A Few More Notes

Wipeout (#96) has a character named Emil Molitor, who turns out to be the book’s villain. The name made me think of Paul Molitor, a baseball player who played most of his Hall of Fame career for the Milwaukee Brewers in the ‘80s. I have a feeling another Hardy Boys book mentioned a few members of those ‘80s Brewers teams, but I can’t remember which, and I can’t find it in my notes. Can anybody help me out here?

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You may have noticed I included the price tag on the image of Wipeout’s cover. That’s my copy, and I like those little reminders of the book’s past. I had no idea what “Hills” was, but I like knowing the book was sold by Hills at a discount. (Hills was a discount department store chain founded in Ohio in 1957; it was regionally successful, but it was bought out by Ames in 1999. Ames went out of business in 2002.) I also appreciate that Hardy Boys books were, at that time — a time I remember! — sold at full price for $3.50. (I also like previous owners’ names printed or carefully signed inside the front cover or on the front flyleaf; it gives the book a bit of history. But former library copies are right out; those things are used and abused.)

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Early in Spark of Suspicion (#98), the previous book, Cast of Criminals (#97), is mentioned. I bring this up for two reasons: 1) most of the digests don’t mention the books preceding or succeeding them, and ii) because it’s taken only a dozen books for that to become strange. Is Cast of Criminals mentioned in Spark because the two books share an author, or was it because of an editorial mandate to tighten references between the books? Spark doesn’t go so far as to mention the next book (Dungeon of Doom) at the end like the books in the Stratemeyer Syndicate days did.

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Whoever wrote Danger on the Air (#95) may have also written Spark of Suspicion (#98). Besides WBPT being in both books, Mr. Pizza appears as well. More superficially, both books take place in Bayport. It’s possible the editor tied two books close together in sequence together, but I think it’s more likely that a single author is the link.

But perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions. The narration also mentions the Liberty Bell Diner. The boys and Fenton stayed in the Liberty Bell Inn in Shield of Fear. I linked that book’s authorship to Vincent Buranelli because the author named motels after obvious points of reference for tourists. (Buranelli did the same in INSERT HERE.) The use of “Liberty Bell” for a place for travelers to stay makes Buranelli a suspect for the authorship of Spark of Suspicion. But Spark calls Phil Cohen “lanky”; Buranelli knew he was “slight” in Danger on Vampire Trail. On the other hand, he called Phil “wiry” in The Witchmaster’s Key, and “slight” could be considered a synonym for “thin” rather than “thin and small.” Also, almost twenty years separate Spark and Danger … Hmm. This isn’t as far-fetched as I thought.

On the other hand, none of the evidence I mentioned rules out a decent editor’s involvement.

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I didn’t want to mention this in my post on Spark because it seemed to demand more seriousness than that post could carry off, but the book’s ending reads much differently after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The parallels are undeniable: a bomber with a badly thought-out grudge decides to explode a bomb that will hurt random people at a public celebration of a local patriotic holiday. The differences are that the Boston Marathon attack was real and that Hardys, being fictional, were able to wrap up things cleanly without anyone being harmed.