The Pacific Conspiracy (Casefiles #78)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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