“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, Frank and Joe faced off against pumas / cougars / mountain lions in The Clue of the Screeching Owl (#41) and the only time Frank and Joe dealt with a cougar is in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), although the creature is shot before Frank and Joe see it in Express. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment