Foul Play (Undercover Brothers #19)

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 burned so badly 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

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)

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.” (EDIT: In Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84), Joe is the captain of the swim team and holds the “best time in the hundred-meter freestyle.” Not sure how I missed that.) 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)

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

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)

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)

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. I've detailed their flying experience 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. Yes, Elvis did a little cliff diving in his 1963 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 them 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)

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)

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)

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?

(ETA: It turns out this is a reference to the previous book, Trick-or-Trouble. Frank and Joe (and Callie) are awarded flying lessons as a reward for discovering who was sabotaging a Halloween prize contest, although they solved it only as the contest was ending and most of the possible damage was done.)

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)

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)

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)

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!

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)

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)

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)

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!