competent agents don’t need a couple of teenagers mucking up their search for a nuclear bomb; it’s Frank and Joe’s case! And because it’s their book as well, they manage to slip their minders and return to the investigation. When they manage to pick up the trail of an Assassin agent, Frank declines to call the Network so they can investigate on their own. Hey, what’s a little nuclear annihilation compared to the glory of the Hardy Boys?

Do you really want an answer to that question?: When Frank and Joe find a dead body, a Network agent asks them, “You didn’t move the body, did you?” Joe indignantly responds, “What do you think we are? Amateurs?” Depends on the mystery, Joe — you usually do protest that you’re amateur detectives.

One MILLION dollars: When the Assassins threaten the world with their world-altering nuclear bombs, they make their ransom demands to the United Nations General Assembly. Because, yes, when you want quick action and results, the organization you go to is the UN General Assembly. They may have had better results by submitting their demands to the Girl Scout National Board of Directors — that cookie money does add up, I imagine.

There’s no racism like subtle racism: The Balinese lad who helps the Hardys (and saves the world by informing on them to the police) is named Haji. That sounds worse today than it did in 1993, given that “Hadji” is a derogatory term used for Iraqis by American soldiers during the Iraq War.

False dichotomy: When Frank is following Joe and Network agent Endang up Agung, he finds the motorbike they were riding. His immediate thought is either the pair were captured or killed. He fails to consider they may have abandoned the bike for noise or mechanical reasons or a dozen other reasons. And remember, Frank’s the smart one.

My girlfriend’s back: At the end of Pacific Conspiracy, Vanessa Bender wanders up to the Hardy home. I had no idea Joe was dating Vanessa at this point; I thought she was introduced later in the series. Joe’s behavior toward Gina and Endang gave me no indication he was going out with anyone.

Vanessa’s entrance line is, “Glad to see me?” Joe answers, “You bet.” I was almost waiting for him to ask, “You won’t blow up on me or get shot or get shot again, will you?” I like to imagine two different responses from Vanessa:

a) “No, I’ll be fine, but if I hear about you flirting with or kissing another girl again, even to save your life, I swear to God you’ll be dead.”

b) “I promise I won’t die. But some day the Casefiles are going to end, Joe, and then what will happen to me? It won’t be death, but I won’t even have generated the nostalgia that will bring Iola back to life, even in a limited capacity. In a way, that’s even worse — a kind of a half existence, not quite here but not quite gone either. Is that what you want for me, Joe?”

I find the former more realistic, but I’m affected more by the latter. I never completely adjusted to Vanessa, but I always found her role interesting in a sad sort of way — she’ll never be Iola, to Joe or the readers, and she’ll never get a chance to be anyone else. In this sense, Assassin cell leader Nwali has Joe pegged: “I do envy your skills with the ladies, Joseph. One girlfriend dies, and you find another.”

Opinions: The Pacific Conspiracy, I suppose, is like a Casefile forcibly mated with one of those late Grosset & Dunlap books, a world-trotting adventure where the world just could coincidentally end up getting exploded by a nuclear bomb. The too easily beaten Assassins and their Bond-villain antics are tiresome and predictable, and although I appreciate that the Assassins were more sadistically overconfident than incompetent, they should have known Frank and Joe’s success level and just poisoned them. I also believe Nwali should have had a better quirk than a fondness for Indonesian puppet theater, though I give a tip of the hat to Dr. Krinski having a komodo dragon for a pet. Again, kudos, Franklin W. Dixon!

It did amuse me, however, when Frank creates a panic using rubber monkey-fighting snakes to escape from a Monday-to-Friday plane. Samuel L. Jackson would be proud!

Grade: C-. I do envy your skills, Joe.

Tagged for Terror (Casefiles #76)

2011-03-17T16:44:00.005-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe head to Atlanta to find out why luggage is being stolen from Eddings Air flights.

“Borrowing” from the past: Fake jobs! The Hardys have a long and distinguished history of getting jobs for a week or less so they can investigate some sort of skullduggery. This must leave them with the most checkered resumes in the history of Western employment, but it does get results. In Tagged for Terror, the first book in the “Ring of Evil” trilogy, Frank and Joe work as baggage handlers for Eddings Air. To solve cases, Frank and Joe have also worked:

As sailors on the Black Parrot (The Twisted Claw, #18)
As a snake tender (Joe) and elephant feeder (Frank) in “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus (The Clue of the Broken Blade, #21)
In a Hay River restaurant (The Viking Symbol Mystery< #42)
In construction jobs on a Kentucky road project for Prito Construction (The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge , #45)
For a builder, learning the signs that a building is unsafe (The Crimson Flame, #77)
Moving scenery on a movie set (Cave In!, #78)
As Dandy Duck (Joe) and Piggy Bank (Frank) at Fantasieland (Sky Sabotage, #79)
As lumberjacks for the Peapack Lumber Company (The Demon’s Den, #82)

In addition, the boys washed dishes in return for a restaurant breakfast (What Happened at Midnight, #10), helped explore an underwater wreck and raised a sunken ship for Crux Salvage (The Secret Warning, #17), washed cars at the Highway Garage in Brockton (A Figure in Hiding, #16), worked as cowboys at the McVay Ranch (The Crimson Flame), were stationed in the Underwater and Grasses and Lillies sections of the State Experimental Farm (The Flickering Torch Mystery, #22), did chores for the Millwood Art School (The Haunted Fort, #44), and unloaded bricks for Prito Construction (The Outlaw’s Silver, #67).

Although he doesn’t step in behind the yoke, Frank mentions that he’s done some flying. His flying experience is chronicled in my post on Power Play (Casefiles #50).

Whee!: That is one boring cover — possibly the most boring of any book I’ve covered on this blog. There’s no danger, nothing interesting going on at all. It’s just Frank and Joe doing their fake job at Eddings Air. Not even Joe can convince himself it’s fun, even though he’s hanging off the side of the cart, getting ready to sidehack.

With Hank Forrester as “Ezra Collig”: The head of security for Eddings Air, Hank Forrester, is described as “a beefy, red-faced man in his fifties, with thinning salt and pepper hair.” He’s constantly denigrating Frank and Joe’s abilities and stealing their thunder. He reminds me of someone in these books, but I can’t remember who …

File under “good question”: Forrester may be a jerk, but he does have an interesting question: when Frank and Joe stand in as Fenton’s surrogates in investigating the missing baggage from the flights, he asks, “Private investigators? Where’s your license?” Usually, when they’re poking around on their own, it’s just a couple of kids being nosy — Encyclopedia Brown with higher stakes and a more literate audience. But on this case, they’re acting as Fenton’s surrogates, and presumably, neither Fenton’s time nor the boys’ is free.

There are all sorts of legal and liability issues to consider here; I mean, this isn’t the ‘60s, when you can send boys all over the country with minimal or no supervision. Life is more litigious and allegedly more dangerous (although I suspect the same number of childhood tragedies happened in each era, and today’s get more publicity). Back in the ‘60s and even the ‘70s, we could pretend that those sort of concerns didn’t matter. And we still can. But when a character points this out, it becomes a problem, and it would have been even when Tagged for Terror came out in 1993.

Ladies’ man: When the first pretty girl comes along, Joe starts flirting with her. That’s presumably why Iola was killed off at the beginning of the Casefiles series: to give Joe a chance to hit on whatever attractive girls the mystery brings along without guilt. He frequently did that anyway, late in the Grosset & Dunlap days, but no one ever thought it was strange he had a girlfriend and would flirt anyway — sometimes even in front of Chet, Iola’s brother. In this case, it’s Gina Abend, a ticket agent for Eddings. What’s strange is, she responds, despite a) having a boyfriend, and b) not being in high school. Looks like someone wants to rock the cradle of love. Frank tries to shut Gina out, but not even memories of Iola can keep Joe from following his heart (or other part of his anatomy).

To you kids all across the land, there’s no need to argue: adults just don’t understand: Forrester is always ragging on Frank and Joe’s investigation, and Eddings and his pilot, Solomon Mapes, treat them like kids. This the way the books should be: adults are, generally speaking, not all that bright or observant. It’s the way life feels when you’re in high school (and when you’re in grade school or junior high, for that matter); it should be reflected in the books, especially when the Hardys are on the road.

God help him, he’s not very bright: While talking to Gina and Solomon (her boyfriend), Joe muses about the case, thinking an earlier airplane accident might have been intended to kill him and Frank rather than Eddings. Frank covers for him, but Joe really needs to learn to have an inner monologue.

Play to your strengths: It’s a running joke in the Casefiles: when Frank has a plan, Joe complains that Frank’s plans involve him doing something stupid. I’m not sure that’s actually the case, but I have to say, Joe is portrayed as being a little dull-witted, so at least those who have been watching the boys will feel the stupidity is in character.

Later in the book, Joe sarcastically suggests Frank’s plan will involve him dressing “up like a girl and [having] me bat my eyelashes at him until he tells me his deepest secrets.” This is the kind of plan Bugs Bunny devises, so I think we have an idea what Joe’s doing when Frank’s studying.

Mr. Architectural Snob: When Frank and Joe head to an area of Atlanta that’s a little run down, Joe notes the size of the houses; Frank immediately wonders how long it will be before the houses are knocked down (or fall down), just because the porch sags a little and the paint is faded and chipping. Not every place can be High and Elm, Frank. Geez.

Atlanta, still reeling from being burned to the ground during the Civil War: After Frank and Joe are ran off the road and one of their tires shot by a drive-by gunman, the boys tell their new acquaintances — “friends” would be too strong a word — about the incident. The big-city residents are blasé about attempted vehicular homicide and random gunplay on city streets during broad daylight, calling it “big city problems.” I don’t think I want to hang around with people who don’t at least say, “Sorry to hear that,” when they hear you’ve been shot at.

The March of Technology: Danny, an impoverished student who works at Eddings Air to put himself through college, uses an old manual typewriter, which shows how poor he is. Today, what would the equivalent be — a broken-down laptop? Going to the computer lab to do homework? An old IBM? I don’t know.

Also, for some reason, Frank and Joe don’t have their cell phone with them in Atlanta. Avoiding roaming charges, perhaps? In any event, when they have to call the police at the end of the book, one of them actually has to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to use his phone.

Sorry, Mr. Hick, sir: Frank wakes Joe up at 4 a.m. before traveling two hours to Danny’s small hometown, his explanation being that people get up early in the country. Well, yes, some do, especially farmers, but those that work in offices (and some factories) won’t be up until later. And even the farmers won’t appreciate being interrupted at 6 a.m. by a pair of smart-assed kids.

And of course, rather than waiting until they’re off work and can visit these poor rural dwellers at a reasonable time, Frank and Joe skip work. That is, they don’t report to the work they need to keep to investigate the luggage thefts. They run the very real risk of getting fired, and no one who knows their mission could interfere without revealing their undercover mission.

Matters of the heart: At one point, Frank remembers his girlfriend, Callie, often helps them investigate crime. He also thinks he “often told Callie things that he would never tell anybody else.” What on earth would that be? What would he tell Callie that he would not tell his father or Joe? Frank and Joe are close, as close as any two human beings can be. Does Frank confess his secret insecurities to Callie? Does he tell her that he can’t maintain the constant investigations, that he will crack sooner or later?

Or does he tell her that he’s creeped out by Chet’s constant eating (suggesting a betting pool for his first heart attack?), or that Aunt Gertrude’s food really tastes like old person and disapproval?

We don’t need no stinkin’ proof: Near the end of the book, Joe doesn’t want to confront a suspect because they have no proof that he’s done something wrong. Constrast this to Joe’s behavior in Open Season (Casefiles #59), when he will accuse anyone of anything at any time.

Opinions: The Network and the Assassins are the Casefiles overlying storyline, and their appearance in Tagged for Terror is what gives the book the impetus to be the start of a trilogy. I admit, I’ve never warmed to Network vs. Assassins or the Hardys’ Network contact, the Grey Man; it seemed like it was stretching the suspension of disbelief much too far. Much of the Hardys’ adventures can’t stand too close examination, and really, the Hardys investigating superspies vs. contract killers can’t even be mentioned before snapping my belief. The later Casefiles moved away from this, and I appreciate it; I preferred the Casefiles to be the mysteries where the Hardys can investigate murders.

I was surprised by the sudden switch to the Casefiles mythology. Tagged for Terror starts as a normal investigation into a theft ring. And because it’s a Casefile, the bodies start to pile up. (I have to admit, it’s strange that getting shot at and forced off the road does not distinguish the grittier Casefiles from the more reserved canon and digests.) And in that light, it’s a pretty standard mystery, perhaps a little above average. But then the Grey Man shows up, and the Assassins are mentioned, and the Network has an interest … but Frank and Joe still do all the work. Is the Network what Reagan was thinking about when he complained about the inefficiency of government?

Grade: B-. I am amused by Joe’s plucky pick-up attempts.

Open Season (Casefiles #59)

2011-03-10T13:05:00.001-05:00

Plot: While on a Colorado skiing trip, Frank and Joe stumble into the attempted murder of K.D. Becker, a wildlife researcher.

“Borrowing” from the past: When Joe and Frank are menaced by a mountain lion, Becker saves their lives by shooting the big cat with a tranquilizer dart. Back in the old days, Frank and Joe could have taken care of it themselves — mowing down wolves in Hunting for Hidden Gold (#5), successfully hunting a fox in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8), or just bonking a tiger in the head with a rock in The Disappearing Floor (#19). Frank was hardcore in The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), killing a lynx with a radio antenna. In any event, the only time Frank and Joe dealt with a cougar in the canon is in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), although the creature is shot before Frank and Joe see it. However, what the various Dixons mean by “wildcat” is sometimes in doubt; occasionally it seems to be larger than the small, wild feline the term usually refers to. The Hardys were confronted by wildcats in The Secret of Wildcat Swamp (#31), of course, and in Mystery of the Desert Giant (#40) and The Voodoo Plot (#72).

This is not the first time the boys have gone cross-country skiing. The previous times include the most famous winter mysteries, The Mystery of Cabin Island and The Yellow Feather Mystery (#33), although they were skiing across the Bayport countryside rather than the Rocky Mountains. Frank and Joe are also described as “able” skiers in Cave-In! (#78). Open Season is set during the Hardys’ two-week Christmas vacation. Previous mysteries that have taken place during the Christmas holidays include The Cabin Island Mystery, The Mysterious Caravan (#54), and Cave-In!.

One of the suspects in the case has a shortwave radio in his cabin. It’s been quite a while since Frank and Joe have come across one of those. Their most famous encounter with the short waves was in both versions of The Short-Wave Mystery, but they also had shortwaves in the original What Happened at Midnight (#10), The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39), The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46), The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47), Tic-Tac-Terror (#74), and The Blackwing Puzzle (#82) and revised versions of The Shore Road Mystery (#6), A Figure in Hiding (#16), The Secret Warning (#17), The Twisted Claw (#18), The Disappearing Floor, The Secret of Wildcat Swamp, and The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). Really, it seems like it was a craze in the 1960s.

Feels like he’s wearing nothing at all: At the beginning of Open Season, Joe describes his “tight-fitting, one-piece, insulated ski suit” as “the cutting edge of ski technology and fashion. It’s lightweight, gives me room to move — and it matches my baby blues.” Which reminded me of this scene from the Simpson, where Homer is distracted by a memory of Flanders in his skin-tight ski suit: “Stupid sexy Flanders.”

Rocky Mountain high: Gunnison National Forest, where the story is set, actually exists in west central Colorado; it’s not incredibly far from Aspen, to throw out a name of a ski town that you’ve heard of, but there are other wilderness areas that are closer. (Such as White River National Forest, which is just to the north.) Gunnison forms a larger unit with Grand Mesa and Uncompahgre forests, which combine for more than 3 million acres in the Rockies in west central and southwestern Colorado. (Uncompahgre is near Telluride, another ski town.) The forests have the unattractive acronym of GMUG.

The Hardys drift into and out of the small town of Elk Springs. There is an Elk Springs in Colorado, but it’s not in or adjacent to Gunnison National Forest. Elk Springs is in northwestern Colorado, closer to White River National Forest and Routt National Forest.

He who breaks the law shall be punished back to the House of Pain: The sheriff points out their “investigation” is actual grand theft, since they swiped a snowmobile to get away from a bunch of cattle hands while the boys were trespassing. Although the owner of the snowmobile owner declines to press charges, the sheriff has another chance to use the law against the boys, when they’re helping a fugitive evade the law. The sheriff threatens to charge them as accessories, while Frank counter-threatens to sue for wrongful injury since he was knocked out by shrapnel while being shot at by a deputy.

Poor, poor pitiful us: While Frank and Joe are challenging one another to push themselves while cross-country skiing, Frank silently complains that others don’t see the boys’ best qualities: “Other people saw only a couple of teenagers. They didn’t see the serious, dedicated detective team.” There’s a reason for that, exemplified by this book: Frank and Joe frequently don’t do much detecting, unless you count random accusations, trespassing, and breaking and entering as “detecting.”

While confronting a cougar poacher, Frank and Joe are momentarily stopped by the hunter’s assertion that he has permission to hunt on the land. A bystander, however, points out the owner is Becker, who is a wildlife researcher unlikely to give permission to someone killing cougars. Joe complements him, saying, “Nice piece of detective work.” Given that Joe’s idea of detective work was to barrel into an armed man on skis, that’s damning with faint praise, although it’s not meant to be.

Frank also criticizes the sheriff, asking him, “Do you solve a lot of cases by eavesdropping?” Given how many cases Frank and Joe have cracked through that technique, I don’t think Frank has anything to complain about.

Ha!: After Joe’s only plan to gather more information on a poacher is to burst into his hospital room and grill “him relentlessly for hours,” Frank accuses him of reading too many cheap detective novels. “They don’t come much cheaper than us,” Joe says, which is true — you can’t find mysteries much cheaper than the Hardy Boys. Later, when Frank needs a distraction to use the library’s computer (it has a modem!), Joe ends up checking out a stack of paperback whodunits.

Who are you, and what have you done with Frank?: While staying at the cabin of one of the suspects — a very accommodating suspect — Frank makes “ a conscious effort not to snoop around the cabin.” This behavior is inimical to the Hardy Boys and everything they stand for. When a suspect is out of his home, and you’re in it, you snoop! Dammit, what is wrong with kids these days?

Rural decay: Frank says the small mountain town of Elk Springs is his kind of place: “Most of these stores look like they’ve always been here and always will be. There are no instant neon fast-food minimalls. No highrise office complexes.” Joe also chimes in, saying the lack of development is charming. The local they’re chatting with has a more realistic point of view: what they’re praising is a general lack of economic development caused by the lack of tourism. For Frank and Joe the economic isolation and general lack of development is quaint. For the locals, it’s a slow economic death sentence.

Plan and plan! What is plan?: Frank uses a “clever” subterfuge to get close enough to a suspect to question him. Joe turns the questioning into a series of accusations, because in Open Season Joe is an idiot. After the failure of the interview, Frank criticizes Joe, saying, “The plan was to draw him into a conversation and see if anything slipped out, not hurl accusations in his face.” Good general rule, perhaps, but Frank didn’t see fit to actually fill Joe in on the plan before the interview — the extent of his instructions to his brother were, “Leave this to me.” More polite than “Keep your mouth shut,” perhaps, but what intelligent person is going to think that’s going to work with Joe?

Are they blind?: After a perilous climb that ended with them falling several feet in a pickup truck that flipped over as an avalanche started, Frank and Joe drive to the hospital to see Becker. The ER nurses think the boys are there for treatment; Frank is amazed that he and his brother look like they need treatment. Didn’t they see each other after the dust from the avalanche settled? Or while they were driving back to Elk Springs? I swear, they have to be the least observant detectives in the history of ever.

Opinions: I don't know why it bothers me so much that Frank and Joe don’t do any detecting in Open Season. They often trespass, break and enter, and randomly accuse people in other books; why is it so bad here? Perhaps because they encounter a sheriff who is actually willing to enforce those laws against the Hardys; perhaps because I’m just getting fed up with it. Their techniques have the subtlety of a brick wrapped in burlap, although their shadowing skills are generally pretty good given the lack of cover.

Open Season does get points for its underused setting. Winter in the mountains — the isolation, the closed pool of suspects, the potential for “accidents” … it’s a good setup. Open Season fails to make full use of it, but it’s a good idea.

Grade: C. A dull “adventure” in which Frank and Joe’s atrophied detecting skills are helped by the target-rich environment.

Beyond the Law (Casefiles #55)

2011-03-03T10:55:00.006-05:00

Plot: Ezra Collig is accused of corruption from his time in Millerton, a quarter of a century before. When the Hardys and others investigate, the police commissioner and a TV reporter are nearly blown up.

“Borrowing” from the past: Beyond the Law really takes the time to fill in Ezra Collig’s past in a way that hadn't been done before. In the original canon, Collig’s life was a blank slate; he’s an old acquaintance and occasionally friend of the Hardys who professionally serves as anything from a hindrance to a lackey. Other than being afraid of bad publicity, being in his late 40s, and gaining the office of chief of police fewer than five years before, Collig has done little but sell Frank and Joe the supervan they use in the Casefiles and Digests. But Beyond the Law fills in the gaps. He dropped out of school to earn some money, joined a road construction crew, then made it onto the Millerton Police Department. After a brief term of service — he quit after exposing his partner’s graft — he returned to high school in Atlantic Heights, married his teacher Bea Cowan after graduation, and then joined the force in Bayport, rising all the way to the top. Bea passed away shortly before the beginning of Beyond the Law.

Collig also reminisces about how the increasing awareness of the legal rights of criminals has put a crimp in crimefighting. It’s amusing to hear Collig talk about how gunning a man down used to get you medals and a promotion but now gets you fired or that whacking suspected thieves on the calves was just prudent; it’s somewhat worrying to hear Collig complain about having to have sufficient cause to search a suspect, what with the Constitution and whatnot. Although on one hand this is a reminder that the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there — it’s also a reminder that the Hardy Boys canon, while ostensibly less violent than the Casefiles, had a lot of dodgy rights stuff going on within them that had nothing to do with racism. It’s also clear that the Hardy Boys can ignore the constitutional rights thing, as long as they don’t kill people or whack them in the calves.

Joe repairs the van, adjusting its timing. Joe has done a lot of mechanical work over the years, repairing the roadster and his motorcycle with his brother in While the Clock Ticked (#11), souping up a dirt bike in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60), and tuning up the car in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). In A Figure in Hiding (#16), it’s said he liked “nothing more than a mechanical problem”; in The Crimson Flame (#77), the narration mentions he and his brother often work on their car.

Fenton’s sartorial advice for the mystery: “Wear a good suit, and you’re bound to get mud, crud, or blood on it. Only cops who stay in offices can dress up for the job.” For more of his pearls of wisdom, see Last Laugh (Casefiles #42).

Frank and Joe give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The boys have always been good at first aid, and both have given mouth to mouth before: Joe in The Secret of Pirate’s Hill (#36) and The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), Frank in The Clue in the Embers (#35), The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), and The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48). Probably the most challenging first-aid work that either has ever done was in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), during which Frank attended the victims of a train derailment.

Where is Bayport?: After Frank and Joe have a few sticks of dynamite lobbed at them while on the interstate on their way back to Bayport, Joe asks, “Hey, you’re not going to try to catch the Mad Bomber of Route I-forty-nine, are you?” Although I don’t know what Route I-49 could mean other than Interstate 49, Bayport is nowhere near that road. I-49 runs between I-10 in Lafayette and I-20 in Shreveport, entirely within the state of Louisiana.

When Joe looks for Millerton on the map, he notes that it’s as far away from Bayport as one can get and still stay in the same state. Later, when the boys head to Millerton, the narration says it took a couple of hours. That leaves New York and Connecticut out of the running for Bayport (at least for this book); from New York City to Buffalo is more than six hours, and nothing in Connecticut is even close to being two hours from anything else in Connecticut (traffic permitting). But two hours works out about right for New Jersey; both the southeast and southwest corners of the state are about two and a half hours from the New Jersey part of the New York metropolitan area. If you move away from New York, say to Long Branch, Keansburg, or Asbury Park, the time works out about right.

Idiot’s Affairs: Obviously, when the scandal about what Collig might have done in Millerton comes out, the publicity conscious Bayport PD kicks him to the curb and starts their own Internal Affairs investigation. Why they do this is beyond me; the allegations were more than a quarter century earlier, and it has nothing to do with Bayport. (The Millerton PD seems uninterested in the allegations.) The IA detectives turn up nothing, of course; it takes two motivated teenagers to get something done. Like notice that a bunch of cops quit at about the same time as Collig. Frank and Joe don’t actually talk to any of these cops, but hey, they took the first step.

The new top of the police bureaucracy is portrayed as the villains in this book, but it’s hard to dispute two of their points: Kid vigilantes have no business in modern crime control, and if the entire city government was corrupt, it’s a reasonable assumption that Collig or someone on his force was also corrupt. Of course the investigation is shoddy and wrongheaded, but they at least started from the right point.

The March of Technology: While using the Millerton Police Department’s equipment, Frank finds their link to state databases is a “nearly obsolete computer.” I (barely) remember computers in 1991, and I’m having trouble figuring out what could be both nearly obsolete in 1991 and could still uplink with the state servers. A TRS-80? An Apple II?

When Frank and Joe announce on live radio they are going to Millerton to investigate the allegations against Collig, nearly everyone seems to hear the news. In a town with its own TV station, would everyone really be listening to the radio for an update on the Collig “corruption” case?

When Frank and Joe go with Callie to visit her friend Liz at the Bayport Times, they find her working on a typewriter. When I worked at newspapers, a half decade later at newspapers not much bigger than the Times, no one used typewriters — everything was computerized, although sometimes clunkily. But in 1991 … is Liz’s typewriter an anachronism, or is it a possibility? I don’t know.

I’ll take Forced Metaphors for $400, Alex: In a bit of deathless prose, Frank muses, “They’ll figure Collig left Millerton under a cloud … I just hope that cloud doesn’t rain on the chief’s parade.”

The Eagle: According to Beyond the Law, Bayport’s TV station is WBPT. There is, of course, no television station with that call sign; however, since 2001 it has been the call sign of a radio station in central Alabama: 106.9, the Eagle — “Birmingham’s home for classic hits.” When Beyond the Law came out, the station was WBMH, a country station. That iteration lasted about a year.

Modesty will get you nowhere: Frank mentally complains about the media always using the phrase “famous private detective” to describe Fenton. I know it must get monotonous — Fenton might as well change his name to Famous Private Detective Fenton Hardy, FPDF Hardy for short — but he is a famous private detective. Again, Frank and Joe have been using his name across the country as a get-out-of-logic-free card for years.

Separation of Frank and Joe, Part II: Like in Panic on Gull Island, Joe has a friend independent of Frank. Unlike in Gull Island, this cryptozoological specimen has a name: Johnny Berridge, a cameraman at WBPT. Berridge is obviously not a chum, which means he’s a … a … (I can hardly bear to say it) … a source.

In the old days, of course, the Hardys didn’t have sources — at least not consistent ones. They would come to town, pump you dry of information, and go about their business, never to see you again. If you were lucky, you might get to be a chum for a book, serving as extra manpower or as a sort of guide. But a consistent source? That suggests the Hardys have some sort of plan about their sleuthing, and that’s just un-Hardylike. On the other hand, it probably fits the Casefiles better.

Taking the wrong notes from Collig: After replacing Collig, acting chief Parker Lawrence tells Frank and Joe they are “finished on this case”; like Collig in Power Play (Casefiles #50), he forgets Frank and Joe have no real standing to be on the case, so there isn’t really a “case” where they are concerned, and they don’t work for him, so it’s not like he has the power to order them off the case. Threaten them with arrest, yes; order them like a boss, no.

Yee-haw!: This Dixon notes Joe uses the high beams on the way to the Morton farm. This is not noteworthy. If you live on or travel to a farm at night, chances are you will frequently get to use the high beams.

Don’t give Joe any ideas: After Collig tells Frank and Joe that (in a non-creepy way) he married his high school teacher, Joe muses that it’s “one way to get good grades.” Joe, I know you’re single, what with Iola being reduced to particles, and the book learnin’ is sometimes a challenge, but there are laws against that sort of thing. I know you don’t care about laws when they apply to you, but they’re there for your protection. Trust me. The short-term gain isn’t worth it.

Now, your brother — he’s 18. He can do what he wants.

Opinions: This is the book that should have been #50 for the Casefiles. It uses the series’ continuity, referring to Frank and Joe’s work in See No Evil (Casefiles #8) as the impetus for the anti-corruption drive that ends up with the reform candidates seeking to drive out Collig. It also features Collig, a long-time supporting character. It’s also nice to see Ezra Collig’s backstory get fleshed out, although a random Casefile is an odd place for that to happen.

As for the mystery itself … Well, it’s better than Power Play, but that’s not saying very much. The reform party’s attempts to dig up dirt on Collig are feeble — actually, calling it feeble is an insult to all the feeble people out there, especially the feeble minded. Forget the technology of the computer, which Frank understands but the Internal Affairs cops do not; they don’t quite get the combination of telephones and personnel records. Or, when it comes down to it, talking, something Frank and Joe mastered quickly. Frank and Joe even found the right guy to talk to immediately.

Also: Tossing dynamite at the Hardys while both are driving down the interstate. I can’t tell if that’s completely mental or completely awesome, but either way, it has no part in a Hardy Boys book, and it’s quite telling that Frank and Joe drive away from the bombing as quickly as possible so that they don’t get caught up in the mentalness / awesomeness or the justice.

Grade: C. When you balance the highs and the lows, it’s completely average.

Power Play (Casefiles #50)

2011-02-24T10:50:00.003-05:00

Plot: Frank and Joe are hired to check the security at Bright Futures, a company that makes solar cells. However, before their investigation can get underway, one of the company’s top researchers is murdered.

“Borrowing” from the past: In Power Play, Frank mentions he recently got his pilot’s license, certifying him for single-engine planes. Frank first flew a plane (under supervision) in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#19). In The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), both he and Joe get instruction from a pilot named Stewart, but Jack Wayne — Fenton’s personal pilot — doesn’t start teaching them until The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). He even makes an emergency landing in that book. He and Joe get their license in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39). By The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), he can perform loops, banks, and rolls in a seaplane, and he passes the FAA proficiency test for float planes. In The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48), he lands a twin-engine plane … on a glacier. The Stone Idol (#65) mentions he has flown helicopters at the Bayport air field; in The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), he and Joe build an ultralight with their friends.

That last is important, because in Power Play, Frank rides in and briefly flies a solar-powered ultralight plane. Now, I kept track of how the Hardys get around, but I don’t think they’ve ever used a solar-powered ultralight plane. In The Blackwing Puzzle, they do fly an ultralight called the “Silver Falcon,” but it wasn’t solar powered. In fact, I don’t think they ever traveled in something solar powered in the first 85 books. (There was an electric car in The Skyfire Puzzle, #85, but that doesn’t count.) That’s surprising, since the Hardys have flown in hot-air balloons and a space shuttle, used parachutes, skimmed across the bay in ice boats, swum powered by porpoises, trekked with mules, even used a hand car. But never a solar-powered ultralight.

Frank and Joe get extra time to investigate because of Spring Break. I expected the boys to have experienced Spring Break about forty times before the Casefiles, but during the canon, they used it to get out of school only three times: The Arctic Patrol Mystery, The Firebird Rocket (#57), and The Voodoo Plot (#72). They also used Spring Break to track down Iola in Panic on Gull Island (#107).

The March of Technology: Oh, 1991. Computers were so exciting then — even interoffice electronic mail (“e-mail” not being a common enough usage) and 300 megabyte optical “disks” (the ones I have sitting by my desk, made for CDs, hold 700 MB) are breathlessly reported as exciting advances … even though you had to have a special drive for the 8-track like optical disks. Some technological plot points are relevant, however; the murdered researcher smuggled sensitive information out of Bright Futures by switching the label from a rock CD to the optical disk. This is similar to how Private Bradley Manning smuggled sensitive information off a secure Army intelligence server in Baghdad to give to Wikileaks; he brought in a CD-RW labeled “Lady Gaga,” erased the music, then copied the information onto the now empty disc. (I’m still not sure how the researcher switched the label, however; were the labels on early CDs stickers?)

Frank and Joe have a cellular phone (again, “cell phone” is not in common enough usage in 1991), but when they try to use it, there’s too much static. Their provider must be AT&T. Zing!

You’re slipping, old man: Fenton … I worry about the old man. In Power Play, all those concussions seem to be catching up with him. In the beginning, when a client calls him a “famous detective,” he says, “I don’t know about the ‘famous’ part.” That could be him being humble, but I don’t think you can be humble about your reputation when your sons use your name as a “Get out of jail free” card from coast to coast.

Later in the book, Fenton tells his sons that a researcher for Bright Futures has been arrested. Two pages later, he says, “[The researcher] could be home by now — if she has a good lawyer. She doesn’t have an arrest record, and there’s probably not enough evidence to charge her.” Not enough evidence to charge her? She’s already been arrested! That means she’s been charged! Do you even listen to yourself, Fenton?

Halfway through the book, Fenton goes jogging in a mesh shirt. Putting aside how smart I think jogging is, I keep getting an image of Fenton in an open-mesh shirt that is pretty much see-through (been watching too much anime, I guess). That’s not a pretty picture. In any event, in this picture of parental authority, he tells his sons that he wants to pull them off the murder investigation because they were only hired to investigate security, and murders are dangerous. Neither of these considerations have either bothered Fenton before; I don’t know if this is how Fenton is portrayed in the Casefiles, but it does fit in with the worrywart who founded ATAC in the Undercover Brothers series.

Speaking of slipping: Frank and Joe suffer the indignity of the “cut-the-brakes” trick. Frank later says it wasn’t a murder attempt; they shouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot. That seems an awful chance to take; I think, under New York law — as given unto us by DA Jack McCoy on Law & Order — that it shows a reckless indifference to the boys’ life and therefore would be classified as attempted murder, but what do I know?

In any event, Joe, who is driving, tries to use the parking brake to slow the van first. Only after that does he downshift. He should have tried it in the other order, which would have been more effective.

Speaking of ‘off the case’: At one point, Chief Collig — who has been antagonistic to Frank and Joe the entire book — tells them, “You’re off the case.” Firstly, he has no real authority over them, except when they break the law. (Which admittedly is all the time in this book, so perhaps I’m selling him short.) Secondly, a “case” suggests an official investigation of some sort, but Frank and Joe have no official standing — not even a private investigator’s license. For the Hardy Boys, there’s no case for them to be on. In fact, by telling them they are off the case, Collig implies they were either on the case before or had some sort claim to be on the case. I think Ezra just wanted to say those words to a couple of loose cannons, and whether the words made sense be damned.

Asking for trouble: Weirdly, Bright Futures hires Fenton’s sons just to check security. That is, the company had no idea there were no problems before Frank and Joe came along. Of course, afterwards, there’s a murder, the company is revealed to be rife with industrial sabotage, and the company’s remaining researcher is poached by a competitor. Nice job, boys.

The new math: After the head of Bright Futures tells Frank and Joe about a dispute between his top researchers — one of whom is now dead — Frank “filed this information with what they already knew. According to his math, none of this added up to murder yet.” I would really like to see what that equation looked like: Motive + death ≠ murder?

So there’s a … “Superb Bowl”?: God knows I am not a big fan of American football. I prefer baseball by far, and I agree with George Will’s contention that football combines the two worst aspects of modern American society: violence and committee meetings. But dammit, why can’t Dixons ever get the game quite right?

In The Crisscross Shadow, Chet is listed as a center, which is an offensive position, but he’s shown only as a defensive player. Even if there is a defensive center — and there isn’t really, although perhaps a defensive tackle in on a three-man line could be considered a “center” because he’s between two other players — he wouldn’t cover receivers on pass plays, as Chet tries and fails to do. (Maybe he’s a middle linebacker, which would fit the criteria.) Joe is said to be a left halfback — “halfback” is usually as specific as it gets — but he throws all the passes for Bayport, which is the quarterback’s job. Frank’s supposed to be the quarterback, but he functions as a receiver. At one point, the teams are locked in a defensive duel which forces each side to run two plays, then punt; each side gets three plays before they need to decide whether to punt. I’ve already gone over the ludicrousness of everything in Foul Play, which had no clue about football.

In Power Play, the offense is much lesser: Chet is said to have the “wide, massive frame of a football linebacker.” There are many other positions that could be better said to have a “wide, massive” frame; offensive or defensive linemen are prime candidates. Linebackers are large but have to be more athletic than linemen since they not only have to overpower people but also cover receivers. In fact, if you want a stereotypical description of linebackers, it would be quick and powerful rather than wide and massive.

It’s a small detail. But it’s a small detail about the most popular sport in America. Is it that hard to get right?

Opinions: Frank and Joe are at the nadir of their investigative abilities in Power Play, with Frank and Joe’s investigative techniques alternating between random accusations and breaking and entering, with a bit of bullying Chet thrown in to keep things from getting too predictable. They antagonize all the authority figures they can find, and Chief Collig and Fenton decide to finally draw a line and rein in the boys for reasons I can’t quite discern. Child endangerment laws catching up with Fenton and Bayport, maybe? Perhaps other municipalities giving Collig hell for using teenagers to solve his crimes? I don’t know, but neither Collig nor Fenton seems to want Frank and Joe on the case despite their results and their ability to avoid death.

I also find it odd that the Casefiles would hit their fiftieth book and not do some sort of anniversary stunt. Then again, the series was less than five years old at the time, so perhaps it was considered too early to do something like that.

And as I mentioned before, I really don’t like the cover. That it superficially resembles something that happened in the book is irrelevant.

Grade: D. Not very good. The optimistic “unlimited promise of solar power” angle and technology dates it more than perpetual teenagers Frank and Joe ever could.

The Last Laugh (Casefiles #42)

2011-02-17T09:54:00.002-05:00

Plot: Frank, Joe, and Chet investigate kidnappings, bombings, and arson at a comic book convention in San Diego.

“Borrowing” from the past: Casefiles don’t care much about the past, but there are some links to the proud Hardy Boys traditions. Or maybe the Casefiles duplicate earlier books without knowing any better.

In this case, the background details are somewhat similar to The Apeman’s Secret (#62). In that book, Frank, Joe, and Chet are all interested in comics (although Chet more so than the Hardys), and they are called to investigate crimes committed by people dressed up as comic book characters, just as they are in Last Laugh. Chet even gets a story published by publisher Star Comix (Marvel Comics actually started a kids-oriented imprint called Star Comics in 1984). Chet even dresses up as a villain for a comic-book costume party. (The party wasn’t at a convention, though; it was at the Alfresco Disco. Ah, 1980.)

Joe remembers some of Fenton’s advice early in The Last Laugh: no clue is too small for a good detective. Other gems from Fenton include:

“Listen much and say little.” (Hunting for Hidden Gold, #5)
“One of the first requirements of a good detective is to keep his ears open and his mouth shut, and to be wary of confiding in strangers.” (What Happened at Midnight, #10)
“A good detective doesn't let his impulses get the better of him.” (The Disappearing Floor, #19)
It is an admission of defeat to call the police. (The Flickering Torch Mystery, #22)
There is “no more dangerous or cruel fighter than a cornered criminal.” (The Secret Panel, #25)
Note the time of any unusual occurrence. (The Secret Panel)
“A good detective must be observant of small details.” (The Phantom Freighter, #26)
“Never discard a single clue.” (The Secret of the Lost Tunnel, #29)
A little undercover sleuthing in advance is better than barging in head on. (The Crisscross Shadow, #32)
Do not talk to strangers about cases. (The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, #37)
Safeguard any valuables you come across during a case. (The Mystery at Devil’s Paw , #38)
Two of a “detective's best friends are the newspaper and the police.” (Mystery of the Desert Giant, #40)
“In detective work, sometimes it's the crazy clues that bring results.” (Mystery of the Desert Giant)
The modus operandi is often the best way to identify who committed a crime. (The Night of the Werewolf , #59)
Do not take foolish chances. (The Night of the Werewolf , #59)
A criminal has to have motive and opportunity. (The Swamp Monster, #83)

Frank and Joe silently communicate, with Frank making motions with his head that Joe can instantly translate. Most of the Hardys’ previous silent signals were more specific than various chin jabs and nods, though. The boys squeeze each other’s hands in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21) as a “danger signal,” and they have a specific, secret hand signal in The Crisscross Shadow (#32). The revised version of What Happened at Midnight mentions a system of hand squeezes. A few other times, such as in The Pentagon Spy (#61), The Disappearing Floor (#19), and The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), switching lights on and off are signals. In most other cases, their “secret” signals aren’t silent: they’re bird calls or whistles or horn honks or wildcat screeches (yes, really) or knocks or obvious phrases (“Here we go again!” in The Hooded Hawk Mystery, #34).

What?: Despite the title, the book has absolutely nothing to do with jokes, laughter, or the phrase, “He who laughs last laughs best.” I think someone saw the “comic” in “comic book,” and immediately thought of old Walt Disney or Little Lulu comics.

Investment advice you can trust: In The Baseball Card Conspiracy, baseball cards are touted as a great investment. In the two decades since, that has been shown to be a horrible idea. Last Laugh takes a slightly different approach; I expected comic books themselves to be lauded as moneymakers, especially since the big investment boom in comics was beginning just as this book was published. But no — this Franklin W. Dixon makes the better argument that comic book art (the original art on Bristol boards and the like) would be a good investment. I don’t know how the market for original art has held up, but it has to be better than the books bought around the time Last Laugh was published (early ‘90s). The author generally restricts the art in question to Golden Age (late ‘30s-mid ‘40s) comic art, which seems like a good bet.

Getting the details right: The boys attend a comic convention in San Diego — it’s never called the San Diego Comic Con (or to give it its formal name, Comic-Con International), but that’s what it is. Since this book is set 20 years ago, the convention was actually focused on comics rather than generic science fiction / geek entertainment, as it is now. SDCC was founded in 1970 by fan Shel Dorf, and it bounced around several San Diego locations befreo ending up in its current location, the San Diego Convention Center, in 1991, the year after this book was published. (The convention has already moved in Last Laugh.) The events Chet tries to interest the Hardys in, like the large costume party, actually occur at SDCC.

At the end of the book, Chet wants to attend a concert at the convention by a band called “Seduction of the Innocent.” It’s a real band that played at conventions, one with a better name than musical pedigree. The members are actor Bill Mumy (Lost in Space, Babylon Five), writer Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), actor Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan), and artist Steve Leialoha (many DC and Marvel books). The name has strong comic book roots: the title belonged to a book by anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham, who claimed comic books and their graphic imagery led to violence and juvenile delinquency.

Among the Golden Age covers displayed at the convention, one Joe sees is described as having a “muscular, square-jawed hero in a star-spangled costume slugging Adolf Hitler.” As you can see, that’s a pretty good description of Captain America Comics #1.

The Real McCoy or an Impostinator?: The question that preyed on my mind throughout Last Laugh is whether Barry Johns, his staff, and the comic book companies involved were based on real people, composites, or made up out of whole cloth. Even by the end, I still hadn’t decided.

Barry Johns was a fan who worked his way into the business through persistence and hard work. That could describe any number of comic professionals; most likely, this Dixon had someone like Roy Thomas in mind. Thomas, like Johns, used his experience with fanzines and his enthusiasm to become one of the first fans to become a professional comics writer. Thomas was a bit earlier, but the idea is the same. Thomas was editor in chief at Marvel Comics from 1972 to 1974.

The description could, in a loose way, apply to Jim Shooter … although it’s other parts of Johns’s character that fit Shooter more aptly. Shooter wrote his first story for DC at the age of 14 in 1966, then, after graduating high school, worked his way through the ranks at Marvel in the ‘70s. (There was a lot of turnover at the top at Marvel in the ‘70s — seven different editors had the top job at some point during the decade.) There were many successful runs at Marvel during his tenure, a welcome departure from the creative doldrums the company suffered through in the ‘70s. During Shooter’s reign at Marvel, however, the company alienated some talent through strict deadlines and editorial control, as Johns does through late payments to freelancers and not giving proper credit (and strict editorial control). Many Marvel writers and artists left to go to work for DC. Shooter was forced out after nine years in 1987.

Johns left Terrific Comics (most likely a stand in for Marvel) and founded Zenith Publishing, where he had a bit hit in Metaman. Shooter launched Valiant Comics in 1989, and the company grew spectacularly for a few years — until the comic book industry’s next bust in the mid-‘90s, when the whole thing went pear shaped. Shooter had been forced out before then, however.

Zenith was headquartered in San Diego, most likely for plot convenience. (The largest comic publisher located in San Diego today, IDW, was founded in 1999.) However, when Frank and Joe visit the company’s offices, Joe notices the “bullpen” — an open area for many artists to work at the same time. Marvel was famous for its bullpen; however, there was no actual bullpen area in its offices. It was just a convenient and colorful way for early editor Stan Lee to refer to the writers and artists working for Marvel at the time, and the name has stuck.

Too much TV, not enough comics: At one point, Joe says he will be able to “play [the suspect] like a violin,” which Frank finds overdramatic. Obviously, Joe’s picked this up from some generic crime TV show or movie — probably too many of them. Despite his disdain, Frank’s watched too much TV as well; he thinks he’s lucky the car he’s in didn’t explode when it rolled. Cars rarely explode in real life; in TV and movies, the special effects people put bombs on the cars to make them go boom.

Chet, the comic book fan, seems to have not read enough comics, however. When people dressed up as comic book villains attack them, Chet seems unconvinced as to whether they have superpowers. Anyone who has read comics (or watched TV, or movies) knows that when fictional characters come to life, it’s always a scam.

Good cop, bad Hardys: As usual, the Hardys horn in on an active investigation, but this time, Det. Sgt. Drew Hanlon isn’t having it. He tells the boys that since it’s a kidnapping case, the FBI has jurisdiction, and they should butt the hell out. (I’m paraphrasing.) When they are caught at the scene of a firebombing, Hanlon hauls them in and questions them for a whole hour. Frank and Joe are aghast at this sort of treatment, little imagining what would have happened if a) they were normal people, instead of the most special teenagers in the history of forever, or b) the FBI took an interest in their own investigation instead of fobbing off most of the hard work to a detective for the San Diego PD.

I think the books need characters like this: authority figures who give the boys a hard time and seem at least mildly competent. Since adults rarely seem to believe children and adolescents, it seems more real and a better way to identify with the ostensible target audience to have adults working against the Hardys rather than Frank and Joe invoking St. Fenton to become the police’s masters. Any adolescent (or child) who has that sort of power is going to be the sort of person the intended audience would automatically hate — the undeclared lords of the playground set who get what they want because their parents are rich, powerful, or both. Screw those kids.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to sympathize with Frank and Joe’s meddling when they have a better understanding of San Diego, armed with a street map and a day’s experience, than the San Diego police or the local FBI.

Opinions: Since I have a familiarity with comics and the comics industry — see my new book Comic Book Collections for Libraries for an example — I was distracted throughout the book, trying to figure out who this or that character was supposed to be. Someone specific? An amalgam? Something new? Only Barry Johns seemed to have enough details to identify with any sort of depth or confidence. The others … they were generic figures. Which was a problem when I was trying to figure out if they had any wider significance and a problem in relation to the plot. And I’m still trying to figure out if Chet’s fan friend Tom Gatlin was a reference to Tom Galloway, a comics fan and Usenet dinosaur also known as “tyg.”

It seems to me a better story could have been made by making Last Laugh echo the real battle for Golden and Silver Age creators’ rights, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s battle for Superman money or Jack Kirby’s battle for recognition at Marvel. Given that Golden Age cover art was at the center of the mystery, a fictionalized version of the legal struggle would have fit quite well into the story. But no — it’s a generic money / rights issue at the heart of Last Laugh.

Grade: B-. Although this isn’t a bad mystery, I found I wasn’t engaged with it either.

The Baseball Card Conspiracy (#117)

2011-02-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

Plot: Counterfeit baseball cards start popping up at shows in the New York / Bayport area; when Biff gets burned, Frank and Joe are on the case.

“Borrowing” from the past: For dramatic purposes, Shore Road is considered to be “dangerous,” even to the point of washing out in very wet weather. Frank and Joe take the road to Southport. In The Tower Treasure, the road is rutted and rough, and in 1931’s What Happened at Midnight (#10), Shore Road “doesn’t lead anywhere in particular” (pg. 196). It became the main road to the new airport by The Great Airport Mystery (#9). In Danger on Vampire Trail (#50), it merges with a superhighway several miles from Bayport. By The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), much of its rush-hour traffic was diverted by expressways, completing its evolution from a back road to main artery and back to secondary road. Perhaps Conspiracy is implying it is about to fade back into back road status.

Biff Hooper’s home is said to be in one of Bayport’s “newer” housing developments. Given that the city hasn’t grown in population in 70 years, that may not be very new. The only time the Hoopers’ house was mentioned in the original canon was to place it within walking distance of the boys’ boathouses in The Shore Road Mystery (#6).

Frank and Joe — mostly Frank — identify a symbol used in geometry: parallel lines with a backslash is called a transversal. Frank and Joe were last seen in geometry class in 1930, in The Great Airport Mystery.

At one point, Joe claims to have collected stamps in the past; that’s never been stated before, although Hurd Applegate’s stamp collection was a plot point in While the Clock Ticked (#11).

Bayport’s baseball team — semipro? minor league? Heaven forbid, major league? — is nicknamed the Blues. Frank mentions the team was founded in the 1890s. In The Wailing Siren Mystery (#30), Bayport’s nine is named the Bears. This may not be a mistake since many teams have switched their names over the years, even switching back to previous names.

Biff trails one of the thugs down to the Bayport Mall. For those of you who are interested in how American consumerism is portrayed in popular culture, the mall just barely managed to show up during the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s ownership of the books — 1984’s The Blackwing Puzzle was the mall’s first appearance.

On the cover of the Hardy Boys: I don’t say this often — I can’t imagine why — but I really like the cover to Baseball Card Conspiracy. Frank and Joe look like plausible teenagers, albeit ones who are a little too buff. The criminal, who looks like a red-haired James Dean or Luke Perry, is literally escaping the illustration, with his foot and hand outside the border. Frank is running onto the illustration, with his foot cut off by the cover’s edge. There’s a lot of details, like the strewn cards and the bystander’s barely greeked Pirates’ cap (the Pirates’ “P” is replaced with a “K”), the pennants, the baseball equipment. The two bystanders look like the same person, unfortunately, but that’s a minor quibble.

For those who are curious, the jersey in the background — a #8 in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ colors — is probably meant to be that of Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, who played his entire career for Pittsburg. Although this book was published in 1992, when the Pirates won their third straight National League East title, I think we have to consider the cover artist — “Daniel R. Ho????” (it’s cut off by the cover’s cropping, but it’s almost certainly Daniel R. Horne) — is a Pirates fan. According to his bio, he was born in Pittsburgh in 1960, which would have made him 19 when the Pirates last won a World Series. (CAUTION: The link to Horne’s site has an audio file, and many of the prints in his store are NSFW.)

Talkin’ baseball: The counterfeited cards are those of Don Mattingly, Daryl Strawberry, and Ken Griffey, Jr. The manufacturer and year of the cards are never mentioned, but unless the Strawberry and Mattingly cards were rookies, they probably wouldn’t be worth much today. Mattingly’s 1984 Topps rookie card goes for about $5 on eBay, half the $10 it was trading for in Conspiracy. His Fleer rookie card goes for about the same, although for some reason his Donruss rookie card is at about $20. You can get Strawberry’s 1984 Topps rookie for about $1; Griffey Jr.’s 1989 Topps rookie goes for $5-$10. Some more obscure variants can go for a lot more, but overall, the value of baseball cards have crashed since their early ‘90s peaks. Joe’s assertion that “there’s a ton of money to be made in baseball cards” shows that Joe is not only not a lawyer but is also not an economist.

Of course, Franklin W. Dixon isn’t an economist either. The counterfeiters in Conspiracy are selling the fake Mattinglys for $10 a pop. Biff buys his from a dealer for … $10. Obviously, in this case the dealer won’t be making any money. Dixon is making the classic collector mistake: the price-guide price is retail price. If you sell to a dealer, he will give you much less than that amount; the dealer has to make a profit, and the seller doesn’t have the customer base to sell the collectible (or didn’t, until eBay). The counterfeiters would have been selling the fakes for somewhere between a quarter and three-quarters of the price-guide price.

Police employment: Frank and Joe drop off a screwdriver used to commit sabotage at the police station, with Frank blithely commenting that he’ll see if the police can match the fingerprints for them. Do the police work for Frank and Joe? It usually seems so, but at one point, Con Riley and an officer confront Frank and Joe after a tip-off and find them with a bunch of (planted) counterfeit cards. Con explains how he has observed their civil liberties — it figures the first time anyone’s civil liberties are respected, it would be the Hardys — but despite being caught redhanded, Frank and Joe weasel their way out of an arrest and avoid being treated like regular folks. This is especially ironic since they later marvel at two crooks exercising their right to remain silent just before they break into an innocent man’s mansion to prove he’s guilty. They also leave the scene of an accident (admittedly, no Hardy was driving) without giving those at the scene a way to contact them to help with the accident report.

Fortune favors the prepared: On their trip to Southport, Frank and Joe’s vans get two flat tires, courtesy of a sniper. Frank and Joe have learned from their adventures, and the van actually comes stocked with two spare tires. Each also carries a spare packed overnight bag in their van.

Even the prepared mind can be baffled: Fenton is working on a case involving a stolen duplicating machine / printer of uncanny resolution. Frank and Joe are working on a case that involves many copies of excellent forgeries of baseball cards. The boys see a connection between the cases … and that connection is that maybe the person who Fenton is helping can inform them about printing technologies. So close!

Time catches up with all of us: Fenton seems to be in a bit of a decline. He literally is unable to escape from a cardboard box at one point. Near the end of Conspiracy, he goes to the police to get them to search for Frank and Joe after only a single night’s absence. Either that’s too much time or too little, and I can’t figure out which.

Ami d’hypocrite!: In Panic on Gull Island (#107), Joe absolves Iola for looking at guys while she’s on Spring Break with a friend. (He doesn’t do it to her face, of course, since she’d probably hit him and make him cry for saying it.) In Conspiracy, Joe flirts with and even asks for the phone number of a woman who was bilked by a counterfeiter. Sure, he says it’s to notify her if her money is recovered, but I think we all know what’s going on here.

March of technology: The Hardys recover a 3 ½-inch diskette that helps them figure out what’s going on. This is amusing from a modern perspective for two reasons: one, the diskette is an outmoded form of data storage, and two, Dixon had to distinguish it from the even more outmoded 5 ¼-inch diskette. Someday, people will be saying, “Remember CD-ROMs? Man, I haven’t seen one of those in forever!”

On a similar note, Frank and Joe have to go to a public library to search through old telephone directories. Although those directories are still useful to many people, a lot of libraries have thrown them out, and any real private investigator would have purchased a subscription to a database that would do the same thing.

Nothing half-hearted about this guy: Usually, you wonder why the villains don’t just kill the Hardys and be done with it. That’s not the case with the main thug in Conspiracy, who tries to throw Frank from a train, shoots out their tires while they are driving on Shore Road, attempts to firebomb their van, and hits both boys in the head with fastballs before clubbing Joe in the skull with a baseball bat. (That probably should have been debilitating, if not fatal.)

Double Entendre Theater, where we like what we see, if you know what we mean: One morning, Frank goes to the breakfast table and finds his parents “lingering over breakfast.” They had been up late the night before … “discussing the case.” So that’s what the kids call it these days.

Yes, I know it’s juvenile. I don’t care.

Opinions: I was surprised by this one. I had low expectations, but this book managed to function on two levels for me: a time capsule of the time when collecting baseball cards was a craze and as a solid digest. As I mentioned, economics is not this book’s long suit, but there are a few touches that show the author knows the Hardys, and the plot is simple enough, with just enough good suspects, to keep the reader guessing.

Grade: B+. A superior digest, although if you don't have fond memories of collecting baseball cards, it might not get much above average for you.

Panic on Gull Island (#107)

2011-02-03T08:22:00.002-05:00

Plot: Iola is missing on Spring Break, and Joe and Chet eventually head down to a Florida motel to find her.

“Borrowing” from the past: Iola Morton is Joe’s girlfriend — it even says the pair are “going together” on the very first page. That reasonable and natural description of their relationship may not seem remarkable, but it was never used in the first 50 Hardy Boys books. Never. Instead, there were euphemisms like Iola being Joe’s “special friend,” “best girl,” “regular date,” even “staunch supporter.” It’s also revealed in Gull Island that Joe gave Iola a watched engraved with the romantic (for him) inscription of, “To Iola, From Joe.” This is the first thing, as far as I’ve known, that he’s ever given her.

Iola is kidnapped in Gull Island. In the original canon, Iola was particularly resistant to such shenanigans; she was tied up, with the rest of the Mortons, in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37), and that’s it. As for injuries, her hair was singed in The Clue in the Embers (#35), and she was knocked out after hitting her head on a boat’s gunwale, which caused her to fall into Barmet Bay in The Secret of Pirate's Hill (#36). (The ‘50s weren’t great for Iola.) She was also pulled underwater in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). Falling into the bay was the worst thing that happened to her … until she was blowed up in the first Hardy Boys Casefile, Dead on Target.

The Hardys are chased by some Doberman pinschers at one point. The Hardys have been chased by dogs for years, starting with a Russian wolfhound named Chan in Footprints Under the Window (#12) and continuing too many times to get into. The only time they had previously been menaced by Dobermans was in the first paperback adventure, The Night of the Werewolf (#59).

Do you care?: Joe seems slightly concerned but not exactly upset when Chet tells him Iola has disappeared. The first thing he does is drive to the airport to pick up Frank and Fenton — like they couldn’t have hailed a cab — and the narration notes that Iola’s disappearance would “affect him as much as it did Chet.” Such a effaced way of expressing the thought — it allows the sentiment to be interpreted as an expression of possible grief (or joy, when she is found) as much as it does legal troubles the disappearance could cause them (did you have anything to do with it?). Nobody else seems too worked up either. It takes the adult ostensibly looking after Daphne and Iola two days to call the Mortons. Two days! The Mortons send Chet, rather than a responsible adult, to investigate. And Fenton tells the boys to drive all the way down there — a 24-hour trip that leaves them exhausted — rather than flying them down there.

On the other hand, Joe is so worked up over Iola’s disappearance he can’t muster the will to make a fat joke while he and Chet wait for Fenton and Frank to arrive. Frank, on the other hand, doesn’t miss a beat, going for a Chet’s appetite joke minutes after surviving a crash landing on a passenger plane.

Separation of Frank and Joe: At the beginning of Gull Island, Fenton and Frank are returning from a detecting trip to Chicago. Why was Joe left behind? To make some calls and talk to a “friend” from the telephone company about some things. He could have done that from Chicago! Besides, Joe doesn’t have any friends that Frank doesn’t have, right?

What are you driving, a wheelbarrow?: At about 3 a.m., Chet estimates he and the Hardys are 300 miles from the Florida border and about 18 hours from Gull Island. The fictional Gull Island is somewhere between Naples and Sarasota. That’s … that’s incredibly slow.

Since they’d just eaten, they wouldn’t have to stop again until Florida, at least — about five hours away, since the speed limit back then was probably 55 mph. But to get from the Florida border to Fort Myers, Fla. — which is between Sarasota and Naples and closer to Naples, the more southerly city — is between 300 and 350 miles, depending on the route. Most of it would be on the interstate. Even with highway driving, eight hours would be a long time; Mapquest estimates it at about five and a half, although the speed limit is higher now. So will they be taking four to six hours of meals and bathroom breaks on such an important trip?

Long arm of the Syndicate: The Stratemeyer Syndicate, which created and controlled the Hardy Boys series for decades, revised the books in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. One of the things they wanted to do was have Frank and Joe more respectful of the police (and other authority figures) and to make those with authority more worthy of respect.

In Gull Island, the Hardys and Chet are stymied in their investigation by the worst lawman ever. The deputy sheriff obviously wouldn’t know a crime wave if it bit him in the hinder. He decides a kidnapping, a boat theft, destruction of a private dock, vandalism, and a boat explosion are not only separate incidents but not crimes at all. He responds to the kidnapping concerns by saying that since there was no ransom note, there obviously was no kidnapping — financial gain evidently being the only reason for kidnapping a pretty teenage girl that he can conceive of. (And that’s putting aside the possibility that the case was murder.) The only question is whether the deputy is incompetent or corrupt, but the end of the story suggests (in its omission of the deputy) that the readers were never supposed to regard the deputy as corrupt at all. Still, he’s pretty awful.

On the other hand, everyone else is stupid in how they handle him. The locals seem to think he has no superior, with no one mentioning appealing to the county sheriff’s office. One local suggests running against him in an election, but that’s asinine — deputies are generally appointed by the sheriff, who is the one who runs for office. It takes until two-thirds of the way through the book before anyone mentions the state police, let alone any other level of law enforcement. In a technical sense, even if the deputy believed Iola was kidnapped, that crime is the jurisdiction of the FBI rather than a county office. No one even mentions talking to insurance investigators about the crimes.

In the end, though, it shows how little everyone wants to get Iola back that no one alerts the media. There might not have been a 24-hour news cycle in 1991, but I guarantee that the disappearance of a female teenager on Spring Break would cause a firestorm of attention on the case. Things would start happening. But no one thinks about putting pressure on the police by even threatening that. No, no — that would interfere with Frank and Joe’s “investigating,” which mainly involves trespassing and crashing parties.

Seriously, Iola, you might want to think about finding better friends.

Com-put-tor: The Hardys are on the cutting edge of technology; they take a portable phone (which gets stolen), a fax machine (!), and a portable computer (which if I remember those days correctly, was only barely portable). But that’s not all; by connecting through Fenton’s computer, they’re able to find a client list for a local car rental agency (primitive hacking?), and when they go to the police in Miami, all the current real estate owners are listed on a computer by the parcel they own. Given that many counties haven’t made that leap twenty years later, the Hardys are very lucky.

Gator gonna getcha: In the book, Alligator Alley — the highway that runs between Naples and Miami across the Everglades — is described as a narrow road, with a soft, sandy shoulder. One mistake, according to Joe, would end with the van in the swamp.

As originally constructed, the road was indeed a two-lane highway, but now it’s a four-lane toll road, part of Interstate 75. It’s long and straight, and in the middle of the night, it could serve as prime territory for someone wanting to see how fast their vehicle can go. Interestingly, the change from two to four lanes came during the time Gull Island saw print; Gull Island was published in 1991, and the expansion took place between 1986 and 1992.

Hurricane … No?: I am shocked — shocked! — that there is no hurricane in this book. There’s plenty of wind and rain, but there’s no hurricane. I know that Spring Break does not fall during hurricane season, but logic has never been a concern as far as the Hardys are concerned.

Do you remember what happened in previous cases, Frank?: Frank leads Joe to trespass on a suspect’s property. He tells Joe, “The worst that can happen … is he’ll tell us to get off his property.” That sentiment is interrupted by a charge from the suspect’s guard dogs. Also, they suspect the man of being involved in a kidnapping; shouldn’t Frank have considered getting abducted a possibility? Not to mention worse, like being injured or killed?

Chet seems to have figured things out, though. When Frank and Joe ask him to pose as a cable installer and tell him, “Just check out the person’s reaction to the name. That’s all,” Chet says, “Every time you say ‘that’s all,’ I seem to get knocked out or tied up!”

Joe is not a lawyer: At one point, when Joe picks up a real estate contract and starts browsing it, the narration notes his lack of legal knowledge. For an “amateur” private investigator and someone his mother wanted to be a lawyer, his ignorance of the law is amazing. He enters a man’s house; because the door was unlocked, he claims that he isn’t guilty of breaking and entering, although that doesn’t matter. He hands over a pair of thugs who tried to run him off the road to police, claiming they’re guilty of aggravated battery; that’s not what trying to knock someone off the road with a vehicle is, and the reader never sees them commit aggravated battery. And finally, he obtains a confession from a suspect with the threat of letting the man drown; obviously, Joe has never heard of “duress.”

This is still better than Frank. To stop the criminals from escaping, he steals a speedboat and destroys it by ramming it into the criminals’ boat.

Oh, this time you’re interested: At the end of The Secret of the Island Treasure, Frank and Joe reject Hurd Applegate’s offer of another mystery, which involved finding a lost silver mine in Latin America. In fact, they run away like little children at the mention of the boogey man. But when their local contact in Gull Island talks about a sunken treasure galleon, they are all over that action.

Opinions: I think the Dixon for this book was trying to write a James Bond story for teenagers rather than a Hardy Boys book. There was little or no help from the police — in fact, when the Hardys do secure their cooperation, they act rashly and violently before the police arrive. They attend a party to try to gain intelligence. They ignore the law to go where they want to go. They talk with the chief suspect, with each side knowing the other’s true intentions but with each maintaining a patina of civility. There’s a nice semi-tropical location as well. The villain even has a pool full of sharks, like Largo has in Thunderball. As you can imagine, it doesn’t work very well, especially since the sharks don’t eat anyone.

The Hardys’ remarkable resistances and powers are taken to ridiculous extremes. They wander into Miami off Alligator Alley and hand over a couple of thugs to police, and instead of having to answer a lot of inconvenient questions, the police take their word for things — and the boys don’t even have to invoke the name of Fenton Hardy. The boys and Iola are also gassed with the pesticide methyl bromide (also known as bromomethane), with Joe and Iola falling unconscious; they are both revived without complications. However, methyl bromide at those concentrations should have caused some sort of complications, since the pesticide is highly irritating to the eyes, skin, and linings of the nose and throat. It’s not just a random knockout gas: it’s a chemical gas meant to kill things.

Grade: C-. One of those books whose plot falls apart if you look at it wrong, and not in a fun way.

The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100)

2011-01-27T08:03:00.003-05:00

Plot: Hurd Applegate sends Frank, Joe, and Chet to represent his interests in digging up a buried pirate treasure in Barmet Bay.

“Borrowing” from the past: The return of Hurd and Adelia Applegate! Hurd showed up in the first Hardy Boys mystery, The Tower Treasure, where he and his sister, Adelia, have been robbed of valuable jewels and securities. He blames the father of one of the boys’ friends, they investigate, Hurd thinks they’re incompetent fools, etc. You know how it goes — a story as old as the hills. He pops up again among the auto thefts in The Shore Road Mystery (#6). In his next appearance in the series, The Great Airport Mystery (#9), he and Elroy Jefferson bail the boys out of jail. His last appearance was in While the Clock Ticked (#11); Hurd gets mixed up in their investigation of death threats to Raymond Dalrymple when he claimed Dalrymple stole his stamps. Hurd saves the boys from a bomb, and the boys find Hurd’s missing stamps. A good time was had by all.

The Hardy Boys also return to Tower Mansion, the site of their first mystery (the theft of $40,000 worth of Applegate’s jewels and securities). In Island Treasure, Frank even mentions Joe falling off the stairs up the tower. Before this story begins, Applegate has sold the mansion, and it’s being turned into condos. Hurd reveals his father, Major Applegate, was the mansion’s first owner.

The Tower Treasure was also the basis for a serial on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1957, titled “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.” In that case, the boys (played by Tommy Kirk and Tim Considine) were looking for a pirate treasure, as they are in Island Treasure. The introductory song mentions Applegate’s treasure as “gold doubloons and pieces of eight”; while speculating what the treasure might be in Secret, Joe asks, “Gold? Jewels? Old Spanish doubloons?”

Just as in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8) and The Secret of the Lost Tunnel (#29), when there’s a simple substitution cipher to be solved, Frank’s your man. Frank manages to decipher a code on a dug-up stone for the location of the treasure.

History is just one fictional thing happening after another: There is a lot of Bayport’s maritime history in this one, and all of it is made up out of whole cloth. Damien, the archaeologist along with the expedition, tells the boys Barmet Bay was discovered by Dutch explorer — fictional, of course — Henrik Schuusten in 1574. (Possibly a play on the name of publisher Simon & Schuster?) Chet chimes in that Schuusten named it Baarmuter Bay, after some important person in the Netherlands. That seems to be fictional as well. (Also: Chet gets to know something neither Frank or Joe knows? Shocking!) Also, as far as I can tell, the Dutch made no major North American expeditions to the New World until the early 17th century, when Henry Hudson claimed New York for the Netherlands.

Damien also says the ocean near Barmet Bay was extensively patrolled by pirates in the 17th century. As for the pirate who left the treasure on Granite Cay, he lists the fictional Henry Dafoe as the chief suspect, although he also mentions Captain Kidd.

Damn teenagers: Frank, Joe, and Chet are told to report to the marina “bright and early” for a day of treasure hunting. Although Joe does arise, chipper, at 7 a.m., they don’t arrive at the marina until 9. That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, bright and early. That’s when bankers show up for work.

Pot. Kettle. Black: Frank nearly gives himself a hernia while trying to throw an anchor overboard, evidently surprised that an anchor would be heavy, even though, as Joe says, “It’s supposed to hold the boat in place.” Frank then calls Joe a “dipstick,” which, although inaccurate, I find charming.

Weirdly, it seems Chet has stolen some of the brothers’ intelligence. Besides knowing about Barmet Bay’s history, he also has timely survival advice: when Joe falls in quicksand and complains that the harder he tries to escape, the more he gets sucked in, Chet tells him, “Then stop trying to get out.” I find this inversion of roles both disturbing and strangely alluring.

Why does Franklin W. Dixon hate Joe?: Maybe it’s an alliance of Franks, but the worst thing that happens to Frank is that he almost falls down the stairs in the tower. Joe falls into quicksand, gets knocked out and almost drowns when the mining pit floods, is the one who almost gets caught by a partially severed rope trap, and is the one who falls unconscious when the pirate poison gas attack is sprung.

Your edumacation for the day: The island treasure plot is largely stolen from the real-world treasure hunt on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. In many ways, that’s fitting, since many parts of the Oak Island story are probably legends rather than fact.

It’s also fitting since the story begins with three teenage friends in 1795. The three discovered a depression in the dirt on Oak Island beneath a tree with a tackle block on one of the branches, suggesting someone had hoisted something into a hole that had since been filled and settled. The walls of the pit had visible pick marks, there was a layer of flagstones just below the surface, and every ten feet, there was a layer of logs. The boys gave up at 30 feet, which is a hell of a feat for three boys. Remarkably, there are no records of this attempt until 60 years later.

About a decade later, another attempt was made by different hands; this time they dug down to 90 feet, finding logs every ten feet and a layer of charcoal, putty, and coconut fiber at 40, 50, and 60 feet. Before they gave up, they found a stone (since lost) with a coded description translated to say, “Forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried.” The pit flooded before more digging could be attempted; it was believed a channel (never found) lined with coconut fibers between Mahone Bay and the pit allowed the pit to flood when the protective seals (putty, charcoal, and coconut fiber) were removed. No one has ever gotten closer, and the bottom of the pit collapsed (either through a booby trap or natural means) in 1861. More modern technologies have given tantalizing glimpses below, but no one has actually found anything of value on the island.

In Island Treasure, many of those details are kept. The diggers find flagstones, one of which has a coded message that says, “Twenty feet below lies the greatest treasure of them all.” The flooding trap is unsealed when they open a door, but Damien quickly defeats it with cement at the source of the channel. There’s also a wooden platform (albeit one with a door in its middle.) On the other hand, they didn’t find the skeletons of pirates on Oak Island, so Island Treasure is one up on them there. They also didn’t find a treasure chest booby-trapped with poison gas, but exhaust from pumps in the pits tended to have the same — albeit more deadly — results. Four members of the Restall family excavation died from fumes in the 1960s.

Bad archaeology is what he needs: It’s obvious Damien has sold out to the Man on this one. When the Hardys, Chet, and other workers start unearthing skeletons at the bottom of the pit, Damien doesn’t even try to do any real archaeology work. Just put them in the bucket and keep using those big shovels to get to the bottom, boys! Don’t worry about spade marks on skeletons or disturbing artifacts! Get the treasure!

Read more in the Pansy-atic Adventure Series!: At the end of the novel, Hurd tries to interest the boys in finding a hidden South American silver mine. Uncharacteristically, Chet is gung-ho about finding it, but even more uncharacteristically, Frank and Joe want absolutely nothing to do with it. Cowards!

Opinions: When you’re going to steal, steal from the best, I always say. The Oak Island Treasure is a story worth adapting to the Hardy Boys, especially as the generally hemi-glutteal attempts made at finding the treasure in the 19th century matches up with the general standard of competence in the Hardy Boys. Using characters from The Tower Treasure for the 100th book is also a great idea; Hurd and Adelia should show up more often, but of course, they don’t. Not hip, those old people.

The actual treasure hunting is done briskly, taking a total of 60 pages (and three days) to get from ground breaking to GOLD! There’s not much mystery here — the culprits are kinda obvious if you care about such things, and I can totally understand if you don’t — but that’s not a problem when you’re digging up trapped treasure chests and pirate skeletons every few pages. I could have done without the hurricane threat, but it wouldn’t be a Hardy Boys book without some sort of natural disaster; besides, hurricanes follow the boys around (see Hurricane Joe, #11 in the Undercover Brothers series, Typhoon Island, #180, The Hidden Harbor Mystery, #14 revised, The Secret Warning, #17 revised, and The Four-Headed Dragon, #69). Hurricane Celia is supposed to be the worst to hit Bayport in 20 years, but, eh, who knows? It just sort of blows in one evening and out the next, as did the storm in Hurricane Joe.

Grade: A. Nostalgia + excitement = one of the best, if not the best, digests.

The Serpent's Tooth Mystery (#93)

2011-01-20T02:32:00.007-05:00

Plot: Phil Cohen gets canned from his job at the zoo, then he gets framed for releasing and stealing the zoo’s snakes.

“Borrowing” from the past: Phil Cohen is the least-used chum — well, least used if you don’t count Jerry Gilroy, who hasn’t been seen since the ‘60s, or Perry Robinson, who I believe was killed and eaten in a hobo jungle during the Depression. He’s described as a “high-tech” genius, master of electronics and computers. That’s pretty much the angle he’s given after the Stratemeyer Syndicate sold the series; before, he was just a general book nerd. He draws and paints (Mystery of the Spiral Bridge, #45) and composes for and plays piano (The Clue of the Hissing Serpent, #54). He plans for college and a medical degree (The Mysterious Caravan, #54). Most damningly, he enjoyed reading as much as he did sports (The Pentagon Spy, #61). Nerd! On the other hand, Chief Collig describes him as athletic in Serpent’s Tooth; his quickness and agility is noted in The Pentagon Spy, he plays first base for Bayport High in The Mummy Case (#63), and he’s the county tennis champ in The Mysterious Caravan.

Phil gets phired in Serpent’s Tooth; he was hired to build electronically controlled display cases for snakes, but he accidentally sets off an alarm while the head herpetologist was milking a snake. Oops. In the past, Phil has been employed as a timekeeper for Prito Construction (The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge) artifact restorer in a museum (The Mysterious Caravan), ticket taker at the Big Top Circus (Track of the Zombie, #71), and in some capacity at the Wild World animal park (The Sting of the Scorpion, #58).

Phil’s parents are mentioned in this book to be on their second honeymoon. The Cohens never appeared in the first 85 books of the series.

Frank mentions some “run-ins” with snakes. The Hardys saw more snakes than Marlon Perkins. Other than dogs, no other animal tries to kill the Hardys as much as snakes do. They encountered rattlers in The Mark on the Door (#13), Mystery of the Desert Giant (#40), The Clue of the Screeching Owl (#41), Mystery of Smugglers Cove (#64), and Track of the Zombie; a boa constrictor in Track of the Zombie; two different species of rattlesnakes, an Eastern diamondback and a pygmy rattler, in The Voodoo Plot (#72); a viper in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21); a krait in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34); a cobra and a python in The Crimson Flame (#77); a coral snake and a cottonmouth in The Swamp Monster (#83); and just a plain-old snake in The Secret of Wildcat Swamp (#31). But the deadliest snake in this one, the Australian tiger snake, is a new one for the books. Unfortunately, they don’t kill any snakes in this book.

Where is Bayport?: It’s two hours from Jersey City on a normal day. Jersey City, for those of you who can’t mentally untangle the sprawl that is the New York City metropolitan area, is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, between Hoboken and Bayonne. According to Mapquest, it takes an hour and a half to get between Jersey City and the real Bayport, N.Y. (on Lon Gisland). Two hours would take you farther out on Long Island, to Riverhead — about the point where the island starts to thin itself into two narrow spits of land.

If you like the idea of Bayport being in New Jersey, two hours from Jersey City takes you pretty far down the shore — about to Mystic Island, which is almost to Atlantic City. That far south, and Bayporters would likely consider Philadelphia “their” city rather than New York, which is something that has never been shown in other books. Also, Frank, Joe, and Phil mark reaching the New Jersey Turnpike as a major milestone on their way to Jersey City, which just doesn’t work if they start in Jersey.

The best answer for this book is probably New Haven, Conn., and its vicinity. It’s about two hours from Jersey City, and unlike destinations on Long Island, the Hardys could travel on the Turnpike near the end of their trip. Since this route also allows them to avoid the worst of New York traffic — not mentioned in the book — New Haven is a winner … this time. This conclusion is an outlier for most books; in The Castle Conundrum (#168), Frank admits Bayport is in New York.

Fenton’s advice: Write it down, all you aspiring detectives out there: the first thing Fenton taught his sons was, “Ask questions. Then, if all else fails, ask more questions.”

Your edumacation for the day: The title probably refers to King Lear, in which Lear castigates his truthful daughter, Cordelia, by saying in Act I, Scene IV: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!” Admittedly, this quote has no relevance to the story at all, but neither does the phrase “serpent’s tooth” — there’s nothing special about the teeth of the snakes in the book, and in any case, the serpents are usually called “snakes” and the teeth are generally called “fangs.”

As Phil notes, “hamadryad” is another name for the king cobra. It’s also a type of nymph from Greek mythology — a dryad, one of the nymphs that are closely tied to trees. It has nothing to do with the story, but that’s hardly important; if the Hardys can spew random facts, so can I.

Also, Joe learns the correct term for the antidote to a snake’s venom is antivenin, not antivenom. He’s corrected by a zoo physician who has the tone of someone who corrects someone on that every day.

Off brand: A recurring vehicle in the story is a flashy sports car called the Pillari 400 — evidently the hideous generic offspring of a Porsche and Ferrari. I imagine it having odd shaped wheels or a day-glo plastic interior. The Hardys also find a ticket for a professional football game between the Mustangs and the Titans, a game played in the Meadowlands. The USFL had collapsed in 1986, a few years before the book was published, but the author probably had something similar in mind. The Titans were the home team, playing at Titans Stadium; this is probably a reference to the New York Jets, who were originally named Titans. The Mustangs could refer to any number of horse-themed NFL and USFL teams, including the Baltimore / Indianapolis Colts, Denver Broncos, and Birmingham Stallions.

About time someone brought it up: At one point in Serpent’s Tooth, the Hardys find a stolen snake and return it. Of course, they trespass to do it. Officer Con Riley explains that the Hardys have found some clues, but the person responsible for the property on which they have trespassed isn’t having any of it: “I don’t care what they found! I pay taxes — taxes that fund your paycheck. I expect the police to solve crimes, not a couple of kids!”

Honestly, that cannot be said often enough.

Technology!: Ah, the late ‘80s, when technology was going to do everything for us. In this case, computers are used to provide security for the herpetology labs; visitors without an electronic badge set off alarms. This is an important plot point, as the Hardys realize the snake theft has to be an inside since alarms weren’t set off. Unfortunately, that should have made the solution too easy. I worked with a similar system in 1990, and even then, not only did the system register authorized / nonauthorized people, but it also noted who those authorized people were. It should have made finding the culprit as easy as a quick check of the computer files.

Phil is also framed by a large electronic deposit into his account — an early example of computer banking. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t say what that entails: an ATM deposit? An electronic transfer? Magic electrons forming an ASCII art check? Electronic transfer seems most likely, but if that were so, the police should have been able to figure out where the money came from, opening all sorts of new aspects to the case.

Everything’s up to date in Bayport: They’ve got the Bayport Zoological Gardens, after all — none of this lowbrow “Bayport Zoo” stuff. (Like it was in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34) or The Voodoo Plot (#72).) On the other hand, in a very ‘80s throwaway plot, Bayporters have to deal with toxic waste dumping in Barmet Bay.

Bayport also has a University Medical Center, leaving the question of what university? The only college to be associated before Serpent’s Tooth is Bayshore College (Mystery of the Samurai Sword, #60).

Previous hospitals in Bayport have included Bayport General Hospital (A Figure in Hiding, #16; The Secret Panel, #25; The Sign of the Crooked Arrow, #28; Tic-Tac-Terror, #74), City Hospital (The Melted Coins, #23), and Bayport Hospital (The Crisscross Shadow, #32; The Mystery at Devil's Paw, #38; The Viking Symbol Mystery, #42; The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior, #43;The Billion Dollar Ransom, #73). Additionally, there’s an “excellent” hospital at the Bayport Naval Base (The Billion Dollar Ransom).

Stretching the bounds of probability: While driving in New Jersey, the Hardys’ van is bumped by a semi into a lane that’s about to end, then bumped again and put into “a wild skid” on a wet roadway. Yet when the truck passes by them after the second bump, Joe is able to calmly read the label on the side of the semi as if nothing is going on. But is that any worse than Fenton Hardy “cr[ying] muffled words of encouragement through the gag over his mouth”?

Probably not. But it’s a close race, and they’re both pretty stupid. Also stupid is ventilation shafts big enough for Frank, Joe, and Iola to crawl through, but that’s a typical movie cliché.

Where “thank you” is a double entendre: When Joe is about to be sliced into pieces by a fan in that absurdly large ventilation shaft, Iola gets help, and Frank is able to rescue his brother in time. Frank says, “Iola told us you were in trouble. I think you owe her.” Joe responds, “Well, that’s one thank-you I won’t mind delivering.”

Opinions: The mystery for Serpent’s Tooth is decidedly average, although using snakes instead of strangely reluctant killers does get around the general plot question of Why don’t the villains just kill them? In any event, the investigation does have a plot twist or two, the false accusation of Phil does move the plot along, and despite the general dumb moves by Frank and Joe and general inaccuracies, the mystery itself is fine.

But beyond the actual mystery, the book occasionally shines. There are moments of self-awareness, as in the above complaint that the police should be finding clues, not a couple of kids. More importantly, the supporting cast beyond Phil feel more alive than anything else in the book — more alive, really than most of the series characters after Leslie Macfarlane left the series. Iola and Chet actually talk to each other like siblings do, trading gibes. Chet is good natured and occasionally funny. Chet and the girls actually act like they are teenagers who care about Phil, willing to take stupid chances for the guy. Iola and Joe actually act like they like each other rather than being two humans who have been paired off for mysterious purposes. The book shines when they’re on the page, and they’re shuffled off much too quickly.

Grade: B+. Chet, Callie, and Iola’s short appearance is enough to raise it above the standard digest.

The Shadow Killers (#92)

2011-01-13T02:29:00.005-05:00

Plot: Frank’s karate sensei is brutally attacked just before a classmate enters a vital karate competition. Meanwhile, the government hires Fenton to find out who’s robbing National Guard armories of weapons, because that wouldn’t be seen as something that would be the FBI’s and ATF’s top priorities.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank actually studies karate. He’s used karate several times in the past; the first time was in The Clue of the Hissing Serpent (#53). He’s actually a green belt, but he whines about the instructor, who has dedicated his life to karate, being too dedicated to the sport. Joe is not a student, even though he’s used karate in the past as well; in fact, he used it before Frank did, starting in The Bombay Boomerang (#49). And he keeps using it, all the way up to A Will to Survive (#156). Of course, they both used karate the last time they dealt with Japanese businessmen in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60).

Frank doesn’t understand Japanese, making it a rare language that he doesn’t comprehend. Frank knows French in The Mysterious Caravan (#54, although his schoolboy French can’t keep up with a movie) and Passport to Danger (#179, where it’s much better); as for other language classes, he’s taking German and Spanish in The Jungle Pyramid (#56) and Latin in The Secret of the Old Mill (#3). Outside the classroom, he didn’t understand Spanish in in The Mark on the Door (#13) but rectified the deficiency by The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37) and The Stone Idol (#65), and he perfected his German in The Submarine Caper (#68).

This time, on Stereotype Sweepstakes …: Our first contestant is Mr. Franklin W. Dixon, whose hobbies include cranial trauma, bondage, and “scientific” criminology. Your challenge: We will give you a country, and in 154 pages, you have to work in as many stereotypes for that country as possible. Are you ready? Good! Your country is … Japan.

Karate … ninja … samurai (which are a type of ninja) … yakuza … sushi is disgusting … honor … samurai swords … karate comics … dragons … ruthless businessmen ...

Outstanding! We will accept “karate comics” for the more common “manga.” I’m impressed you even correctly misidentified samurai with ninjas instead of something completely different. You’ve won the right to go to our bonus round. All you have to do is identify the #1 stereotype about Japan that you have missed. Are you ready? Go!

Uhh … nunchaku?

Oh, sorry, no. The correct answer was “geisha.” Better luck next time. But we do have some fabulous parting gifts for you. You have won a year’s supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat (and not a Japanese stereotype, no no), and Turtle Wax. See you next time on Stereotype Sweepstakes!

Oh, Bayport: When in trouble, Frank tells Joe to dial the “police emergency number.” Since not even Frank would be so pedantically exact to call 911 by that long name, that must mean Bayport does not have 911 service. Which is strange; you would figure that if any city needed 911, it would be the crime-wracked city of Bayport. 911 had been in use for almost two decades by the time The Shadow Killers came out in 1988.

On the other hand, maybe the town’s ambitions and priorities lie elsewhere. The Bayport Times, serving a small city of 50,000, has a foreign correspondent who travels to the Far East to cover stories. That’s insane, especially when even that correspondent wouldn’t even categorize Bayport as a major port.

Model members of the modern middle class: Frank and Joe have their own rooms. This is the first time they have not shared a room, although the last time their shared room was mentioned was when it exploded in The Shattered Helmet (#52).

Mental giants, they’re not: The Hardys are rarely the sharpest scalpels in the crime kit because they don’t want to seem too far ahead of their readers. But in Shadow Killers, Frank and Joe get needled by a local karate thug without much of a comeback. (He calls them the “Hardly boys.” Hey, I smiled.) Frank does get him back with the old “stain on your gi” trick, though.

While driving at high speed, Frank gets hit with a chemical in his eyes; rather than hitting the brakes or keeping his hands on the wheel, Frank does neither, forcing a passenger to grab the wheel and stomp on his foot, which was over the brake pedal. And while Frank battles a ninja on top of a building, rather than blocking the door down and waiting for reinforcements, he knocks the ninja toward the edge, then charges and almost falls to his death when the ninja dodges. (That’s a total villain move, attacking a man and almost falling to one’s death.) The father of their friend-for-the-book, Tikko, calls them “dangerous clowns”; they have no response. And after almost being killed by a booby-trapped grenade, Frank suggests that they “maybe” should turn the grenade over to the police. Maybe?

Most of this is Frank, the level-headed one, seeming stupid; Joe gets in on the fun when he can’t figure out that the grenade might have been stolen in the National Guard heists Fenton is investigating. Also, while watching an armory for thieves, he sees the thieves; rather than alerting the authorities, as he’s been told to do, he enters the armory and tries to apprehend the three well-armed villains. He ends up getting arrested for his trouble; it’s a fitting punishment, but unfortunately, there’s no law against being stupid, so he’s released.

Not off brand: In the armory, Joe finds some C2. Although the plastic explosive most people are used to is C4 (also called Semtex), C2 does exist, and as you might guess from the numbering, it’s an earlier version of plastic explosive, invented during World War II. C4 is more stable than its predecessors, but from what I can tell, C2 is still occasionally used.

Not a suggestive line: “Tikko was new to all this. Joe could feel her tensing beside him … Silently, Joe grabbed her hand and squeezed. Tikko got the message.” If you have read any Hardy Boys books before, you have likely guessed that rather than describing a moment of human intimacy, what Mr. Dixon has given us here is Joe’s signal to Tikko that they will wait to fight the thugs who surround them rather than attack immediately. Really, if you thought differently, you have only yourself to blame.

Opinions: Not a high point for the series. The boys come off as pretty stupid; I don’t mean “stupid” in a “makes bad decisions” sort of way (although there were bad decisions), but stupid in a “Weren’t they paying attention to their own stories?” sort of way. It’s obvious who the villain is and what the plot is, but like I said, the Hardys can’t be too far ahead of their younger readers. Fortunately for the Hardys, the villains aren’t too much better, using elaborate deathtraps and smuggling plots when there were so many easier ways to work their evil.

The worst part, though, is the ethnic stereotyping. As pointed out above, it hits all the high points of what Americans understood Japanese culture to be — including believing ninjas are assassins rather than spies who occasionally kill — with the exception of geishas and kimonos. (The karate gi fill the latter niche, I think.) To be fair, I don’t think anyone gets called “Honorable Mr. Hardy,” but on the other hand, in the final climactic battle, the thugs fight Frank and Joe with samurai swords and nunchaku. I mean, honestly. They’ve stolen shipments of guns and they think swords and guns are a good idea? These are yakuza! They’re practical in their killing.

I am disappointed the Hardys didn’t get to go to Japan at the end. It’s one of the few major industrialized nations the Hardys haven’t been to, and it’s a fairly popular tourist destination for Americans in Asia. Given that the Hardys have been to Cuba, Easter Island, Antarctica, and space, it’s a little weird they haven’t been to Japan.

Grade: C. The stereotypes aren’t as actively offensive as they could be, and at least the action continues throughout.

Hardy Boys Digests Redux!

2011-01-06T08:07:00.003-05:00

After two years of no posts, I’m going to be updating http://hardyboysdigests.blogspot.com on Thursdays. Expect the same sort of recapping and comparisons to the original canon that I’ve done before; the only difference is that I’m going to be including Casefiles this time, and the digests I write about will (for a while at least) be from the late ‘80s / early ‘90s. I already have a couple in the can, and the first — The Shadow Killers, #92 — will be posted in one week.

But for those who can’t wait, here’s a little something to whet the appetite:

There are two things wrong with this cover:

1. The tagline. “Play with fire, and you’re sure to find danger in a flash!” There’s nothing wrong with the “Play with fire” intro — a bit clichéd, but that’s how you do these things — but the second part is all wrong. It needs to be slightly witty and a lot shorter. “Play with fire, and watch the explosions!” is slightly better, although not much. “Play with fire, and watch the sparks!” is a great deal better, since the book deals with solar power (power / electricity / sparks). If you’re married to having “in a flash” in the tagline — and if you are, I wouldn’t let it get out, or Fox News will feature your “untraditional marriage” for the next umpteen news cycles — then maybe “Play with fire, and you’ll be burned in a flash!” would work better.

2. Everything else. My goodness. What’s your favorite part? Is it middle-aged Frank running along in the background, t-shirt neatly tucked into his pants? Joe looking slightly like Bill from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure? Or Joe’s loafers? The fact that Joe appears to be trying to run away from a beam of light? Or that if he just hit the ground and rolled under the panels he would be safe? Perhaps it’s the solar panels being pointed toward each other rather than all of them being pointed toward the sun. Joe’s glowing hand? Or is he a saint, dropped in from a medieval painting?

My wife and I came up with a dozen of these when I first showed it to her; I’ve forgotten some of them. But my favorite is a perspective problem. The ground is clearly sloping toward the viewer, but look at how high up Joe is. What is that boy’s vertical leap — eight feet? Ten? I’m sure someone with better geometry skills than I have could figure it out.

Double Trouble (Undercover Brothers #25)

2009-01-22T14:35:00.005-05:00

Plot: Frank and Joe are sent to bodyguard actor Justin Carraway, who’s filming a movie and doing his bad boy act in Bayport.

Hip or not: Joe says “slammin.’” This has to stop now. He also uses “psych” in the narration, which would be fine — if it were 1993. I’m still amused whenever someone uses “dillweed,” though. The final nail in the “or not” coffin is when Joe calls Bayport a “rockin’” town; the term “rockin’” can never be used to describe something that is rockin’. The very use of the term automatically makes the item / event not rockin’. Example A: Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

Other linguistic follies: Joe mentions his Spidey sense “twanging.” Spidey sense tingles, dillweed. Unfortunately, when confronted with a vodka bottle stuffed with burning paper, he’s unable to come up with the esoteric but correct term of “Molotov cocktail.”

Special consideration should be given to Frank, who uses “paps” for “paparazzi” (paparazzi is already plural, Frank, so you don’t need the “s”) and “tapped” as a verb meaning “choose,” and Joe, for using “Oscar bait” in narration. Who are these people, and why have they been reading Variety? (Or more likely, Entertainment Weekly?) Although, as Joe correctly points out, “Knowledge of celebrity culture has been essential to the successful completion of many of our missions.” (Don’t worry — he’s supposedly trying to sound like that.)

Mission difficulty: Low. They still almost manage to botch it. Joe almost dies while protecting Justin from low-grade assassination attempts.

Only in Bayport’s business district: This time, we learn Bayport supports Motel Eleven (almost twice as good as Motel 6 and three better than a Super 8, although not as super), Three Monkeys (a club), and Bowl-a-Rama, which they stole from The Simpsons. There’s also Kiddie World, which appears to be a store where you get child-care items. A store named “Kiddie World” should probably sell toys, not stuff adults need to buy, given that it is impossible to say that name and retain your dignity.

It’s not like there is a ready made supporting cast or something: Frank and Joe party with a real movie star and are told to invite their own friends to the party. Chet’s invited, of course, but who else gets a call? Such longtime friends as Andrew Peterson! Kayla McHugh! Maddy! Eli! Evidently, Biff, Tony, and Phil were still in the limbo they disappeared into when the digests ended. Iola and Callie … well, who knows? Justin wanted to party with some chicks, and Iola and Callie aren’t attached any more. …

Why does the plot hate Joe so?: Now, to be sure, Joe does get to kill a rattlesnake; this is infinitely preferable to his and Frank’s being scared away by coyotes in Running on Fumes. Unfortunately, he gets beaten up by a not-especially-athletic female classmate. And, indignity of indignities, he looks like Dick Casablancas of Veronica Mars on the cover.

There is such a thing as being too clever: Frank forges Fenton’s name on absence slips. Given that Fenton knows they are ATAC agents, shouldn’t he be able to actually sign them? Then again, Fenton is regressing, treating Frank and Joe like amateurs. Well, I suppose they are — like rookies, then.

It’s not dirty, it’s agricultural: Frank and Joe are aided in capturing the … sigh … All-Teen Ride ‘n’ Tie saboteur because their horse wants to mate with the saboteur’s horse. It says something about the series that horses are allowed freer and more realistic expression of their urges than the lead characters.

Rock and roll, Cola Wars — I can’t take it any more!: Justin throws a hissy fit when he’s given Pepsi instead of Coke, one that ends with him hurling bowling balls at onlookers. It’s a little extreme, but if I were famous enough to get away with it, I probably would too. I mean, Pepsi and Coke are two diametrically opposed forces in the cola market. If you’re selling cola, you should know which one it is that has its logos pasted all over the staff area. It’s like asking for a Hardy Boys book and getting a Nancy Drew paperback instead.

Opinions: Frank and Joe as bodyguards is not the best plotline in the world. They’ve done it before in Top Ten Ways to Die, The Mummy’s Curse, and Death and Diamonds, although admittedly this is the first time they’ve had to guard a guy. Since they’re tied to the dipstick, they don’t investigate all that much, and they sit around waiting for murder attempts. The murder attempts are underwhelming, to say the least.

I have no idea what to make of Trudy’s crush on teen actor Justin. Is it creepy? Is it funny? Is it neither? I have to go with the last, as it’s just puzzling. It’s such an odd character flaw. Trudy has no soft spots for anyone outside the family, and yet here she is, fawning over a pretty face … well, at least we don’t have to listen to Playback the Parrot’s opinions on Justin.

I still have no idea what the All-Teen Ride ‘n’ Tie is. It’s a horseback endurance race of some sort, but there’s rules about not riding the horse for the entire course, and there may (or may not) be partners involved. All I know is Frank and Joe can’t ride at the same time, and there’s some walking involved. Oh, and you can’t gallop all the time because you’ll wear out your horse.

Grade: C. As mediocre as mediocre can be. It doesn’t really look good for the rest of the trilogy.

Foul Play (Undercover Brothers #19)

2008-11-30T22:48:00.003-05:00

I have been reading through the Undercover Brothers series in order, for reasons I’m beginning to think include secret masochism. When I read Hurricane Joe (#11), I didn’t think there would be any of the books with such a great ignorance of its topic. I mean, it’s hard to top hurricanes that bring in clouds in the morning, winds and rain in the afternoon, and a gradual clearing overnight, combined with people who evacuate on the say-so of a local TV station that has already wrongly predicted a hurricane.

Hard, yes. But it isn’t impossible. I present to you: Foul Play (#19).

Franklin W. Dixon (whoever he or she is) betrays an appalling ignorance of college football. (Also: The title would be more appropriate for a baseball book than football. The only foul anyone talks about in football is a personal foul, a penalty of various severities.)

First of all, the college Frank and Joe investigate — Pinnacle College — is said to be dominating the “Mountain Division.” I’m not sure what this means; the four college football divisions are Division I (Bowl Subdivision, formerly Division I-A), Division I (Championship Subdivision, formerly Division I-AA), Division II, and Division III. As you can see, “Mountain Division” sounds like none of these. It sounds like a conference. Perhaps Dixon meant conference instead of division?

No, no. Because undefeated Pinnacle State is going to play in the divisional championship, and that will end their season. If “Mountain Division” is a conference of Bowl Subdivision teams, their season will continue in a bowl game afterwards. If they are in one of the other three divisions, they’ll go to the playoffs.

The quarterback agrees to fix the championship game because he’ll use the payoff to bribe someone to make him the #1 pick in the NFL draft. Given that the NFL doesn’t choose who will be #1, he won’t even know which team to bribe until January. It’s asinine to think a team will base a multimillion dollar decision on a bribe considerably less than that, and if bribing one person is enough to get him the top pick, then other people probably already thought he would make a good #1 pick and the bribe is just to make sure nothing happens. (Being a possible #1 pick is a pretty good sign that Pinnacle is in the Bowl Subdivision.)

The real idiocy doesn’t come until the big game. In no particular order:

— Joe, a high school junior, kicks a field goal. Given that Joe can’t meet NCAA eligibility requirements (he doesn’t attend Pinnacle), his scoring is definite grounds for forfeiture of the game.

— Another kicker is sent out to try a field goal on first down with time running out at the end of the first quarter. There’s no reason to beat the clock at the end of the first quarter; when time runs out, the teams simply switch ends. Whoever has possession retains possession at the start of the second quarter, with the ball just as close to the opponent’s goal line.

— In the second quarter, Joe is sent out to kick a field goal on third down because it will give the team two tries. This is sort of correct; if the hold or snap is botched and Joe didn’t actually kick it, they could try again. If he actually kicks it, that’s the only chance he gets.

— Miller State has 24 points by midway through the second quarter. Joe says the defense is “stepping up.” They are, in actuality, getting beaten so much their defense should all have the same name on the back of their jersey: “Toast.”

— In an offensive huddle, Joe, who is impersonating a kicker, is included. Kickers are special teams, not offense.

— During a passing play, the ball is lobbed to a wide receiver being covered by linebackers. One of the linebackers shoves the receiver to the ground, while another intercepts the ball. There are two errors here: shoving the receiver to the ground before he touches the ball is blatant pass interference, and if you have linebackers covering a top wide receiver, your defense has already screwed up. A great linebacker will not be able to cover a top wide receiver for long; finding multiple linebackers who can do it is impossible.

— On an extra point, two Pinnacle defenders “take down” the Miller State kicker. This is known as roughing the kicker, and it would allow Miller State to kick the extra point again if they missed. Instead, Dixon has the blocked kick stand. When Joe makes his kick, Joe is grabbed and hurled to the ground. This is also roughing the kicker, and Miller State would be penalized on the ensuing kickoff.

— Idiocy in consecutive sentences: “Miller State’s kick was pretty good. We only managed to get to their forty on the return.” A good kick might be returned to the opponent’s 40, but no one would say “only.” That is very good field position. Either the kick was bad, the tackling was awful, or Pinnacle’s blocking was excellent.

— On his field goal kick, Joe says his offensive line runs forward. They do not. The offensive line runs forward usually only on running plays, but not on passing plays or kicks. On the same play, Joe says Miller State’s “huge guards” were “sprinting” toward him. The only guards on defense are nose guards, and they would be in the middle of the line, in the big pile up, rather than on the outside, where the sprints come from. (If they’re huge, they probably don’t have the speed to run around the blockers and get to the kick.) Blocking would have to be horrible to allow two defenders to run straight through the line.

— When Joe tackles a teammate on the sideline, he says, “I never played kicker before. I’m really a tackle.” Tackles don’t actually tackle people. They block defenders to keep them from the ball carrier. I refuse to believe Joe would say this just as a stupid pun because he’s surrounded by football players, whose first thoughts would be exactly what I pointed out.

— When Pinnacle wins in overtime (Sorry! SPOILER!), one of the players says, “One score … that’s all it took!” In college football, each team gets the ball at least once in overtime. So technically, it took one score and a stop of the other team. (This could be a player glorifying the offense and overlooking the defense and not, technically, an error.)

That’s just what I noticed. There probably were more mistakes — I didn’t include the transparent point fixing scheme. Because of these mistakes, this book is probably the worst of the Undercover Brothers I have read so far.

I really, really hope it doesn’t get worse. There’s only six more to go until I’m caught up.

Martial Law (Undercover Brothers #9): An Imagined Conversation with Frank Hardy

2008-11-14T13:41:00.003-05:00

So, Joe and I are investigating this guy who runs a dodgy martial arts dojo, right? And he keeps getting these packages in paper bags, full of little vials of liquid, injectible drugs —

They could be steroids.

that he sells to his students to help their performance —

Steroids, right?

but he calls them Chinese herbs —

But we both know they’re steroids.

and the students get addicted to the results and have to pay through the nose for more.

Steroids.

And the students bulk up, like mega fast, and —

Are you the only teenager / sports fan who has never heard of steroids?

they have real short tempers, so —

STEROIDS, you moron!

Anyway, I’m stumped. What do you think is in the vials?

Boy, I don’t know either, Frank. Why don’t you swipe one of the vials, at great personal risk to you and your friends, and have your father unnecessarily send it to a lab for testing?

Boardwalk Bust (Undercover Brothers #3)

2008-10-30T08:04:00.002-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe investigate jewelry thefts in the suspiciously Atlantic City-like Ocean Grove, but they find the thief has an ulterior motive when the jewelry turns up buried on the beach.

Borrowing from the past: Frank and Joe have their pilots’ licenses, although Frank hints they got their certification via ATAC. Frank and Joe start learning to fly in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37) and get their licenses in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39).

Frank and Joe are part of the swim team at Bayport High; Joe swims short sprints and relays, while Frank holds the school record in the 4x400 medley. The boys have been swimmers since the beginning but have never been described as part of the swim team; the closest, really, was in the revised Figure in Hiding (#16), where Frank and Joe were described as “expert surf riders.” Frank claims Joe is a black belt in aikido and “a pretty fair hand” at tae kwon do. These are newer disciplines for Joe, who has used judo, jujitsu, and karate numerous times (as well as boxing and wresting) to subdue crooks.

Just as in the old, old days, Aunt Trudy seems like a meddling biddy, acting as a drill sergeant for household chores and complaining about Girl Scouts.

Hip or not: I’m going to stop mentioning “bro” soon, but it still bothers me too much to let it go here, as Joe calls Frank “bro” as they’re about to be drowned in corn. This comes a half page after Frank travels to the ‘80s and uses “No duh” non-ironically. A suspect profile notes there’s “no cheese like bling-bling,” which makes me want to hurt someone very intensely and very personally.

Mission difficulty: Low. No undercover operations, no death threats (attempts, yes). Frank and Joe don’t even bother to hide their investigation this time. Actually, why this is an ATAC mission is beyond me; jewel robberies in Atlantic City — sorry, Ocean Grove, N.J. — is not exactly a youth-oriented crime. “Q.T.” — the director of ATAC — says Ocean Grove has increasingly attracted young people, but I’m not buying it.

Threat assessment isn’t exactly Frank and Joe’s strong suits. In the action scene that starts the book, Frank mentions he called the sheriff to set up a roadblock so the drug-smuggling farmer wouldn’t escape — “just in case we were walking into a deathtrap.” If I’m worried about walking into a deathtrap, I want the sheriff to rescue me. Avoiding being buried beneath several tons of corn is more important, I think, than catching some dimwit who allows random teenagers near his smuggling operation. He’ll turn up, probably telling some fast-food worker who catches his eye that he can score some dope, easy.

Frank and Joe also believe using a banner from an advertising plane as a parachute is a good idea. It is, to use a technical term, not. Frank and Joe should have been turned into sticky red Hardy jam after trying this one.

Once a cop: Fenton drives a Ford Crown Victoria, the most popular cop car in America.

Is making no sense a criminal trait? When Frank and Joe ask “Bump” Rankowski how he got his nickname, he points to his tricked-out private airplane and says, “She’s good for a bump or two!” Maybe it’s an embarrassing story, but I have a feeling Mr. Rankowski just doesn’t want to have to be the one who explains certain realities to Frank and Joe.

Language!: A Russian selling taffy in Ocean Grove says “boychick” is Russian for “boy.” It is not; it’s Yiddish. It’s an affectionate term for a boy or (less often) man. Another immigrant telling the boys, “You shut face, okay?” is much better.

That’s more like it!: Joe gets kicked in the eye by a cow, which somehow emasculates him, but when the chips are down, he shows he’s still got it: when a drowning girl is being menaced by a shark, he tells Frank to save the girl while he fends off the shark. It doesn’t matter that the shark turns out to be an overturned surfboard; that’s some Hardy courage and a damn sight better than being scared by coyotes.

Joe’s pick-up line of the book: After a woman saves them from drowning in the tide, she wants to know what the story is. Joe says, “How about we tell you all about it over lunch tomorrow?” She shoots him down because he has two black eyes, but it’s fairly smooth.

Opinions: Other than persistent references to ATAC and Frank and Joe lying to the Hardy womenfolk about what they’re doing, this is much like the digests that come before it in tone and plot. Unfortunately, it’s kinda boring. The villains’ plot is stupid, and Frank and Joe’s investigative technique consists of barging up to people and asking if they did it or who they think did it. Making Joe the plot’s butt-monkey doesn’t win any points either.

Putting Frank and Joe on the swim team does have a side affect — it amuses me to no end thinking Frank and Joe have to shave like swimmers do. Joe would probably be inordinately proud of this, while Frank would be mortified.

Grade: C. Just kinda dull, although at least Frank and Joe are allowed to work this case by themselves.

Running on Fumes (Undercover Brothers #2)

2008-10-23T08:35:00.002-04:00

Plot: ATAC sends Frank and Joe out into the desert to infiltrate the camp of Arthur Stench, a radical environmentalist who has gathered a cultlike following miles from civilization.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank takes an internship at a law office as a cover, which must make his mother very happy; she wanted him and Joe to go into law and medicine, although it was never clear which she wanted to be which. Her plans started back in the first book, The Tower Treasure, and her feelings were shared by Fenton, but he relented, and she did as well in What Happened at Midnight (#10). She raised the issue again — at least mentally — in The Flickering Torch (#22).

Frank also fences in gym class, which he, Joe, and their chums learned to do in the revised Clue of the Broken Blade (#21). Those lessons evidently didn’t take, as not only does Frank lose, but he doesn’t realize there isn’t enough room or much place in competitive fencing to “circle” with your opponent. Also, although both boys feign inexperience with the bow (or forget their experience), The Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28) says they’re quite knowledgeable about archery. Frank even makes a bow, while Joe and Chet make arrows.

Frank and Joe get a reward from this one — new tricked out motorcycles. This is the latest in a series of fabulous prizes the boys get from crimefighting; the most recent (and comparable) is a police van, which the boys received in exchange for a $20,000 “donation” (hint, hint) of their reward money, in The Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84).

ATAC Mission Difficulty: Suicidal. Whereas the previous mission might have been within reason — keep an eye on things in a youth-dominated but clean urban setting — this one sends Frank and Joe undercover into a environmental cult miles away from help … or roads, for that matter.

Hip or not: On the plus side, a bully calls Joe a “dillweed,” which strikes me as spot on. I also admit Joe’s exclamation of “Unholy awesome!” makes me laugh — in a good way. On the other hand, Joe says, “Rat poop.” You can’t recover from that. Calling himself a “potatohead” isn’t much better. Neutral is saying, “Kick it”; you can recover from that, but only if you’re a Beastie Boy. Joe also calls one of his pursuers at one point “butt breath,” which is fine, if he were 11.

Perhaps they should investigate geography: On the boys’ way from Bayport (wherever that may be) to southern California, the boys stop by Mt. Rushmore. Which is, for those who don’t know, in South Dakota, and several hundred miles out of their way, while they’re riding cross country on their motorcycles on a mission from ATAC.

I don’t know much about survivalist environmental cults, but … : I’m pretty sure they don’t let you sleep in until 10, like they do with Frank and Joe. And if you spend all afternoon weeding in the desert sun, you’ll be more than tired — you’ll be baked. And when your main schtick is that you hate technology, solar panels and protein bars kinda are a weird interest. And you don’t get to write “papers” on how people who don’t “agree to use solar power should be locked in a dark cellar until they see the light.” Those are called “threats” or “insane ramblings.” In any event, only the police and the doctors with the nice pills get to see them.

Joe’s pick-up line of the book: After seeing a girl sweeping her front porch because she doesn’t want the creepy crawlies “sharing her tent,” Joe says, “I’m not a creepy crawly. Does that mean I’m welcome to —” He gets interrupted, the girl wasn’t buying anyway, but it was a good try. He’s also indignant a girl rejects him for Frank after she rescues them in the desert, even though he had a few seconds to prepare for her arrival: “I washed my face with spit for her!”

Too much information: Joe says Pebbles Flintstone is hot. This is creepy on many, many different levels, the top three being her infant nature, her fictional nature, and the nature of being created for Joe’s grandparents. Of course, Joe claims girl geeks aren’t hot, which shows he knows nothing. Petal says she had a crush on Bill Nye, Science Guy, which is also kinda creepy but in a different way.

Opinions: This one’s pretty sparse on plot; it takes the boys quite a while to get to the camp, and then things don’t quite feel right. It’s not the weird vibe the reader’s supposed to get; it’s more like the writer isn’t sure about what should go on there and just fills the space with weirdos.

Oh, and they go back to their tent to get their lockpicks after the tent was burned to the ground. Nice.

I’m still not sure about a lot of the details of the new set up. Laura has gone from colorless to a little annoying, with her frequent blurting of semi-related factoids. Chet is bullied in this book, which is one hell of a comedown for him; just think what Chet would have done to a bully if Leslie McFarlane were writing him again. And I was really hoping that parrot would be a one-time appearance, but no such luck. Frank is a bit of a weenie, getting tongue-tied around girls and not being able to separate what would happen in fake fights (losing at fencing) with the real world (blowing people up). He, like Joe, is scared of a coyote as well. A coyote! Frank killed a snake with a club in The Clue of the Broken Blade! They were on motorcycles! They had nothing to fear!

Grade: C. But if they have another undercover ATAC agent come out of the woodwork and save them again, so help me, my wrath will be mighty.

The Future of the Blog

2008-10-18T01:15:00.004-04:00

I’ve come to the end of the digests I’ve bought at the Green Valley Book Fair a few years ago. How it took me so long to read a couple of dozen books, I don’t know, but it did. I’ve had fun reading them, though.

For the next few weeks, regular updates will continue; I have a few of the Undercover Brother series, and they’ll be posted on Thursday until they too run out. Then I’ll be taking a month off. I’m planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November, and the free time this will give me will be a boon.

I can’t say for sure whether I’ll be back in December. It’s possible; I have a couple of Casefiles I haven’t read yet, and there are a few digests I own and have read that I could re-read and add. Even if I don’t post regularly, I’m sure there will be at least irregular updates.

So thanks for visiting, and be sure to come back for at least the next few weeks!

Double Jeopardy (#181)

2008-10-16T08:12:00.004-04:00

Plot: Student reporters Frank and Joe investigate sabotage at a Formula One race in Indianapolis.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe are sent to the race as representatives of the Bayport Herald: Frank as a reporter, Joe as a photographer. The Herald has appeared, among several other Bayport papers, in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60). This is the first time Frank and Joe have worked in journalism. Which is surprising, given that sailor, elephant tender, and cowboy are among their one-week careers.

Although Frank claims to be very big into bicycle racing, he’s never really cared about it before. (Although a bicycle race made up part of the Speed x5 race (#173).) The Hardys have used bicycles to get around during The Flickering Torch Mystery (#22), which was during the gas rationing of World War II, and The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60).

Joe mentions working in the pits in the Indy 500. Although neither should be on pit row in an actual competitive situation, both boys are accomplished mechanics, with many instances of repairing automobiles. The most famous feat was restoring a lemon of a roadster bought in The Shore Road Mystery (#6) into something to be proud of. Joe has been described as “mechanically minded” (revised Hidden Harbor Mystery, #14) and as liking “nothing more than a mechanical problem” (A Figure in Hiding, #16). He also fixes a sabotaged car in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20). Frank hotwires a truck in the revised Secret of the Old Mill (#3) and repairs a carburetor in The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48).

The Brickyard: Although the author goes out of his way to not say it, the track the story takes place at is the fabled International Motor Speedway. It’s the site the Indianapolis 500, although the track is reconfigured for Formula One and only uses part of the best-known Brickyard track. The race itself is almost certainly the United States Grand Prix, which has been held in a half dozen other sites in the past century and has been had many spans when it was discontinued; we’re in one now, as the last USGP was last year, and there is no next date scheduled, although Formula One and the IMS leave the open the possibility the race will resume in the future. It is, as a fellow reporter notes, the only Grand Prix in America.

Formula 409: Americans are familiar with NASCAR and to an extent Indy cars. Joe himself mentions he and Frank have attended an Indy 500 and a few NASCAR races. Formula One doesn’t make as big an impact on the American sporting consciousness. But the some of the claims made in Jeopardy that might seem surprising are accurate. The F1 circuit is made up of 18 races or Grands Prix. Frank refers to Kellam Martin as “the American driver”; it seems strange, but there are actually no American drivers in F1 in 2008. Noah notes each team has a budget of a quarter billion dollars; although he makes it sound as if it were for just that race, that is in the estimated range of a team’s annual budget.

And now, coming out of nowhere … : In the middle of the race coverage, in the middle of the mystery, Frank enters a bike race in a velodrome in Indianapolis. For heaven’s sake, why? What drama can a throwaway storyline like this possibly generate? For additional ludicrousness, Frank brings his “prized bike” that had won “a couple” races to Indianapolis with him.

You said “screw”: Becky, a PR woman, uses the word “scrutineering,” meaning the verification that the team is following the rules. The term is used correctly, but any teenage boy with a working sense of humor would giggle like a ninny at the word. Needless to say, Frank and Joe are stoically silent.

Competence!: When Becky reveals she knows the Hardys are usually investigators, not reporters, Joe wants to know how she found that out. Becky basically says she looked it up. Frank and Joe didn’t have a cover identity, but they seem a little off balance that someone can find out about them by, you know, being good at what they do.

That’s how it works, Joe: While Joe sneaks up on a suspect’s isolated house, the narrator says, “Every step brought him closer to the house — and farther from safety.” I get the second part of the sentence, but the first: of course every step brings him closer to the house. Unless he’s wandering in a random direction, that’s where he’s trying to go.

Stylin’: Frank and Joe work as servers at a charity function dressed in cargo pants and sweaters. Stay classy, F1 and Indianapolis!

Opinions: The setting isn’t quite right for the Hardy boys, and I question the wisdom of dropping Frank and Joe into a world-class racing event allegedly crawling with reporters and then making them the best investigative journalists ever. The Hardys should be part of smaller events you’ve never heard of, the ones just starting up or about to die out, visiting battlefields whose claims to fame are minor. They aren’t international men of mystery, after all.

The central mystery comes across as interesting, one of those rivalries escalating into violence scenarios that predominate a certain kind of Hardy Boys story. And there are some fun moments. The isolated house in the woods is nice, and the villain attacking Frank with a dinosaur skeleton is a unique touch. If only there hadn’t been so many distractions — a velodrome? Who cares about a velodrome?

Frank and Joe come across as spoiled — as if having Fenton for a father hasn’t already allowed them free rein (Joe picks a lock and does some major-league hacking in Jeopardy). Joe mentions he has driven an Indy car at IMS, and he gets to take a spin in an F1 car during Jeopardy. (Remember just how much the budget for an F1 team is, and you’ll realize how much a privilege that is.) Joe also says he and Frank worked the pits in an Indy 500 “a few years” before. And they get to go to the only American F1 race instead of, you know, experienced reporters. I’m sure the Herald has a sports editor or reporter who’s just waiting in a dark alley for Frank and Joe to return, slapping his palm with a 2x4, muttering, “I’ll show them my byline …”

Grade: D+. Vroooom!

Typhoon Island (#180)

2008-10-09T08:33:00.003-04:00

Plot: Frank, Joe, Callie, and Iola go on vacation to San Esteban, which is facing rampant crime and a hurricane.

“Borrowing” from the past: There’s not much here to tie in with older stories. Frank and Joe are menaced by a bull, as they were in Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28), The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior (#43), and The Pentagon Spy (#61). They also have a tarantula planted in their bed; they were confronted with a spider in The Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84) as well.

Frank and Joe fly a plane from the Florida Keys to San Esteban. Their flying experience is detailed in In Plane Sight (#176). In Typhoon, Frank and Joe fly a pontoon plane, just as they did in The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42).

Hit ‘em right in the euphemism: Frank knees a boat thief in the “thigh”; the man gasps and drops to the deck. It can be painful to be hit in the thigh — the real thigh — but I think we now know the answer of whether Frank or Joe would be pragmatic enough to go for the family jewels in a fight.

Those are some trusting parents: Callie’s and Iola’s parents let their daughters go on an unchaperoned Caribbean vacation with Frank and Joe. We know their virtue is safe, because the Hardy boys haven’t gotten used to being kissed on the lips, and the most compromising position anyone gets into is when Frank and Joe respond to screams of terror from the girls’ bungalow and finds Callie in a nightgown and Iola clad only in a towel.

Still, the Mortons and Shaws are awful trusting. Iola and Joe comment that after Chet, the Mortons don’t worry so much about Iola — but since Chet gets in all his trouble with the Hardys, shouldn’t they be more worried about the trouble Joe can get their daughter in? And why would the Hardys, Mortons, or Shaws let teenagers go to an island about to be smacked by a hurricane?

Turn up your nose, will you?: Joe is leery of the weathered building and faded sign that announces the business they rent their plane from. Frank says, “This isn’t Bayport, Joe.” Which is good, really; Bayport may be higher rent, but it is one of the most crime-ridden burghs on the Atlantic coast.

Welcome to Non-Sequitur Theater, where we like pizza: Noting that their bungalows are on a cliff, Iola says the only way to the beach is by cliff diving. “It worked for Elvis Presley,” Frank said. I’m not sure where that came from. It’s from the 1963 Elvis film, “Fun in Acapulco,” but why would Frank know that? Why?

The girls do have limits: You get the feeling Iola and Callie have had about enough of the boys’ heroism. At one point, Iola calls the brothers “heroic, but foolish”; I can’t think of a better three words to describe Frank and Joe. Joe suggests a man he and Frank chased through rain-drenched streets isn’t a gangster, saying, “Even gangsters are smart enough to get out of the rain.” Iola responds, “But not my boyfriend, apparently.”

Callie begs Frank and Joe not to turn their vacation into a detective case. Silly girl. You must not know him very well if you think there’s even a remote possibility of that happening.

“Playful” has many meanings: While the four teens are wandering through caves, utterly lost, Frank tries to kill all their hope by suggesting fresh water on the walls of the cave could be filtering through the rock rather than leaking from an immediate surface source. Callie gives him a “playful” punch in the shoulder, despite being “clearly frustrated.” I’m sure the narrator left out Frank’s shout of pain.

That word, I do not think it means what you think it means: The title of the book is Typhoon Island, despite tropical cyclones in the Atlantic / Caribbean being called hurricanes. A local says “typhoon” is a local name for hurricanes, but it’s usually used for tropical cyclones in the Pacific. This smacks of someone coming up with the name first and thinking up the plot details later.

Opinions: This is more of a disaster adventure than a mystery: think Key Largo instead of The Big Sleep, with more running through the hurricane and none of that Bogart / Bacall chemistry. Frank, Joe, and the girls spend almost half the book running around in a hurricane. There are some interesting bits, a little suspense, but it’s not good as a Hardy Boys book.

And the quipping! My God, they can’t stop making little puns and quips and … they’re not funny. They stop being entertaining. I get it, they’re trying to keep their spirits up despite horrible batterings from attackers and a hurricane. But … just stop it. Stop it!

At least here, unlike in the Undercover Brothers book Hurricane Joe (#11), the author realizes hurricanes don’t appear one afternoon with no warning and evaporate by the next morning.

Grade: C-. No more plucky quipping!

Passport to Danger (#179)

2008-09-30T23:49:00.004-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe accompany Fenton to Paris for a symposium on sports-venue security, and soon find themselves investigating sabotage at Le Stade de France. What are the odds?

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe go to Paris, which is a venue they’ve seen surprisingly rarely. They hit Paris on their way to war-torn Zebwa in The Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84). As for the rest of France, they visited Provence in The Castle Conundrum (#168); Fenton was in Paris for a symposium then too. (Perhaps Fenton is a bit of a junket junkie.) Frank and Joe can get by with their command of French, although Frank seems to be a bit better at it. The only time they’ve had to deal with French is in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37), when they could both read the language. Their only other trip to a Francophonic part of the world is when they go to Canada, where they meet French-Canadians even when they’re not in Quebec (especially then, really).

The villain nabs Fenton while he’s away from the symposium. Fenton’s been captured a few times before: most famously and effectively in The House on the Cliff (#2), but also in The Mark on the Door (#13), The Twisted Claw (#18), The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21), The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46), The Bombay Boomerang (#49), The Clue of the Hissing Serpent (#53), and The Infinity Clue (#70). He was roughed up pretty thoroughly in The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45) as well.

Huh. That’s a few times more than I figured a top-notch detective with ties to the federal government would be abducted by criminals (and survive).

Despite the claim that soccer is one of Joe’s favorite sports, it hasn’t ever been mentioned in connection to either Hardy. And why should it have been? In the days of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, soccer would have been seen for what it truly was: Communist kickball.

Good to be outstanding in your field: For the second book in a row, Fenton is called overseas to tell those foreign policemen how to do their job. This time, rather than exclusive cultural tours and exotic retreats, Fenton gets all sorts of free electronic gizmos and gadgets: night-vision goggles, tiny concealed microphones / recorders, a pseudo iPhone. Fenton also gets a car and driver to and from the symposium.

Frank and Joe, world tourists: In Paris, a foreign city renowned for its cuisine, what do Frank and Joe make a beeline for? Burgers. French fries. (Although Passport claims fries were created in France, their origin is disputed.) Pizza. Later, the boys make a token effort — croque monsieurs, sausage rolls and pastries, crepes — but you know their hearts aren’t in it.

Not to perpetuate a stereotype ...: Some of the French, including their new acquaintance Jacques, use the phrase “how do you say” or its equivalent. It smacks of laziness on the part of the author. Having Jacques aspire to the awkward title of “King of Computing” does the job much better. On the other hand, none of the English or French assault Frank for calling their national sport “soccer” instead of “football,” so perhaps it all works out in the end.

Remember to hit the tourist spots: Frank and Joe get to not only see Le Stade de France, the Louvre and Les Catacombes, but they get to see them after hours. Sure, they’re left to die in Les Catacombes, but they discover a secret passage in the Louvre. A secret passage in the Louvre! It’s like something out of a Dan Brown novel. Fortunately, neither “da Vinci” or “Code” is mentioned.

Hacking for the public good: When Jacques claims to be a hacker, it raises no red flags with Frank and Joe. Why should it? It might be technically illegal, but they do it, and they frequently convince their friend Phil Cohen to do it. It’s all in the pursuit of justice, much like the lockpicks they frequently use to break and enter.

Finally: practical advice from Fenton: Frank handcuffs a large, violent man using the techniques Fenton had taught and drilled him on. I can honestly say I can’t remember a single instance of Fenton ever teaching his sons the physical side of detecting. On the other hand, I also don’t think he’s taught his sons concussions are serious business, as Joe refuses to go to the doctor after sustaining a head injury.

Opinions: Passport starts intolerably slowly, and it threatens to get bogged down with the French and soccer. Thankfully, it develops into an old-school story: there’s a secret panel and passage into the sewers, Fenton gets captured, and there’s extensive use of gadgets (including lockpicks and penlights). And Frank and Joe use technology without using it to replace actual detecting, so it comes off as a successful book all around.

Grade: B+. It would be an A, but it still has an awful lot the French and soccer in it.

The Mystery of the Black Rhino (#178)

2008-09-25T08:03:00.002-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe accompany Fenton to a conference in Kenya and stumble over a poaching operation.

“Borrowing” from the past: The Hardys head to Kenya, which they’ve been to only once: they flew into Nairobi in The Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84), the penultimate digest before the Casefiles started coming out. Other than that, there have been few trips to the Dark Continent. They journeyed to Egypt in The Mummy Case (#63) and Morocco in The Mysterious Caravan (#54). In Phantom, they also visited the fictional Zebwa.

Chet remarks, “It would be fun if we could all go” to Africa. In the past, Frank and Joe were often accompanied by their friends on their international jaunts. Frank and Joe act unaccustomed to traveling while on this trip, which they rarely did in the first 85 books — trips around the world were de rigeur for them.

Black Rhino makes a big deal of Frank and Joe being on the track team. This is not the boys’ best known sport, although it is mentioned more often than than basketball in the Stratemeyer stories. In any event, they head out west with “Cap” Bailey, their track coach, in The Secret of Wildcat Swamp (#31), and they’re described as “track stars” in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). Both are top sprinters in The Demon’s Den (#81) as well, and in the revised version of The Twisted Claw (#18), Joe sets a new record in the 100-yard dash and Frank wins the 440.

Track is a 365-day-a-year sport: Joe remembers the track coach giving the team extra time in the weight room just before the mystery begins after failing to perform up to expectations in the last couple of meets. But Frank remarks that Bayport won the state championship the month before. Frank and Joe should have moved on to the next sport in line already — baseball, or maybe tennis. And what’s to compete for as a team after you win state?

Showing their ages: Frank calls a couple of teenage pursesnatchers “punks.” What, is Frank 60 years old? Is he going to tell the kids to get off his lawn, or how he fought Adolph in Dubya-Dubya Two?

Literally, a Get Out of Jail Free card: When New York policemen mistake Frank and Joe for members of the pursesnatching operation, Frank uses his driver’s license to “prove” he’s Fenton’s kid. “Hardy” + “Bayport” = Fenton Hardy’s kids. Now that would be a fake ID worth having.

Tears! Like real organic beings!: Iola mopes and cries as Joe’s about to leave for Kenya, the boys consider buying souvenirs for their girlfriends while in Africa (but don’t to seem to actually do it), and the girls joyfully hug the boys when they return. Frank and Joe’s first thoughts as they come home is to go on a date. Callie is described as Frank’s “best girlfriend,” although they “hadn’t talked about any dates past the next prom.” (I’m not sure what that means, exactly; the next prom is probably almost a year away. Does that mean they hadn’t talked about a wedding date, or just that Frank’s trying to keep Callie from getting too clingy? “Now, you know we didn’t make a date for June 17 of next year, so you really have no reason to be upset about me going on a date with Belinda Conrad on that date. What?”)

On the other hand, when Callie and Iola suggest going on an African safari with the boys the next year, Joe says, “Sorry.” Iola sighs her disappointment but puts up with it.

Jack Wayne!: He doesn’t appear, but he’s actually mentioned as Fenton’s charter pilot. I can’t remember him coming up at all in these three-digit digests.

Thanks, Dad: Fenton’s idea of praise on a case where the criminal isn’t caught: “Your clothes will need a good washing after being in that smoke — I heard what happened. You boys never cease to amaze me with your bravery. Anyway, our flight leaves Nairobi in an hour.” In other words, you boys are brave but not too bright. Because of that, we have to leave this country without our usual high-quality souvenirs.

Kenya, Land that I Love: Fenton loves Kenya. He and Laura took a holiday in Nairobi before the boys were born, and he has “fond memories” of the trip. He and the boys stayed in the same hotel as he and Laura did, and I half expected him to say, “Look, Frank — that’s the room you were conceived in. Want to see if we can get in for a look around?” He also takes a quick vacation-within-a-vacation to an isolated island during the trip … while the boys had a death threat hanging over their heads, with another person who had been threatened already dead. Have fun, boys!

All Africa is next to each other: When trying to convince airline officials to let Frank and Joe to try a risky repair to a damaged airplane in flight, Fenton has them contact “important acquaintances” in Johannesburg, South Africa. Johannesburg is at the other end of sub-Saharan Africa from Kenya, 1,800 miles away, so I’m not sure why they would listen — and that’s a long emergency call to make when your plane is in the middle of crashing.

Master of disguise: To slip away from their police escorts, Frank and Joe don vikoi, native hooded robes. They don’t disguise themselves in any other way, but when Joe walks past a mirror, he doesn’t recognize himself. Joe probably has that problem frequently, and every morning, when he puts on a new t-shirt, he is shocked at the stranger staring at him in the mirror.

The Mystery of the Unfastened Bra, or The Case of Getting to Third Base: The book ends weirdly. “‘And who knows?’ Iola nudged Joe in the arm. ‘If you keep your eyes open, you might find another mystery to solve on the way to the theater.’ Frank and Joe looked at each other and smiled. That was a definite possibility.” I realize now what was meant, that the Hardys find mysteries everywhere. But for some reason, I could not help but read Iola’s words as double entendre — I think it’s the nudge that does it — and Frank and Joe’s reaction as weary acceptance of the rewards international crimestoppers are entitled to. Quite honestly, there’s no reason for me to write my own “erotic” Hardy Boys fanfic if they’re going to give me lines like this in the real books.

Opinions: This is not a very enjoyable book at all. It feels as if it were aimed at a much younger audience than usual. The book feels padded, with several expository passages that overexplain easy things (five paragraphs in the airport about choosing whether to eat before their flight.) This hearkens back to the international phase of the original canon, when the boys would gallivant around the world and describe the wonders they saw for a chapter rather than actually do anything. The boys seem like privileged SOBs as well; they get a police escort to JFK, they fly first class with hot towels, they get police escorts and exclusive tours around Kenya ... they deserve the last, but the first two makes them seem pampered, and quite frankly, the boys aren’t sympathetic enough in this book to pull that off.

The mystery doesn’t begin until halfway through the book, and Frank and Joe solve it only by accident. They save the black rhino through unsuspecting luck as well. Frankly, the best action sequence — lowering a passenger jet’s landing gear while the plane was in flight — is almost possible to take seriously. Most tellingly, a cel phone is conveniently forgotten when its presence would have shortened the book considerably.

Grade: D. Please, no more trips abroad.

In Plane Sight (#176)

2008-09-18T08:11:00.003-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe accompany Jamal Hawkins to an air show, where the plane Jamal is to pick up is stolen, and the air show is continually sabotaged.

“Borrowing” from previous stories: Frank obliquely mentions he has his pilot’s certification, while Joe only recently got his. Frank first flew a plane (under supervision) in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#19). In The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), both he and Joe get instruction from a pilot named Stewart, but Jack Wayne — Fenton’s personal pilot — doesn’t start teaching them until The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). They both have pilot’s licenses in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39). Joe mentions it seems like “ages” since they’d flown. That’s true; I can’t remember the boys piloting a plane in any of the digests I’ve recently read.

The Hardys are back in the Jewel Ridge, Conn., area, although Jamal calls it the “sticks” rather than the technology hub it was in A Game Called Chaos. Jewel Ridge, a couple of hours from Bayport, was last seen in Trouble in Warp Space, which also featured the filming of a television show in Kendall State Park. The boys unwillingly explore the state park in Plane after skydiving in pursuit of a criminal and being shot at. Interestingly, there is a real Virginia Kendall State Park Historic District, but it’s in Ohio.

When Jamal comments on his footloose dating relationship, he comments, “You know how college girls can be.” Frank and Joe shrug, because no, they don’t; as the narration comments, “They’d been dating Iola Morton and Callie Shaw for a long time.” This is true. Frank and Callie have arguably been dating since The House on the Cliff (#2), when Callie was presented as an “object of special enthusiasm with Frank.” (“Special enthusiasm” has to be a euphemism for sex. It just has to be.) Iola becomes Joe’s “special favorite” in The Secret of the Caves (#7). Neither “date” or “girlfriend” is used until The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), when Franklin W. Dixon admits Frank dates his “good friend” Callie whenever he can. For Joe and Iola, the word comes up in The Yellow Feather Mystery (#33), when Dixon admits Joe dates Iola for school dances. On the other hand, Frank and Joe accompany the girls to a school dance in The Crisscross Shadow (#32), which is a date in all but name.

Frank and Joe use their pocketknives to make torches. They used to have pocketknives in their pockets all the time, starting with The House on the Cliff, but they’ve fallen out of fashion in the digests. Their friend Phil Cohen, retrofitted into being a computer expert, is mentioned in the book and asked for a favor, but he never appears on the page, gets a line of dialogue, or talks to the Hardys, even behind the scenes. Phil first appeared in The Tower Treasure (#1) and was seen in about a third of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (#1-83 or 85, depending on who you ask) books after that.

Jamal Hawkins is: Tony Prito, Jack Wayne, and Chet Morton, all rolled into one. Tony, in that he works for his father (although Tony doesn’t work for his father in the later digests, he does in the original canon); Jack Wayne, in that he’s the Hardys’ pilot when they need to be somewhere; and Chet, because he worries about being punished for whatever the plot is supposed to be. In this case, it’s the plane he was supposed to pick up getting stolen, which is something to worry about, although it’s not his fault. He’s also dating a college girl, although not necessarily exclusively — which probably means she’s already told Jamal she will be having drunken hookups while on campus.

Because “Hardy” is such an unusual name: When Frank and Joe are introduced to the organizer of the air show, the first question she asks is whether they are related to the “famous detective” Fenton Hardy. She’s certainly not the “Son of Fenton Hardy” tattoos they have on their foreheads because the police don’t immediately make the same connection; they haul Frank, Joe, and Jamal in when they don’t have another viable suspect for the vandalism and thefts at the air show.

That word … I do not think it means what you think it means: The author frequently calls the control column, used to change an airplane’s pitch and altitude, the “yobe.” The correct term is “yoke.” From what I can tell, “Yobe” is an area of Nigeria, which would make it difficult for Joe to grasp it while flying.

At one point, Joe says another character doesn’t strike him as a “sharp whip.” It’s smart as a whip, Joe. Perhaps you’re not really a sharp whip either, which may help explain his anger issues as well; he threatens one of Jamal’s father’s business rivals with a beatdown after some banter, but when a security guard dismisses everything he and his brother claim about a break-in and lets a crook get away, he’s meek as a lamb.

Spooktacular? Prize? What the hell?: Frank says he’s glad they won a prize from a “Halloween Spooktacular,” which allowed Joe to finish his pilot’s lessons. This shakes the foundations of everything I know as true. First, Joe already has a license. Second, if he needs lessons, either he should dip into his reward money or Fenton should just have one of the millions of people he has aided over the years give him lessons. And thirdly, do I want to know what they had to do at the “Spooktacular” to win a prize? I assume it was a costume competition, but it never says. Maybe they investigated something and were given a … no, that’s a reward, something Frank and Joe are quite familiar with. Decoration? Scaring the candy out of people? I don’t know. Is this in one of the other digests or perhaps a Ghost Stories?

Mighty Mighty Housekeepers: Joe notes the run-down airport could use a year of cleaning from Mighty Maid. That might sound like a made up company, but there actually is a “Mighty Maid” in Woodbridge, Conn. There’s also “Mighty Maids” in Chicago. Can’t really blame the author (unless he / she were trying to put in a plug for the actual business): probably going for a play on “Merry Maids,” and the name’s certainly generic enough.

Hey, it’s the ‘50s, and Frank and Joe are late for the pep rally: Frank and Joe wear their letterman jackets on the trip. Since they were camping near the airport, you’d think they’d have parkas with down or some space-age material. But no, they go for the epitome of Eisenhower-era fashion and comfort instead. Way to keep it real, boys. I’m not even sure Frank and Joe wore lettermen jackets when they were common.

Outward Bound from the uterus: Frank and Joe use “their knowledge from years of scout camp” to build a fire. It shocked me that Frank and Joe went to scout camp; I figured they just came out of the womb knowing this stuff.

Frank and Joe are obviously mammals: They actually have to shave. I can honestly say I don’t remember them ever shaving before, despite being nominally healthy, pubescent males.

Opinions: Decent mystery, although the story of the missing airplane should have gotten better play. When you throw in a plot twist about a stolen vintage plane, a vanished criminal, and a fortune in missing coins, you don’t bury that in the middle of the story. You play that sucker to the hilt. But the solution’s satisfying enough, and there’s some nice action onboard planes and on the ground. I could do without the skydiving without a parachute — it was used in Extreme Danger as well, and it was even more ridiculous there. That silliness aside, it’s a solid, average mystery, with the plight of their friend Jamal giving the book a little extra oomph.

Rating: B. Could’ve been higher if Jamal had used his mack daddy moves on the young millionaire genius.

Speed Times Five (#173)

2008-09-11T01:38:00.003-04:00

Plot: After Frank and Joe enter the Speed Times Five, an extreme endurance race, they begin to fear the “accidents” in the extreme race are actually sabotage.

“Borrowing” from the past: Chet’s appearance on the cable show Warp Space (Trouble in Warp Space, #172) is alluded to when Joe calls him a TV star. The network that airs Warp Space, UAN, covers the Speed Times Five race.

Frank and Joe use tons of outdoor experience — mountain biking, hiking, rapelling, “years” of kayaking experience. There’s not much of that in the original stories, really, despite the claim they have tandem kayaking experience (whatever that is). They’ve always had camping and tracking skills out the wazoo, though it wasn’t until recently that it had to be extreme. Frank and Joe mention having hiked to the top of Lion Mountain “a few years ago” in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34). They climbed a cliff with pitons and hatchets in the revised Mark on the Door (#13). Slightly before the beginning of The Mystery of Smuggler’s Cove (#64) — quite possibly the most quintessential Hardy Boys title — Frank and Joe hiked the Appalachian Trail in Maine, and they also start End of the Trail on the AT. The most directly analogous to this story — remarkably close, really — is The Roaring River Mystery (#80), in which Frank and Joe say they’ve done a lot of backpacking in Maine and “quite a bit” of whitewater rafting. They even get involved in a whitewater rafting race in Roaring River.

Frank and Joe head to Canada — Quebec, specifically. They previously headed to the Great White North in The Twisted Claw (#18), The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), The Mystery at Devil’s Paw (#38), The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), and The Demon’s Den (#81). Demon’s Den is the only time they specifically made it to Quebec. Frank and Joe don’t seem to understand the French radio broadcasts; they can’t follow a French movie in The Mysterious Caravan (#54) either, even though they’re in a French class.

I’m going to stop mentioning martial arts unless there’s something interesting about it. Yes, they use it here as well; no, I don’t care. The same goes for first-aid training, which isn’t mentioned as often but is time consuming when it is.

Jamal Hawkins is …: Back, baby. He gets no love, though: he’s mentioned as “Jamal Watkins” on the back cover. Pretty silly, really. Despite being as much of an athlete as Frank and Joe in Slam Dunk Sabotage, he’s relegated to the support crew, just like Chet Morton. The black man always has to serve — because of his pilot skills in Danger in the Extreme (#152), and because he’s the only one who can translate French here. But at least in Danger in the Extreme he got to compete as well.

Everybody had to pay and pay: Rather than using real brand names for certain products related to the competition, the author uses, well, echoes. Tuffy is a brand of bikes, SeaZoom provides personal watercraft, and Quick Aid is a sports drink. However, the X Games are mentioned by name.

What you see is precisely what you get: A few minutes after meeting Frank and Joe, one of their competitors calls them “boring and straitlaced.” I have no comment.

Frank Hardy is Sylvester Stallone as Rambo: To bring down a helicopter that’s threatening to help a crook escape, Frank tosses a competitor’s helmet into its rear rotor. That bounces the helmet into the main rotor, which causes the craft enough damage it has to fly away. The word ridiculous is thrown around so much lately, so I’ll just let that image stand by itself.

Will you be laughing when Jamal’s in Guantanamo?: Chet makes a crack about Jamal’s driving getting them in trouble with the Border Patrol, and everyone laughs. In this post-9/11 world, however, you can’t be sure that the combination of Jamal’s name and skin color wouldn’t get him into trouble all by itself.

Smuggling for Dummies, Idiocy to the Rest of Us: If you can come up with a better way to smuggle stolen pharmaceuticals across the U.S. / Canadian border than to dupe competitors in a cross-border extreme endurance race into carrying them for the entire race, then stealing the pharmaceuticals back, give yourself ten points and the right to slap this Franklin W. Dixon across the typewriter, should you ever meet him (or her).

There are thousands of ways to get small stolen items across the border, even in the unlikely event your vehicle is searched. You could put them in prescription pill bottles, since customs officials are unlikely to know exactly what the pills are by sight; if you are able to give a good alternate explanation, you are home free. Put them in recapped Coke bottles. Build a smuggler’s hold in your Chevy van. Put them in your spare tire. There are thousands of ways to do it, and unless you act suspicious at the border, 99.999999 percent of them are likely to work.

Opinions: Honestly, had the author ever been over the U.S. / Canadian border? If what you are smuggling is smaller than a breadbox, then you are likely to be able to get it across, no problem. Even if you are searched, there are ways to fool the border guards. Unless you are in a crappy comedy, you are unlikely to get into trouble.

There’s enough competence in the writing to keep Speed Times Five from a failing grade, but … well, the plot’s pretty stupid. Extremely stupid, actually. But at least the Hardys are fighting smugglers, unlike what they’re seeing in Undercover Brothers.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of stereotyping; the “coed” is the member of the collegiate team who has an accident in the kayaking portion of the race (not her two male companions), the Native American is stoic, they’re confronted by a bull moose in Canada, they just happen to mention Expo ’67 in Montreal, and the Canadian thugs are named Pierre and Jacque. (Actually, that last is par for the course when it comes to the Hardy Boys; they once faced a Canadian villain named Pierre Pierre. I wish to God I were making that up.) They also can’t get any English-language radio broadcasts, even close to the American border. That kind of stereotyping is par for the course, though.

And that’s not even mentioning that a) Frank and Joe think every incident that happens, over hundreds of miles of rugged, wilderness terrain among dozens of competitors, is sabotage (who can blame them? It always has been before), and b) Frank and Joe have no real endurance problems when hiking (jogging with a backpack, really), mountain biking, rapelling, kayaking, and speed bicycling hundreds of miles through mountains, forests, and river rapids despite devoting most of their time to amateur detecting. It strains credulity past the breaking point, then repairs credulity just so it can break it again. And they don’t really do any investigating — there’s a nice chase scene in Montreal, but that’s about it. And the one time the author could show Chet and Jamal doing “support,” Frank and Joe handle it instead, transparently giving them a chance to fight the saboteur by themselves.

Grade: D-. If you thought the villains’ plot in The Melted Coins made no sense, well, have I got a book for you!

Trouble in Warp Space (#172)

2008-09-04T14:07:00.004-04:00

Plot: Iola wins a small role in the cable TV show, Warp Space, in a contest, and Frank, Joe, and Chet accompany her to the accident-prone — or is it sabotaged? — set.

“Borrowing” from the past: Curiously light on the past continuity, although it should be noted that the Morton siblings appear and Callie is at least mentioned.

Weary and wary of finding himself in another mystery, Frank mentions it feels like he’s “been chasing criminals for seventy-five years”; Trouble in Warp Space was published in 2002, the 75th anniversary of The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys book. Frank uses a karate chop against a crook; he’s used several styles of Asian martial arts over the years, but he first used karate in an original text in The Clue of the Hissing Serpent (#53). Frank and Joe mention their rescue training, which they have used many times over the years; Joe’s is first mentioned all the way back in The Secret of the Caves (#7), while Frank has to wait until The Disappearing Floor (#19) to “emergency” bandage his father (I think after a tiger attack) and The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20) to attend to the victims of a massive train derailment.

Jewel Ridge, Conn., appears again, this time as the location of Warp Space’s home studio. Although the state isn’t mentioned, it’s obviously the same Jewel Ridge Frank and Joe invaded in A Game Called Chaos (#160).

Dixon knows sci-fi: There are quite a few allusions to sci-fi shows, movies, actors, and books, although I’m quite sure I didn’t pick up on a lot of them. Warp Space is heavily influenced by Star Trek, with “Spacefleet” standing in for Star Trek’s Starfleet, for instance. Iola plays a green-skinned girl from Betelgeuse, calling to mind Star Trek’s green-skinned Orion slave girls (Betelgeuse is a star in the constellation of Orion), although I assume Iola was wearing far more clothes than a scantily clothed slave girl. Female co-stars Jerri Bell and Claudia Rajiv allude to Jeri Ryan, Star Trek: Voyager’s resident Borg, Seven of Nine, and Claudia Christian, who played Commander Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5. Stan Pekar, the venerable and honored effects and makeup expert for Warp Space, calls up Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor, make-up artist, and film director Stan Winston. (And possibly someone else; is Pekar someone / nearly someone?) And I’m sure the Slayer from Sirius is an allusion to something, but I can’t think of what. Can anyone help me out?

The best, however, is when Jerri and Claudia take the chums to Club 451, a restaurant that obviously takes its name from Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi novel, Fahrenheit 451. Incidentally, Fahrenheit 451 has one of the best opening lines in literature: “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Dixon doesn’t know sci-fi: On the other hand, there’s a lot here that makes Warp Space sound horribly camp. I mean, Jerri Bell’s character is named Ensign Allura, for Crom’s sake.

But the author makes quite clear: Frank and Joe aren’t geeks. No, sir. That’s what makes their jokes so horrible: they’re throwing around random sci-fi buzzwords they heard somewhere.

Affection? Really?: After the shocking flirting and touching in The Test Case, the dirty, dirty overfriendliness between Joe and Iola continues here. Iola calls Joe handsome; Joe says Iola’s “as beautiful” as Jerri or Claudia, then gives her a hug. Iola gives Joe a kiss on the cheek, and Joe later gives her a another “quick” hug. Joe even grabs Iola … under the arms! Sure, it’s to keep her from falling into water and being electrocuted, but weak excuses like that are open invitations to sin.

A new dimension in their relationship: On the other hand, there are points when it’s obvious Joe and Iola are at least reasonable facsimiles of teenagers. Joe admires how Iola looks in a Spacefleet uniform, and I don’t believe he’s thinks she looks merely “cute.” Normal, sure, if tame. But later, they are “dancing amid the … pulsing,” and they disappear for half an hour while they “looked for suspicious characters.” I’ll bet I know what they were looking at, all right. Most damning, though, is Joe forgoing a trip to the cafeteria with Frank and Chet, saying he’ll “‘do lunch’ with Iola.” I know why “do lunch” is in quotes — it’s Joe clumsily trying to sound like someone in show business — but I have this picture in my mind of Joe giving Frank a nudge in the ribs while saying it, complete with air quotes around “do lunch” so Frank knows exactly what Joe will be doing.

The law is a plot device: For once, Joe actually wants to call the police — contrast this with Daredevils (#159), when Frank and Joe avoided the police at all costs because they wanted to solve the case themselves. Of course, the stakes were different; in Daredevils, it was multiple attempts at murder, while Warp Space only has assault, theft, and sabotage. Such low stakes — no wonder Frank and Joe want to hand it off.

When Frank and Joe need contract details about some of Warp Space’s crew, the executive producer, Sandy O’Sullivan, balks, saying she doesn’t think it’s legal. Please, Sandy — Frank and Joe had, at that point, just broken into a man’s apartment and his private locker. Your concern is quaint. The law is what Frank and Joe want it to be. So much so, in fact, that Joe is shocked when yelling, “Hold it, you!” fails to get a fleeing crook to stop.

So young, so cynical: When Chet and Joe examine the fridge after a large meal — Joe says it’s in case the urge for a midnight snack strikes — Iola storms off, after yelling, “Men!” Iola, babe, you don’t know the half of it — and if I remember later Hardy Boys books correctly, that’s literal: Joe liked to flirt with the ladies while on vacation in strange lands. On the other hand, maybe she does know; Frank mentions the trouble Joe would be in if Iola saw how he was looking at Ensign Allura, alluding to Iola’s violent streak, which was seen in Past and Present Danger (#166).

In response, Joe says Callie would give Frank double. Maybe that helps explains Frank’s relative constancy and the lack of physicality between him and Callie. Your eyes or hands strays, Frank, and all the karate in the world won’t save your little detective and its chums from Callie’s wrath.

Opinions: Despite the hokeyness of Warp Space, this one comes across well. There’s a little too much set up, both in the exposition about the show and television in general, and a shortage of investigation time. But that’s made up for by the unusual touches: Joe and Iola act like a real couple — well, one that has signed an abstinence pledge and have spent most of their time together on supervised church “dates,” but still one that could be found in nature. Frank and Joe get their asses handed to them by a single crook, who knows — wait for it — kung fu. Kung fu obviously trumps karate, then. And Chet does good work on one of his outlandish jobs, succeeding after getting a spot as a stuntman in a costume. Who knew his association with the Hardys would come in handy here? A willingness or maybe even a desire to hide himself after all the fat jokes and the ability to take multiple punches turn out to be future job skills, not just fun hobbies.

Grade: B

The Test Case (#171)

2008-08-27T08:10:00.001-04:00

Plot: Tony Prito and Joe are suspended from Bayport High after being found with a copy of an upcoming state test, and the entire gang pitches in to clear their names.

“Borrowing” from the past: At times, the book feels entirely retro; it starts with a skating party and a rousing game of crack the whip. They also play “monkey in the middle,” which seems a mildly offensive name for keep away. (I’m not sure to whom it would be offensive. Just feels that way. Wikipedia mentions the name is common in eastern Canada and New England.)

There’s also the old Bayport Times, which has been publishing since the ‘40s. (Bayport’s also seen the Banner (first mentioned in the 1930s), the Star (also the ‘30s), the News (1950s), and the Herald (1980s), but the Times seems the most durable.) Gertrude mentions people didn’t travel as much when she was growing up — and given that she grew up in the 19th century, that’s true. Fenton tells Frank and Joe to search his files for a criminal, which he often did in the old days — but now the files are password-protected databases rather than folders in a filing cabinet. Fenton gives out some of his patented advice, but this time it’s an old political saw rather than detective pointers, so it doesn’t really qualify. Frank uses a pay phone from inside the school; that’s positively antiquated.

One of Frank’s teachers cleverly tells him to solve crimes during summer vacation rather than the school year. That is the most used excuse for why the Hardys can gallivant around, solving crimes, but given how much summer vacation the boys used, they must have been crimefighting over several years.

On a more normal note, Frank uses his “martial arts training” at one point, and Joe thinks about a “martial arts class” — given the range that term covers, perhaps it’s the Hardys’ own art, kung kwankido jujudo, a devastating combination of ignorance and plot convenience. In actuality, Frank’s used jujitsu, judo, and karate. He also uses tai chi in this book; while tai chi is a real martial art, its popularity among seniors and those recovering from injury make it sound as ludicrous as when Batman used yoga to fight criminals in his early days.

Tony’s listed as a second baseman. He was listed as a second baseman in The Mummy Case (#63) but as a “hard-slugging” outfielder in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). Second baseman seems right to me. He also played baseball with his friends on the beach in The Secret of Pirate’s Hill (#36).

Perhaps the most surprising is the return of Jerry Gilroy. Oh, he’s only “an outfielder named Jerry,” but I know who he is. Gilroy was one of the original Hardy Boys chums, a star outfielder who loved baseball so much he actually organized a summer league in Bayport (The Missing Chums #3). Try doing that today. But he gradually faded away because there was nothing unique about him — an athlete like Frank and Joe, a chowhound like Chet, etc. He was in eleven of the first twelve stories, then disappeared for more than a decade before popping up in The Melted Coins (#23), then wasn’t seen again. He was mostly edited out of the revised stories as well, although he pops up occasionally. But he’s back here. Yay, Jerry!

I will not have you acting as normal teenagers in my nostalgia!: Iola and Joe act somewhat … well … flirtatiously toward one another. I know, I know! It’s near impossible to believe, especially since they’ve been dating since the Hoover administration. But Iola steals Joe’s stocking cap at a skating party, giving Joe a “catch me if you can” sort of order, and when he does catch her, he … he … he lifts her up! Actual contact! Sure, it was through several layers of clothing, but if Iola hadn’t pulled the cap over Joe’s eyes, there might have been kissing next! Frank and Joe also hug their girlfriends after Bayport High wins a close hockey game; I think we can all agree that’s a rather thin rationalization for personal contact.

Sometimes, characterization is overrated: The chums get personalities in this book, which would normally be good. On the other hand, Biff is a moron, and Tony is suspicious the Hardys are trying to fit him for a frame, and Iola and Callie get to be girlfriends who fear for Frank and Joe in a fight. (Have you never seen them fight? They never get hurt — well, they don’t get hurt much.) On the other hand, Laura puts some crappy school administrators in their places, so it isn’t all bad.

Right: The kids worry a bad grade on State Achievement Battery will keep them out of the college of their choice. Sorry, no: as long as the topic of their admission essay is “How I Helped Fight Transnational Crime Before I Was Allowed to Vote,” I think most entrance boards will overlook a low score on some half-baked standardized test.

Do you know who you’re dealing with?: Laura complains the high school administration doesn’t even bother to inform her or Fenton of Joe’s suspension, and that’s probably the least objectionable part of the administration’s actions. They don’t check the test or boxes for fingerprints, and the school seems to launch no investigation at all, just sitting around waiting for everything to turn out all right. Futile, when you’re dealing with the Hardys. Laura gets the idea the principal wants everything to go away, and so he puts pressure on a couple of minors to sign false confessions. Laura threatens to hire a lawyer, which still prompts no response from the school, but the threat of Fenton donating his time to investigate the crime and everyone connected with the school would have made the principal wet himself. “You wouldn’t want that incident with the squirrel, the gasoline, and the comic books to get out, would you? Of course not.”

Just a normal day in the Hardy household: A hockey puck flies through the Hardys’ living room window, so Frank and Joe calmly clean up, get a piece of foam-core posterboard they have on hand, and tape it in place. Then they get milk and butterscotch raisin cookies from the kitchen. Nothing unusual here!

Opinions: There’s a lot to recommend this one. It has an old-school feel, it has a manageable scope, and it uses the supporting cast very well. That can’t be underestimated; part of the appeal of the older stories was how Frank and Joe had friends they could rely on. Here, Joe and Tony need friends very badly, and they come through for them. That’s part of what we remember high school as and what we want it to be.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of holes. The action scenes are often clunky at best and unbelievable at worst. (You try jumping onto a cart full of boxes rolling at you at high speed, and see if you can stay on.) The school administration is played as extremely stupid so the kids have a chance to investigate the crime. The lingo is occasionally laughable. (“Turkey”? “Straight stuff”? Really?) I think the capper is when Frank and Joe go to a sporting goods store to see if anyone remembers a guy who bought athletic socks on a Saturday. That seems … tenuous.

Grade: B+. The plotting and character use outweigh the dodgy stuff, because, hey, you expect the occasional plot hole and bad dialogue in a Hardy Boys book.

Switcheroo!

2008-08-21T10:12:00.002-04:00

Running behind a little this week, so I'm switching to an already written recap of the first Undercover Brothers book, Extreme Danger. Enjoy!

Extreme Danger (Undercover Brothers #1)

2008-08-21T10:11:00.004-04:00

Plot: American Teens Against Crime sends Frank and Joe to investigate threats against the athletes at the X Games — no, sorry, Big Air Games — in Philadelphia, where they find a multitude of suspects.

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much, really, other than the boys getting sent to the X Games — sorry, Big Air Games, I don’t know why I keep getting confused — like they were sent to the Winter X Games — wait, Max Games — in Danger in the Extreme. (I suppose they also borrowed the title.)

Other than that, the Hardys have reached a new stage of history. Aunt Gertrude is called “Trudy” instead. Laura has a career as a librarian (fitting she was given a stereotypically boring profession), and Fenton is semi-retired. Frank and Joe’s amateur work is “a couple of years ago”; now, they are operatives of American Teens Against Crime, a really bad idea thought up by Fenton. Callie and Iola are nowhere to be seen — Joe sniffs around the Big Air Games and finds himself an athlete, while Frank is shy and tongue tied with local Belinda Conrad. Chet shows up to help the Hardys, but while he screws up, he manages to handle a motorcycle fairly well, and there’s a minimum of fat jokes. There’s even a guy who mocks the Hardys — which, of course, is insane, given how many law-enforcement personnel might owe them a favor.

21 Jump Street aside, of course: Evidently, Fenton finally decides to fly his crazy flag high, and he doesn’t care who sees it. Exposing two teenagers to dangerous criminals is reckless but understandable; having a whole organization that does nothing that is insane. He must have thought America had a dangerous surplus of teenagers, and it’s his way to eliminate that surplus in a constructive manner.

He’s so hip, he can’t see over his pelvis: This book’s Dixon goes overboard with the hip lingo, trying to make Frank and Joe cool, although I’m not sure if he’s got the right decade. There’s enough “dude,” “outrageous,” and “totally” to provide the soundtrack for an ‘80s teen movie. When the ripcord on his chute doesn’t open, Joe says, “Definitely not cool.” Frank dyes his hair blue and Joe gets a mohawk — here at the other end of the decade, the fauxhawk is more hip, I think — and both boys dress in vintage clothing as a disguise. They also eat cheese steak for breakfast one day — awesome!

Trudy isn’t hip, but she gets to say “poop” a lot.

Inappropriate responses: When the crook in the opening vignette finds Frank and Joe sniffing around his DVD piracy ring, he tries to kill them. Over DVD piracy. In retaliation, Frank and Joe steal his parrot after he’s arrested. ATAC sends them to the Big Air Games after “a few strange postings” on an extreme sports site, which is pretty flimsy. When a covert ATAC agent tries to hint he’s on Frank and Joe’s side by working “Extremely dangerous” (a variant of the mission name), Frank takes it as a threat. Given that he said, “It’s dangerous to ask to many questions” immediately before “Extremely dangerous,” that seems reasonable. And although I can’t say it’s inappropriate when the villain goes after a Big Air Games athlete with a pellet gun — I can’t say whether he was going for the kill or just a wounding — using a pellet gun is no way to get respect down at the county lockup.

No endorsements were harmed while making this book: Frank and Joe own a “game player,” with “game controls.” They only use it for playing their mission briefing, or we might have learned whether they’re into “Coach’s American Football Game” or “Futuristic Soldier Game.” Man, I love Futuristic Soldier Game. Such realistic generic action!

Dating in the 21st century: Normally steady Frank may have trouble talking to a “Belinda,” but Joe has no trouble making a connection with extreme athlete Jenna. When they leave Philly, Joe gets not only her phone number but her e-mail address, while promising to visit her in Atlantic City. Ah, modern love.

Opinions: The beginning of a new series is a jarring transition, especially given the chapters alternating between first-person narration from Frank and Joe. The new status quo will take a while to get used to as well — although why not put them in college? Makes a lot more sense — and the incessant hipsterism will not help at all. There’s even a murder. At the end of the mystery, the Hardys even leave Chet behind, not even bothering to wake him up before they ride from Philly back to Bayport.

But one thing doesn’t change: The brothers’ disregard for due process. Frank says there’s not enough evidence to arrest one of the suspects; Joe responds, “You and your evidence. So what do you suggest, Mr. Law and Order?”

Grade: C-. And I’m being generous here, since I don’t know which direction the series will go in from here.

Daredevils (#159)

2008-08-14T08:11:00.002-04:00

Plot: The entire Hardy family (sans Gertrude) head to Los Angeles to protect the life of stuntman Terrence McCauley, a son of one of Fenton’s old friends.

Borrowing from the past: The Hardys head to California as a family, just as they did in the revised Clue of the Broken Blade (#21), where they all got jobs on a movie set. Frank and Joe also headed to Los Angeles in Mystery of the Desert Giant (#40), The Shattered Helmet (#52, Hollywood), The Firebird Rocket (#57), The Vanishing Thieves (#66), The Crimson Flame (#77), Cave-In! (#78), and The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47).

The Hardys head for the hospital after being a few feet from an explosion. They almost never go to the hospital. Joe was sent to the hospital for “shock” after being in an exploding building in The Secret Warning (#17) and he found himself hospitalized for a stabbing wound in Training for Trouble (#161).

Before this book, Laura Hardy received a personality transplant: Laura actually says something … interesting. She sasses her sons about their attitudes toward police involvement in their cases, insists on helping investigate, and claims credit for cracking Fenton’s tough cases. She also gives Terrence advice on his love life. Where is the real Laura, and can we keep this one instead?

Well, we know Fenton’s not that kind of detective: While on the phone, Fenton’s notes on the attempts on Terrence McCauley are:

Rope — cut?
Window — glass
Empty extinguisher!

I don’t know what I like the best, there. “Window — glass” is pretty good — what the hell else is going to be in a window, sandstone? — but the exclamation point after “Empty extinguisher” is a contender too. “My God! The building hasn’t been properly carrying out regular safety inspections! Fenton to the rescue!”

Safety first: Fenton met Terrence’s father, Brian — also a stuntman — by chasing a crook onto a movie set and into a building rigged to explode. That’s how you get a reputation for safety in the stunt business — by not hiring enough security guards or buying barrier tape or orange plastic cones to warn people a building’s about to go boom.

Joe’s confusing love life: Joe shows more affection for Terrence’s car, staring at it and fondling it, than he ever does for anyone human. Of course, it might be a little creepy if he did treat a girl like a car, but until he tries it, he won’t know if Iola would object. Of course, Joe can’t tell the difference between a woman and a crossdresser at one point, so puberty should be one hell of an adventure for him.

Everyone loves Joe: When Joe is knocked down by a bomb blast and gets a little fuzzy headed, both his father and Frank make fun of him. (Frank uses variants of the “X-rayed his head and found nothing” joke, which is at least seven decades old.) Concussions are hilarious!

Insurance? Don’t make me laugh: Frank mentions he and Joe have high insurance premiums. I assume what they actually have is the state-mandated safety net that everyone has to be allowed to buy to meet state law. Otherwise, some insurer is crazy or owes Fenton a major favor.

Maybe he should avoid that legal career: As usual, Frank’s knowledge of the law is shaky. He resists going to the police after the boys were almost forced off a cliff even though he memorizes the truck’s license plates, saying the police would only be able to arrest the man for reckless driving. Well, no; the testimony of Fenton Hardy’s sons would probably be able to bump that up to attempted murder, and it would allow police to get a search warrant for the criminal’s home. But, hey, no, go on using Terrence as bait so the culprit can make several more attempts on the kid’s life. There’s no chance he’ll be successful, is there?

Of course, Frank’s sense of legality has been warped by being Fenton’s son, where the truth and personal glory trump the law every day of the week. Frank hacks into the California DMV computers and breaks into a suspects office with no consequences in this book, which as I’ve noted elsewhere, is unsurprising: Civil liberties are something that happen to other people.

Because integrity’s so important to him: Frank calls one of the suspects “a man of integrity” after talking to him. Of course, Frank, knows integrity: he’s sitting in the man’s chair, rifling through his files, after breaking into the man’s office — before he even tried to interview the guy.

But he’s better at law and integrity than Dixon is at football: Joe saves Fenton and Terrence by tackling them, taking them out of an M-80’s blast radius. Dixon claims he practiced his tackling as a football tackle. Um, no; tackles are offensive players who try to keep other players from being tackled. For the record, Joe has been a halfback in The Sinister Sign Post (#15) and safety, quarterback, and halfback in The Crisscross Shadow (#32). His football experience — if not his position — is mentioned in The Yellow Feather Mystery, (#33), The Clue in the Embers (#34), the revised Great Airport Mystery (#9), The Shattered Helmet (#52), The Mysterious Caravan (#54), The Vanishing Thieves (#66), Game Plan for Disaster (#76), and The Blackwing Puzzle (#82).

Bad promotion: Flame Broiled, Terrence’s movie, has a big party after the movie opens in multiplexes across the country. Wait — isn’t that backwards? The party should be before everyone knows how bad the movie is, right?

Opinions: A surprisingly good book. The characters act like real people instead of the Prozac Pod People who populate most Hardy Boys books. The boys act like real brothers, Fenton mocks Joe’s stupidity, and even Laura has a personality. One of the incidental characters, Caleb, even stands out as something other than a villain or source of information. The book has the sense to point out some of its flaws; for instance, Joe realizes the studio system is dead despite a studio head wanting to sign Terrence to a studio contract, but the exec claims he wants to revive it, and in Hollywood, that might be possible. A bombmaker makes use of the fact that wire colors are completely arbitrary, and those who disarm the bomb realize it as well. And when threatening a sleazy reporter, Frank taunts him with the lowest of all jobs: ghostwriting for kids books.

Of course, Joe manages to catch Terrence when Joe is dangling from a parachute and Terrence is nearing terminal velocity, so it’s not all hyperrealism.

Grade: A. I have to admit, I even laughed when a stuntman used “What the Evel Knievel!” as an exclamation. Although the “parental units” was a little dated, even when this came out.

The Caribbean Cruise Caper (#154)

2008-08-07T08:42:00.001-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe are called upon to consult during the Teenway teen detective contest in the Caribbean, and of course it’s being sabotaged from within.

Borrowing: Both Hardy brothers are allegedly taller than six feet. I can’t find a concrete measurement of their height before, but as recently as 1985 (The Skyfire Puzzle, #85), Joe is supposed to be 155 pounds. In the original Great Airport Mystery (#9), Joe was only 125. I doubt he’s supposed to be that light today, but he’d be quite a beanpole if he were. At 125, he’d almost be emaciated.

Frank has generic martial arts skills, although he never really bothers to use them. He’s used karate, judo, and jujitsu in the past.

The boys make a stopover in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which they visited in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37).

We can be heroes: There’s more music in this one than most. When Joe gets distracted by a boat, Frank paraphrases a David Bowie song to get his attention: “Ground control to Major Joe.” Joe tells a reporter about a previous case in which he and Frank went undercover as actors in a Broadway musical; even though the brothers have shown musical talent in the past (mostly guitar and drums, although Frank sings a “country and western duet” in Track of the Zombie, #71), they should have been stagehands. And while on a stakeout, Joe mentally recites the lyrics of his favorite golden oldies to stay awake. Of course it’s golden oldies; it’s the most controversy free music known to man.

Shut up!: Jason, the contestant who turns out to be very weakly sabotaging the contest, is tripped up when he says his hometown airport (Dallas-Fort Worth) is nothing special. If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys, it’s that criminals would be better off just shutting up because there’s always a decent explanation for their slip ups. Joe says DFW is the size of Manhattan, which Jason should have known. Really? At age 17, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to compare airport sizes, nor would I have cared.

Frank and Joe should have busted her for fashion crimes: Bettina Dunn is introduced as looking as if she had stepped out of a fashion magazine, but her fashion sense is atrocious. No sooner does she get onto a boat than does she change into bell bottoms; later, she’s in a light green dress “decorated with sea horses and anchors.” Another contestant wears “bright orange jams,” but it is in a tropical paradise in the ‘90s, so I’ll let it slide.

Worst criminals ever: The adults make a big deal out of the pranks that disrupt the contest, but they’re minor stuff. Plastic spiders placed on a cake, ordering fifteen pizzas (an escalation Frank describes as “ambitious” and Joe thinks will “wreck the contest”) … if that’s the worst they can do, just ignore them. There is the syrup of ipecac in the sorbet, but it’s a very low dose. A prank in bad taste, a very noticeable prank … but man, that is minor-league villainy.

Of course, Frank and Joe are the perfect teens to find the prankster. When Frank embarrasses Joe in front of a girl, Joe’s idea of revenge — quickly discarded — is to short sheet Frank’s bed. Haw!

Wait until he tells his parents: In the harbor in San Juan, Joe instantly falls in love with … a 50-feet boat. I feel bad for the Sleuth; when Joe breaks the news about his true feelings, she’ll be crushed. Not to mention how Iola will react …

Bilocation is a difficult skill to master: For some reason, Joe thinks he’ll be able to keep track of four or more people in a tropical island market. Joe is fooling himself, or else his omnipotence is on the blink.

Opinions: There’s not much here. The pranks are less than dangerous, and the Dixon seems to be building mountains out of molehills. Frank makes sure to point out the most likely suspect is the one who’s probably guilty, which is only a news flash in a spectacularly dull-witted book. Frank sees a skull and crossbones painted on a bulletin board and comes to the conclusion of pirates rather than poison, even though the contestants had just been administered ipecac. Frank and Joe are foiled by a punk using a pitcher of papaya juice. A contestant is knocked out by a volleyball. A volleyball!

Two incidents show how low the stakes are and how desperate the author is to build tension. First, when the main villain, a crewman on the boat, is introduced, Frank sees him ignoring the contestants and thinks “the guy lived in another world that just happened to run side by side with the one” the passengers are in. Or else he’s not supposed to fraternize with the passengers. One or the other — a dangerous mental disconnect or obeying ship regulations.

Second, Joe waits in a closet to ambush a thief. He watches the thief come into the room … and then lets her escape because he got something in his eye. When he finally pursues her, she beats him senseless with a wooden stool. An unathletic teenage girl! That’s awful. Weirdest part? Frank says the stakeout “worked fine.”

Grade: D-. We don’t even get to find out who won the contest!

Ghost of a Chance (#169)

2008-07-31T08:22:00.002-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe get jobs as assistant animal handlers on the set of a movie about “Jumper” Herman, but when the star is harassed and dangerous sabotage is occurs, the Hardys investigate.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe serve as assistants to animal trainers who work with a bear and a puma. In original Clue of the Broken Blade, they worked with the carnival, with Frank feeding elephants and Joe working the snake tent. In The Clue of the Screeching Owl, they were fascinated by Col. Bill Thunder, who was a puma trainer. Joe acts as a stuntman in the movie in the revised Broken Blade. Chet had a job as an extra in Mystery of the Desert Giant.

Joe has a confrontation with a puma, during which he manages to slowly retreat to safety while someone else hits it with a drugged dart. There was a time when Joe would have taken the puma out himself; in Hunting for Hidden Gold, the brothers shot wolves, and Joe himself kills a tiger with a rock in The Disappearing Floor. Hardcore.

Nice work if you can get it: Weirdly, Frank and Joe don’t have an explanation for why they get the prime job of working as assistant animal handlers for a motion picture. No one mentions how Fenton saved their employers’ lives or got back their Aztec treasure; there’s no mystery to be solved (at least at the beginning). They’re just “friends of the Hardys.” (Maybe they’re “friends” from back when Gertrude was popular.) Some guys have all the luck, although given the huge amount of coincidences with the Hardys, it shouldn’t be surprising that they are the lucky ones.

Based on a true story: The movie the Hardys are working on, Dropped into Danger, is based on the fictional “Jumper” Herman. From the details in the story — Herman steals an archaelogical treasure in Canada, then flies across the border into America where his plane crashes and he and his treasure are lost for years — Herman calls to mind the infamous D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a plane out of the Pacific Northwest, threatening to blow it up unless he got a ransom and enough parachutes for him and the flight crew (the other passengers were allowed to leave). He parachuted from the passenger jet somewhere near the Columbia River and was never seen again, assumed dead.

With a name like that, she has to be a villain: Ghost of a Chance features a professor of folklore named “Sassy Leigh,” who is behind most of the chaos in the book. I’m sure the name was meant to evoke “Southern” in the readers’ minds, but … Sassy? Really? I mean, it’s an awful name — a sure sign of villainy — but it’s no Pierre Pierre or Slicer Bork. It’s not even Cadmus Quill, another academic type villain.

She has to be a villain, though, because she’s an awful folklorist. She claims an open mind is the hallmark of a “great” folklorist, because God knows, literal truth is what you’re supposed to be getting from these stories, rather than what the folk tales say about the society that tells them.

Other name-related follies: Of course, Jumper Herman is alive, and because he’s in a Hardy Boys book, it’s revealed he’s been living under an alias that is an anagram of his real name. Somehow — despite their experiences with the great Pedro “Zemog” (Gomez spelled backward) in The Jungle Pyramid — the Hardys don’t routinely run anagram checks on new acquaintances. Sure, that would be paranoid, but it would save so much time.

Why couldn’t Chet’s new hobby be cryptozoology?: There’s a Bigfoot in this story. I know: they hedge their bets, dance around it, but it’s there … and it, like everyone else, takes its turn beating up our favorite teen detectives, slapping Frank to the ground with a casual backhand. I believe the next step after being casually swatted by a creature that probably doesn’t exist is getting beat up something from folklore, so I fully expect Joe to be pummeled by an Elf lord later in the series.

There’s a time for G Ratings, and this isn’t it: When a stunt goes wrong and an actress injures her foot, she says, “Yikes, I think it’s broken.” Even if its only sprained — as it turns out to be — that is admirable (or foolhardy) linguistic restraint. I’m not talking about breaking out the four-letter Anglo-Saxon words, but ... well, screaming always helps, I find.

Opinions: There’s a big of everything in this one, and of course, that’s never a good thing. A movie, a sasquatch, a legendary criminal who has really nothing to do with either of those ... the Dixon du jour wasn’t at the top of his game here. I think the most disappointing is that no one knows or cares why the Hardys get such great jobs. Maybe they’re actually interested in a movie career, and Fenton, to make them realize it isn’t as glamorous as they think, gets them a job cleaning puma droppings for a summer? Maybe. Can you think of a better explanation?

He does manage to make Dropped into Danger sound like a troubled production. There are at least two rewrites: one to incorporate the lead actress’s sprained foot, and another to drop in the Hardys wrapping up the mystery. Frankly, it doesn’t sound like that good of a movie (there might be a reason no one’s done a big-budget D.B. Cooper story, no matter how cool it sounds), and the rewrites, sabotage, injuries, firings, and disruptions on the set would make any real movie studio very nervous. And think of what the bloggers would make of it? “Pictures from the set seem to indicate a pair of teenage boys ruling the set. This is going to be a disaster.”

Grade: C-. And the movie gets a thumbs down.

The Castle Conundrum (#168)

2008-07-24T07:27:00.002-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe work at Teen Village International, a French project rebuilding a medieval village for refugees. But someone is trying to sabotage the project by creating mysterious accidents and impersonating a local ghost.

They’ve Got Troubles: Teen Village International is described as a “teen program.” Frank and Joe seem excited about it, but the “program” seems to mainly consist of a couple of weeks of hard labor in the harsh sun. Perhaps Frank and Joe have “problems” they need to work out with tough love, backbreaking work, and long hours in the unrelenting heat.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe use tae kwon do, which adds to their vast repertoire of martial arts experiences. The Hardys most frequently use karate, but they also have experience with jiu-jitsu, judo, and kendo, along with boxing and wrestling. Joe is mentioned as a broken field runner, which could be a reference to his experience as a football player (eight of the first 85 mysteries, starting with #15, The Sinister Signpost, in 1936) or track (three of 85, starting with #31, The Mystery of Wildcat Swamp, in 1952). “Broken-field” running isn’t really a track activity, although Joe is supposed to be a top sprinter (#81, The Demon’s Den, 1984); in any event, Joe is a “star athlete” (#36, The Secret of Pirate’s Hill, 1956)

Fenton Hardy, Freelance Police: Fenton is in Paris to attend a conference on diamond smuggling. For heaven’s sake, why? What possible reason does a private detective have for learning to stop diamond smuggling? That’s a police job — and the Feds, at that. But this is consistent with Fenton being a tool of the Man, as when he confidently tells his sons diamond smuggling is about to become a thing of the past. (How’s that going, Fenton?)

Better at Hard Labor than Bright Ideas: The point of Teen Village International, located in Provence, France, is that the teenagers will rebuild a medieval village as home for refugees. There are, of course, two problems with that:

Even refugees — who are somewhat in the “beggars can’t be choosers” camp, and in any case probably want food and freedom more than anything else — deserve better than to live in a village almost a millinneum out of date that is located in a harsh climate subject to mistrals, which are intense, long-lasting windstorms; and
The French are not exactly known for their love of foreigners.

Where Is Bayport?: Frank admits the Hardys live in New York state. Well, thank God we’ve got that out of the way.

Uglo-Americans: Frank and Joe, who have traveled the world solving crimes, don’t know much about the French. Besides the unfamiliar culinary and meteorological phenomena, they’ve never heard of lawn bowls (although it would have helped if someone had compared it to bocce), they’ve never heard of tisane (an herbal tea, which I’ve never heard of either), and Joe doesn’t realize the French currency is the franc. (Was the franc, now.) The worst is that Joe doesn’t realize the “market” everyone is excited about is not a supermarket. Evidently they don’t have farmers’ markets in Bayport.

A Family of Idiots: The de Frehel family owned the land TVI is rebuilding the village on, and they also own the nearby chateau. In the chateau is a treasure in jewels lost for almost two centuries, hidden by the dying Sieur de Frehel. The Sieur, before he died, liked to remind his family of the motto on the Frehel crest: True wealth is found around the family hearth. Yet in 180 years, none of the Frehel family bothers to search the hearth of the chateau. Of course, when he figures it out, Frank, not believing the family’s stupidity, mocks several generations of Frehels.

It’s Harry Tanwick’s Skeleton: When the Hardys and the dimwit Frehels find the treasure, there’s a skeleton with the gems and jewelry. Presumably it’s the bones of the Sieur, but his body was supposed to be elsewhere. Frank declines to speculate or investigate — or really care, when it gets down to it — the mysterious skeleton, which is one of the bigger investigative copouts since The Disappearing Floor before World War II.

Opinions: There are stereotypes aplenty here, and with the International Brigade of Teens, there’s a lot of stereotypes to go around. You have several rude Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, the surly German, etc. Even the crime is stereotyped: the German pulls his off with a precision cleverness, with the ingenuity being far more important than bodily safety, but it takes an American to go for real greed and murder. I can’t figure out whether the international teens’ misapprehensions about American culture is a clever backwards look — showing while Americans look at foreigners as one-note stereotypes, they don’t have a much more nuanced opinion of Americans — or whether it’s another cultural stereotype (i.e., foreigners are ignorant of American reality). I do like Gert, the unapologetic German; he seems straight out of central casting, with his uncaring attitude toward health and life but a keen interest in getting the job done right.

There are a large number of culprits here. What seems a simple Scooby-Doo, impersonate-the-ghost-and-get-the-land-cheap caper turns out to have several culprits, with the worst crimes being perpetrated by someone who wasn’t even part of the ghostly hijinx. This does introduce a degree of complexity to the solution, but learning part of what seems like a malicious trick is actually a harmless prank does feel like a letdown. The two plots, the ghost story and diamond smuggling, aren’t very well integrated, but that’s supposed to be to divert readers from thinking that diamond smuggling is part of the plot at all. It doesn’t work, but I think this Dixon was just trying misdirection rather than mediocrity.

There isn’t much new here; I believe it has literally all been done before in Hardy Boys’ books, and I don’t believe in the TVI mission for a second. That being said, it’s relatively inoffensive, and Frank essentially telling the Frehels they have a genetic propensity toward colossal stupidity is a great moment.

Grade: B-

Past and Present Danger (#166)

2008-07-17T07:21:00.003-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe decide to help Gertrude, who seems to be in trouble when an old friend, a discredited investigative reporter, comes to Bayport.

“Borrowing” from the past: Fenton mentioned in The Phantom Freighter (#26) that Gertrude was once engaged, and the story is told here by Clayton Silvers, Gertrude’s old friend. She was engaged to a small business owner, who died in a plane crash two months before the wedding. In the same book, Fenton also said Gertrude was at one time popular, but from what Clayton and Gertrude say in this book, she was really just a loud, opinionated activist. Perhaps that qualifies as popular in Bayport. Just like in A Figure in Hiding (#16), Joe falls out of a Bayport hotel window, although this time he catches himself before he falls four stories to the street; in Figure, Joe falls through a glass roof from the second story.

When the brakes go out on Gertrude’s car, Frank thinks he and Joe had been in that situation “more times than he cared to remember.” Probably true, but I can find only one specific occurrence: the Hardy Boys had faulty brakes on a winding, wet road in The Shore Road Mystery (#6). Personally, I believe when you find yourself careening down a cliffside road with bad brakes more than once, it’s time to re-examine the life you have chosen to lead.

And of course, Frank “Kung Fu” Hardy uses karate, which he’s done several times in the past. The first time was in The Clue of the Hissing Serpent (#53).

Once you’ve gone Silvers: Not much is made of it, but Gertrude’s friend Clayton Silvers is black. There’s nothing shocking about it, but it is weird to think of Gertrude having black friends at any time in her life. She strikes me as the kind of person who would say, “Well, I never!” at the merest hint of mixing with someone who had more melanin-enhanced skin.

Only in Bayport’s business district: Dip ‘n’ Sip Donuts. There are worse names, but there are many, many names that are a lot better.

Don’t hate the playa, hate the high-tech spies: Joe shamelessly flirts with a cashier at the aforementioned Dip ‘n’ Sip in order to get information on the crooks. At the end of flirtation, Joe seems to compare the girl and Iola: “[Iola’s] smile was better.” Frank kids / chides him on the performance.

This may seem shallow of Joe, but Iola does punch him a couple of times in the book; “playfully,” sure, but her explosive temper is remarked upon as well. Frank thinks Iola would put Joe in the hospital if she knew about the flirting. You can’t blame Joe if he briefly entertained the thought of leaving an abusive relationship. Of course, it may be the thought of having Chet as a brother-in-law that prevents him from as ideal a boyfriend as Frank; there’s always the possibility Chet could end up as a deadbeat on his couch, and Joe would go into debt trying to feed him. (No amount of rewards from grateful governments or wealthy old men could cover that sort of expense.)

On the other hand, maybe Joe drove her to it. I hate to blame the victim, but the book does end with Gertrude chasing Joe into the garden, mayhem in her heart.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen: Frank and Joe, five-sport athletes in their early days, have been reduced to playing soccer in the park against their girlfriends. Joe also mentions playing softball, which is barely a sport for adolescent males. Some people would suggest men playing softball when they aren’t old enough to drink beer is pointless.

Which one was that?: Speaking with Clayton, Joe describes the wrap up of a case thusly: “And that was how we broke that smuggling case. Dad got the big boss, and we caught the underlings.” That describes close to 99 percent of the preceding books; appropriately, Clayton says, “I think I remember reading about that.”

Opinions: I like this one quite a bit. Gertrude feels like part of the family, although as often happens when the story focuses on Gertrude, Laura is sent packing to some relatives. But Gertrude obviously has a past in the early books, even if we never get to hear it, and it’s good to finally hear it. Appropriately, Gertrude was just as big a meddler and pain in the fundament in her younger days as she was when she moved in with her brother. Frank and Joe are allowed to engage in displays of affection with their girlfriends, even if the relationship is a bit too wholesome. (Although during their double date on bicycles, it is mentioned “the morning was filled with laughter and discovery.” That’s a euphemism for something, surely.)

Grade: A

Skin & Bones (#165)

2008-07-10T07:18:00.001-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe visit Cody Chang, a friend in San Francisco, only to find his business is being robbed and vandalized. Frank and Joe volunteer to help Cody get to the bottom of things.

Straight out of central casting: Since the Hardys are in San Francisco, their friend for the book must be of Chinese descent — otherwise, what’s the point of meeting someone in San Fran, really? Unfortunately, young Mr. Chang is not as charmingly ethnic as you might hope: his parents gave him the reassuringly WASPy name of Cody.

Honestly: what kind of name is Cody?

He knows whereof he speaks: Frank and Joe discover Cody after he’s been knocked out by a blow to the the head. Frank is very businesslike about the matter: “You’ve got a lump ... and the skin’s all scraped away. You might have a concussion. Are you sure you don’t want to go to a doctor?” Cody declines, which is probably what he needed to do to get the Hardys’ approval — Joe’s, at the very least.

They have a stack of photocopied parental permission slips in their lockers: It’s Halloween, and Frank and Joe take a trip cross-country to see a friend. Although let’s be fair: Nothing these two learn from fifth-hour bio is going to help them in ten years when they’re taking surveillance shots for divorce cases and thinking that ITT Tech suddenly sounds pretty good.

Yippee-ki-yi-yay: When a thief makes off with his wheels, Joe rents a horse and rides in pursuit. This doesn’t happen anywhere but in almost funny comedies and chick flicks. Thankfully, this is neither, so Joe doesn’t have to ride the horse on the streets of San Francisco, weaving in and out of traffic, to catch up with the crooks.

Gnarly: When Joe asks for an opinion on his semi-glutteal werewolf costume, Frank says, “Awesome.” It’s difficult to tell whether he’s being sarcastic or not.

No sense of mail security in a pre-9/11 world: Frank and Joe receive a parcel with “Hardys” written on it — no return address or delivery address — wrapped in plain brown paper. It screams “Unabomber” or “anthrax,” but Frank dutifully opens it, even when the box inside contains a “lumpy package.” Perhaps Frank is just eager to get at lumpy packages.

Opinions: This one’s a bit too pat for me. The villain is obvious in the Scooby-Doo “not obvious” way — action centers around him, he has the access to pull the job off, but no one suspects him. It hits the cliches of San Francisco. There’s the requisite non-disfiguring violence and toothless threats. There’s a paternal stand-in for their father (Cody’s father, Philip). In the end, it seemed more that this Dixon had two ideas — the beetle colonies that strip bones and a trip to San Francisco, then decided to set it during Halloween.

Grade: C

The Spy That Never Lies (#163)

2008-07-03T07:13:00.000-04:00

Plot: Frank and Joe meet a new acquaintance, Jake Martins, through their mutual friend, Jamal. Jake is one of the chief programmers behind Bayport’s new security camera system, so when glitches in the system allows crooks to commit crimes unobserved, Jake becomes a suspect.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe mention working on A Game Called Chaos and its featured computer games.

Jamal Hawkins is ...: Frank and Joe’s “chestnut brown” friend on the make. His father owns a compnay and planes that Jamal can fly.

Frank and Joe Hardy, future members of the ACLU: Frank and Joe are concerned about the security cameras blanketing certain sections of Bayport, and rightly so. They also wonder about the implications of the cameras only being located in the richer parts of town. But for the Hardys, getting accused of violating someone’s civil rights is something that only happens to other people. When Jake leaves Frank and Joe alone in his room, Joe wants to search it, and Frank says no — not yet. Frank and Joe are also more than happy to encourage a criminal gang to hack into a local college’s computers to find the grades of one of their suspects.

For the record, Fenton also doesn’t like the cameras, but it’s probably because he fears the cops actually catching some crooks without having to hire him.

Because the Man only gives us 150 pages: Frank, Joe, and Jamal are hassled by a cop at the beginning of the mystery because they are loitering teens. Joe and Jamal take it badly. Jamal, who, you know, might have experienced real prejudice before, is somewhat philosophical after he calms down. Joe remains incensed, however, probably because Officer Unfriendly didn’t recognize him as Joe Hardy, Crimebuster!

Live here much? told Jake studies at Bayport Institute of Technology, lifelong Bayport resident Joe asks, “That’s just down the street, isn’t it?” That’s the observational skills that make Joe the top-notch amateur detective he is.

For your dining pleasure: Bayport has restaurants called Java John’s and the Spud Spa. The latter, a mall-court eatery, belongs on The Simpsons, somewhere between the Texas Cheesecake Depository and Krusty Burger.

When you’re a Bayporter, you’re a Bayporter all the way: Bayport has the worst gang of the 21st century (although technically, this book was published in 2000, the last year of the 20th century). The Kings were stolen from a 1950s greaser movie, sanitized, and plopped into The Spy That Never Lies. They were leather jackets with “Kings” on them, making them easily identifiable. They hang out at a garage. And — most importantly — they have only five members. Working on the Bayport PD’s Gangs Task Force must be the cushiest job ever.

Opinions: This is an excellent Hardy Boys book, with a chance for exploring important issues. It doesn’t, of course, but at least it mentions that these issues exist.

This Franklin W. Dixon gives some of the villains credit for a little intelligence, allowing them to reference 1984 and red herrings. It’s not much intelligence, and it doesn’t stop them from buying obviously stolen goods, but it does add a little something to the usually faceless antagonists.

The Hardys already function as a semiautonomous police force, and in The Spy That Never Lies, Frank and Joe act like one: they make a deal with the Kings when they know the gang has committed a felony — and an easily provable one, at that. But hey — the Hardys are interested in justice, dammit, and if a few petty criminals go free, then that’s the price the system will have to pay.

Grade: A

The End of the Trail (#162)

2008-06-26T07:09:00.000-04:00

Plot: Frank, Joe, Biff, Phil, and Chet are hiking the Appalachian Trail when Biff breaks his leg. The group diverts to the nearest town, the isolated and nearly deserted village of Morgan Quarry. But once in the strange little town, the Hardys and friends find it much harder to leave because of the criminal secrets the townspeople don’t want revealed.

“Borrowing” from past mysteries: Frank and Joe has their posse of chums with them, which is rare in the digests. Chet’s an obese compulsive eater still, and Biff’s a strong, tough guy (although his boxing background isn’t mentioned). Phil’s a damn know-it-all, but the best application of his knowledge is to use an old telephone exchange to nearly burn everyone to death.

Injury report: Biff falls 20 feet out of a tree and breaks his leg. He wasn’t being chased, he wasn’t in a fight; the limb he was on just broke. Good one, Biff.

Live here much?: Rhonda, acting as a local guide, misdirects the Hardys at a fork in the road, leading them in a circle rather than to safety. This does not make the Hardys suspicious. It doesn’t make the reader suspicious either, but for a different reason: The reader expects the characters to be stupid.

Abbrev. bk.: End of the Trail is only 131 pages, which is strange, given the opportunities for fleshing the book out.

Worst. Gunmen. Ever.: After being captured, the Hardys disarm armed crooks three times. Usually they don’t even need a clever plan like yelling, “Hey, look over there!” One time the extent of the plan is Biff collapsing on his crutches. Another time the villains forget to use their guns. When the Hardys do use the “hey, look over there” gambit, it works against a sheriff — a trained lawman. He may be corrupt, but still.

The only competent crooks in the book are a pair of psychotic brothers. Frank wisely runs them off the road using an armored truck.

Hire only UoHT&L-certified underlings: You cannot understate the people of Morgan Quarry’s incompetence as villains. This goes beyond “a bullet to the head would solve all their problems” or even outsmarting themselves with labyrinthine plots. The instant — the very instant — the chums emerge from the trail, two goons drop sacks of money in front of them. Instead of getting the Hardys away ASAP, they keep the chums in town with various suspicious excuses, making sure the Hardys suspected something. Then, instead of capturing them all while they sleep, the villains let the chums roam around town figuring out the plot. They even practically hand Chet a horse.

The Horse Whisperer: Chet reveals an affinity for horses, controlling a bucking stallion by whispering in its ear. He says he’s a good rider and has been told he has a talent with wild horses. He also spends most of the mystery riding on the horse while everyone else is at gunpoint, almost dying of smoke inhalation, crashing through barn doors and fences in an armored truck, and foiling the world’s dumbest crooks.

Rhonda, Warrior Princess: When Nurse Rhonda (“Doc Harrison”) is introduced, much is made of her Vietnam service, and it’s hinted she and Biff talk about this while alone together. What exactly passes between them is never mentioned, although it makes Rhonda risk a prison sentence to catch Biff when he stumbles; I like to think it had to do with a night of tender, temporarily handicapped lovin’.

Opinions: There’s a lot of detail thrown in here that never really gets explored: Morgan Quarry’s history as an illegal gambling spot, Rita’s military service, how Morgan Quarry survives at all. All of these plots are cast aside once the Hardys escape the villains.

It’s a shame, really. The author gives the town a creepy, deserted vibe early on, and going straight to a reveal of the true villains is a waste of that. The author compounds the error by making the crooks incompetent rather than by making the Hardys clever; you would think that a wilderness chase would be entertaining and exciting, the natives’ knowledge of the area balanced by the Hardys and Phil the human computer.

Still, Frank driving an armored car through fences and bar doors is pretty cool.

Grade: C+

Training for Trouble (#161)

2008-06-19T07:05:00.000-04:00

Plot: A new training center for combat Olympic sports opens in Bayport, and if you’ve read a Hardy Boys story, you know that means accidents are going to happen, and Frank and Joe will investigate.

“Borrowing” from the past: Combat sports, baby! Joe takes part in a judo exhibition, and Frank experiences both archery and the biathalon (skiing and target shooting). In the past, Joe has displayed judo experience in four different books, most recently in The Jungle Pyramid (#56, 1977). Frank has been trained in the proper use of firearms by his father — as has Joe — and killed five wolves with a pistol in Hunting for Hidden Gold (#5). (Joe’s the better target shooter, having won a contest in #29, The Secret of the Lost Tunnel.) His skiing ability was on display in The Cabin Island Mystery (#8), The Yellow Feather Mystery (#33), and Cave-In! (#78). Oddly, neither Hardy has shown any inclination toward archery, with Chet being the best archer of the group (selected to represent Bayport in a state archery competition in #61, The Pentagon Spy.) The training center also offers fencing, which both boys studied intensely in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21).

Just what Bayport needs: Bayport gets the new Olympic Combat-Sports Training Facility, which trains young people how to excel in inflicting possibly lethal damage on one another. Given Bayport’s high crime rate, that seems unwise. Just think: it’s like a thug training center, in which all the washouts can be hired by local gangs for muscle!

Hospitals? Who needs hospitals?: Both Joe and Iola are hospitalized — Joe after being stabbed by a sharpened fencing rapier and Iola after experiencing a severe electric shock. Hospital stays are rare for the Hardys, despite the scores of concussions they’ve experienced over the years. As far as I can tell, Frank has never been hospitalized during a mystery, with Joe being sent to the hospital for “shock” after finding himself in a tailor’s shop at the same time it was exploding in The Secret Warning (#17). Iola’s injury is extremely unusual (except in the Hardy Boys Casefiles, in which she blew up real good in the first book). She’s only been knocked out once, which, around the Hardys, should qualify her for some kind of award. Well, it would, except Callie’s never been hurt. That is nothing short of astonishing, and perhaps is a sign she is Unbreakable.

Fine upstanding citizens, those Hardys: Trying to find out who is causing all the accidents at the training center, the Hardys wander into one private office and break into two more. I know Frank and Joe aren’t agents of the government and so aren’t bound by the Bill of Rights, but geez, haven’t they ever heard of breaking and entering, or is being accused of that something that happens to other people?

Opinions: Training for Trouble is an atypically violent Hardy Boys book, with Joe and Iola ending up in the hospital, Joe even requiring stitches. One might expect that sort of result when the criminals are trained in judo, fencing, and archery, but if you do expect that, you haven’t been reading the Hardy Boys for very long. I expect nothing worse than Frank and Joe getting knocked out, even if they were investigating the Homicidal Gun Collector Convention and Target Shooting Championship.

Evidently, Laura expects the same thing, because she genuinely gets worked up when Joe is hospitalized. For some reason, Laura wasn’t allowed to show much emotion during the, oh, I don’t know, Cold War. Perhaps to keep herself numb from the constant threat of nuclear war, she seemed as if she were heavily dosed with Valium from 1946-1990, and therefore didn’t have much emotion to spare when her husband and sons went out to catch violent felons. I can imagine her home, alone, humming to herself quietly as she picked out a dress just in case she had to go to the funeral of a loved one.

We’re invited to feel OK that the woman who stabs Joe (albeit accidentally) skates on assault and that the police are going easy the kid who caused several severe accidents because he turned himself in. (That he’s a juvie pressured by his father and coach should get him the easy treatment.) Perhaps the Hardys are struggling with the purpose of the criminal justice system, whether it should be to rehabilitate or to punish. Or perhaps they think that incarceration of any kind is only for mature adults, not people their age. Go to jail, old man!

Grade: B-. Really would have fit better as a Casefile.

A Game Called Chaos (#160)

2008-06-12T06:59:00.000-04:00

Plot: Phil asks Frank and Joe to help his cousin Chelsea, who works for a software company that suddenly finds itself missing their major game designer.

“Borrowing” from the past: A character is assumed dead after a plane crash, just like a pilot in the revised version of The Great Airport Mystery (#10).

Oy, gevalt: Phil Cohen, apparently the only Jew in Bayport High School, asks for a favor for his cousin. Her name? Chelsea. You couldn’t find a more WASP-y name if you tried.

Fine upstanding citizens, those Hardys: With Phil’s help, Frank and Joe hack into the records of Northern Connecticut University, then Joe uses his lockpicks to enter the university’s steam tunnels. Never mind that they’re hacking into the records on a library computer, after having given their high school IDs to a librarian; but given that students try to break into the steam tunnels at every university that has them, this seems extremely improbable and impossibly easy.

Later, when they confront a crazed fan who has ransacked the apartments of the missing game designer and one of the chief suspects, she protests Frank and Joe would have done the same thing. Joe denies it, of course.

Ah, kids and their computer games: The Chaos series of computer games seems to be a cross between a puzzle solving game like Myst and Tomb Raider, even down to having a sexy female archaeologist as a protagonist. Later, a female character shows up dressed like Carmen Sandiego: a fedora and a trenchcoat.

Do NOT hire Frank as your lawyer: When it’s revealed the game designer changed his contract so he would get all the money for producing the game, presumably taking on the burden of paying any other designers or subcontractors involved from his employer, Frank weighs in his legal opinion: “[He] had complete control over how Cross Enterprises was paid. ... Suppose he decided to pay her less than they had agreed. He could do that legally now.” No, it wouldn’t be legal; it would still be breach of contract or promissory estoppel or what have you. He just might be able to get away with it more easily.

That’s tough talk from a man with “Jewel Ridge” on his badge: Frank and Joe are told to stay out of the investigation by the Jewel Ridge (Conn.) police, who say, “Maybe the police in Bayport need help from amateurs, but in Jewel Ridge, we do things by the book.” Frank and Joe solve the case anyway, far away from the jurisdiction of the Jewel Ridge police.

For those who are curious: Frank uses his skills as a baseball pitcher to throw a flashlight at a mechanical spider, his track skills to outdistance a wolf for a brief period, and his basketball skills to jump a fence. Joe uses his wrestling skills to hold onto a female prisoner. (I wonder if Iola lets him practice on her?) Extracurricular activities really do prepare kids for the real world, evidently.

After their van gets bombed by exploding bats (mammals, not baseball), Joe says, “So much for our safe driving discount.” Any insurance company that would give Frank and Joe a discount has clearly traded its actuarial tables for a large quantity of hallucinogens.

Opinions: Since this one deals with computers and the Internet, we learn computers can tell us everything if you’re clever enough. Plans for the university steam tunnels, wills, kennel records — anything. (Why would anyone put kennel records on a server to begin with? Wait; I don’t want to know.) Also, with robotics, you can make snakes and a giant spider that move in a lifelike way with just standard Radio Shack parts. Did you know that?

The book does a good job of making the villain’s lair seem like a set copied from a computer game. Trap doors, electrified booby traps, and spiked pits abound in a seemingly abandoned mansion in a ghost town. These descriptions are far more convincing than the robotics. And how do you make exploding bats that can home in on a target? The villain pleaded poverty as an excuse for her actions, but these things have to add up in expenses.

The Franklin W. Dixon who wrote this one gets extra points for one of Joe’s quips; when the female villain is knocked out by a giant mechanical ape, another character shouts, “You got her!” Joe replies, “Oh, no ... ’Twas the beast that felled the beauty.”

Grade: A-. Frank and Joe are getting as shady as the crooks they stalk.

A Will to Survive (#156)

2008-06-06T13:56:00.000-04:00

Plot: Strange pranks are happening at the Shorewood Nature Center, a local preserve founded on a dead recluse’s former estate. Since Callie is interning at the Center, Frank and Joe are called in to find the culprits and their motives.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe pose as interns at the nature center, just one of the many fake jobs the Hardys have had over the years: sailor, cowboy, messenger at an industrial plant, car washer, salvage operator, stuntmen, construction, amusement park stooge, and lumberjack, among other jobs. The closest to this job they had was in 1943, when Frank and Joe worked at the State Experimental Farm for a month. While Frank and Joe don’t get paid by the nature center, they are promised a “token of appreciation.”

When Callie mentions a display case of rare lizards has been knocked over, Joe says, “Leaping lizards!” Joe used to say this sort of thing all the time in the 1960s — that, and things like, “Great crow!”, “Galloping grasshoppers!”, “Suffering swordfish!”, and my personal favorite, “Junipers!” “Leaping lizards!” was easily the most popular, though.

Wh-psssssssh!: Iola gives Joe a tape of Japanese flute music, which he leaves in the van. No word on whether he had ever listened to it, but it calms Frank (and blocks out traffic noise!) when he drives to New York.

Kung-fu action Joe: “Years of practicing jump shots and karate kicks” gives Joe the flexibility to do a back somersault and cling to a rock while careening down a hillside on his backside. Good for him.

Jamal Hawkins is ... : Not in this book.

Where is Bayport? At what used to be the southern range of moose, which the Shorewood Nature Center is trying to reintroduce into the area. Good luck with that. I have a feeling The Man will have a problem with that the first time someone's Mercedes gets an antler-shaped dent in it.

Opinions: Can you have a mystery when the detectives have no idea what the heck is going on? It’s possible, I suppose, but it isn’t much fun. Frank and Joe don’t realize Old Man Parent has left a fortune on his old estate for the Nature Center to find until two-thirds of the way through the book.

The Shorewood Nature Center is “more than half the size” of Central Park. Central Park is 843 acres (a little less than 700 acres if you don’t count the water). So SNC is roughly 450 acres, or about 3/4 of a square mile. Callie says it is “big enough to get lost in,” but that would only be if you were an idiot or were trying to find the Blair Witch. A good size for a nature center, but not enough to be called “enormous” or “seemed to stretch on forever.”

Other than the stupid clue Old Man Parent left behind to point the way to his hidden loot, this is a standard Hardy Boys in jeopardy story, with plenty of generally unsavory people to dislike. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Grade: B. Another day, and even more unpaid labor for Frank and Joe.

Danger in the Extreme (#152)

2008-05-28T13:54:00.000-04:00

Plot: Someone’s trying to sabotage the Hardys at the X Games — no, wait, sorry: the Max Games — as they compete. Also, the president’s son, not content to be a hanger on in his father’s life, is eager to be an extreme games poser. He’s just waiting — begging, really — to be kidnapped.

“Borrowing” from the past: The Hardys saved the president himself from a kidnap attempt in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). That was a billion-dollar ransom in 1982. Think of what they’d get for the president’s kid in 2008 (or 1998, in the case of this book).

Jamal Hawkins is ... : An ice climber and the Hardys’ personal pilot. Now no longer do Frank and Joe have to pay someone to be at their beck and call as their pilot and friend. They can just have the black man do it instead.

For those who are curious: Joe’s event is the snowcross (think motocross on snowmobiles), while Frank competes in the ice climb. Joe wins his event, while Frank finishes third (Jamal is second). They were scheduled to compete in the sky-surfing, with Frank doing stunts and Joe as his cameraman, but they skipped it to go skiing with the president’s son.

Inspiration for the Future: In the Extreme Danger, the first book in the new Hardy Boys series (Undercover Brothers), Frank and Joe participate in the summer X-Games — no, wait, sorry: the Big Air Games. Come to think of it, there’s a slight similarity between the titles.

Opinions: There’s something incredibly wrong about Frank and Joe using “hip” slang. Just calling each other “bro” is ... creepy. Forearm bashes are inappropriate touching in Bayport, I believe, yet they do it anyway.

And what’s the use of being in the Winter X Games — sorry, Max Games, forgot — if you can’t get the chicks? The brothers get no attention from females, not even fellow competitors (which is rectified in Extreme Danger, by the way). Iola and Callie don’t even show up. Frank and Joe end up with ... the president’s son. Oops.

Also, for future reference: it’s tough to sell xtreme athletes as perpetrators of an intricate kidnapping plot. Outside the movie XXX, xtreme athletes just aren’t that motivated. Insert marijuana joke here. Weirdly, a friend of the conspirators is “questioned” by agents, but it’s never resolved whether her protestations of innocence are true or rather a dangerous felon lying to save herself. Since this is a Hardy Boys book, the former is more likely.

Frank and Joe get medals from the president himself, which is more than they got when they rescued the president from a kidnapping attempt. One thing I’m sure of: unlike some proud mothers, Laura would have no trouble picking out what to wear for a high-level medal ceremony. Her husband and sons have been through it so many times before (like, for instance, in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, #37, when they received an award from the president of Cuba), that she probably has an outfit in the closet just waiting. And she probably wore it the week before, too.

Grade: C. Major demerits for the hip slang, bro.

Slam Dunk Sabotage (#140)

2008-05-24T01:25:00.000-04:00

The first in my series of reviews of Hardy Boys Digests, which originally appeared on my previous site, The Fagan Freehold:

So in Slam Dunk Sabotage by Franklin W. Dixon —

Why? Well, it was cheap at the Green Valley Book Fair. I mean, cheap. And I like Hardy Boys books —

Hardy Boys. Yes, really. I can’t explain. We all have our quirks. Yes, that’s a fairly odd one, but some people paint their bodies weird colors, then pay a lot more money to watch a sporting event. Those people show up on national TV. I think I can afford to indulge this oddity in private.

Anyway. Hardy Boy books. There’s not really any point in reviewing these books — they defy rational analysis, what with their 1-D characters and stock plots. (Well, the Hardy Boys, tools of the establishment, don’t really defy anything, come to think of it. Except when they’re told to keep their nose out of a case. Then they can’t wait to defy, defy, defy, regardless whether the person warning them be a cop or criminal. They might listen to their father, Fenton, but in that case, he’ll generally get captured or near-fatally wounded for the hubris of trying to rein in his children of destiny.)

But anyway, here’s Slam Dunk Sabotage:

Plot: Someone’s trying to keep the Bayport Bombers from winning the conference championship in basketball, and they won’t stop at violence.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe don’t play basketball as often as they do other sports, oddly enough. (The Hardys are five-sport athletes, in case you didn’t know, a feat that’s somewhere between groin-strainingly difficult and impossible.) They played hoops in The Voodoo Plot (#72). Then, they won the area basketball championship over Hopkinsville.

Jamal Hawkins is ...: Frank and Joe’s friend, but he’s also a player on the rival Rocky River Rockets (what an awful name). Hey, what a surprise — the black kid plays basketball!

Opinions: There’s a decent mystery here about who wants to sabotage the Bayport Bombers, even if the suspects are fairly obvious. (Then again, what was I expecting? This isn’t exactly a thriller with a twist at the end.) The plot is decent enough, combining high school rivalries with a plausible amount of teenage violence. When the Hardys are around, though, plausible amounts of violence are relative; Biff gets dosed with rat poison, after all.

Whoever Franklin W. Dixon was for this book, his (or her) knowledge of basketball was abysmal, at best. Unforgivable, really — basketball isn’t exactly an obscure sport, and the editor should have picked up on something even if the author was clueless.

But it is impressive that there is a great deal of detail on the Bayport Bombers’ drive for the conference championship — usually, sports is a distraction, but here it’s a goal for the Hardys. Of course, even that’s fishy. It’s unlikely there would be a playoff game between two schools for the conference championship unless the championship was necessary to advance to another level of the postseason; the state basketball tournament, for instance. Otherwise, tiebreakers would be used, or the the tied teams would be declared co-champions. The interrupted game would be replayed from the moment the lights went out rather than in toto, if the game would have been delayed any longer than it took to restore power.

Grade: C+. More athletes should try rat-poison laced sports drink. It’s strychnine-riffic! Besides, it can’t be any worse than Gatorade.