Fear on Wheels (#108)

Fear on Wheels is a very good digest, which I wasn’t expecting. I admit: I don’t see the appeal of automobile stunt shows, and I didn’t relish the thought of reading about the late 20th century’s equivalent of the traveling circus. Still, I ended up enjoying the book.

Grant Tucker’s Hot Rod, 4x4 and Motorcycle Show is being threatened by an extortionist. The show has been afflicted with minor accidents recently, and Tucker shows Frank and Joe a letter demanding a quarter-million dollar payoff to prevent further problems. Joe helpfully identifies it as an extortion note. Heartened by Joe’s obvious skills, Tucker sends the Hardy brothers out undercover (posing as PR interns) to find the extortionist. When Frank asks what Tucker wants the boys to do when they find the culprit, Tucker tells them, “You do what you have to do” (7), which tells me Tucker might have a more informal relation to justice than the Hardys.

Given the number of accidents that have happened already, Frank and Joe suspect it’s an inside job. So: On your marks, get set, suspects!

• Tucker himself. A cop Fenton knows investigated a complaint by two investors against Tucker but found nothing; he couldn’t tell whether Tucker was “too clever or too honest” (36). Tucker is vague about the details of the extortion note — how it was delivered, what kind of envelope it came in, where the envelope is now. (Also, he hires Frank and Joe instead of real detectives, although Frank and Joe don’t consider that.) Frank suggests Tucker might have faked the extortion note to embezzle the money.
  
• Fat Dave and the Skulls. The Skulls, who are more a bunch of brawlers than the criminal cartel you might have seen on Sons of Anarchy, seem determined to disturb Tucker’s show. The obvious argument against them is that a member of the biker gang would be easily spotted walking backstage at the show; Frank and Joe suspect the Skulls might have an inside man.
  
• Jessica Derey, a motorcycle stunt rider. Frank and Joe spot someone dressed like her riding with the Skulls, and they think they see her helmet at the Skulls’ clubhouse. Rumors say she wants a large sum of money to film a TV pilot featuring motorcycles. During one of her practices, she takes a spill as she avoids a ramp coated with oil, but Frank is skeptical she could have seen the oil at the distance she claims.
  
• Matt Nazer, the chief mechanic. A former stunt rider himself, he became part of the crew after an accident reduced the range of motion on his knee. Frank and Joe catch him in the garage with a crowbar at night. Plus, he has a suspicious last name. Frank and Joe don’t mention this, but that’s probably because they live in a pre-9/11 world.
  
• Bruce Sears. Bruce had a stunt show with Keith that folded. Once great friends with Keith, Bruce seems to hate him now and pulls pranks on him. (Keith returns the favor.) Frank, Joe, and Matt find him putting a firecracker in Keith’s dragster one night after everyone else has left. On the other, the wheel flies off his deuce coupe during a practice, and he barely manages to keep the car under control.
  
• Keith Helm, “the Dragging King of the Quarter Mile.” Why isn’t he just the “King of the Quarter Mile”? Anyone who knows about drag racing understands what the “quarter mile” means. Anyway, his dangerous prank rivalry with Bruce makes him a suspect, and Frank and Joe are attacked while on an errand Keith allegedly summoned them for. Also, he has a Flying Skulls tattoo on his shoulder.

The most obvious suspects are the Flying Skulls, a motorcycle gang headed by Fat Dave. They’ve caused trouble for Tucker before, and the day before Tucker’s first show at the Bayport Arena, the gang shows up, looking for trouble. But Frank thinks quickly, and he offers the Skulls free tickets to the first show (the non-televised one). Mollified, Fat Dave and the Skulls drive away.

That’s the first of many good decisions Frank and Joe make in Fear. In addition to actually investigating — questioning suspects, trailing them, sitting on stake outs — Frank and Joe consult Fenton. Good heavens! He fills them in on the Flying Skulls and Tucker, but he forces them to do their own work by not giving them too much information. Later, they do the unthinkable: they accelerate through a yellow light while pursuing a suspect.

Frank and Joe also use their basement lab! The first time their lab was placed in the basement was in The Twisted Claw (#18), when it was specifically designated a fingerprint lab. The basement lab showed up numerous times, with more equipment added: a darkroom, a two-way radio, a tool shop. In The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39), the basement was part lab, part rec room, and after that, the lab was moved above the garage. The basement became solely a rec room until The Sting of the Scorpion (#58), when it was used for fingerprinting once again. But the lab went back to the loft above the garage after that.

Later in the case, Frank and Joe are sent out to pick up Keith, who allegedly needs a tow. But when they get to their destination, they are confronted by a bunch of Skulls. Frank and Joe are restrained by some of the gang while one of them walks up to Frank and Joe with a wrench. The head thug says he’s going to give Frank and Joe a “free sample” of what Skulls plan to give Tucker if he doesn’t play ball with the Skulls. It’s a frightening moment; even though it’s obvious Frank and Joe aren’t going to get wrenched, the narration sells the possibility, in part by not giving readers long enough to think about how Frank and Joe are going to escape. Instead of clobbering the Hardys, though, the Skull smashes the tow truck’s windows.

This doesn’t improve Frank and Joe’s opinion of the Skulls, but Tucker appeases the motorcycle gang by hiring them as security at the Saturday-night, live-on-TV show. This immediately makes me think of the Hell’s Angels providing security for the Rolling Stones at Altamont, but thankfully, events don’t spiral out of control. As it turns out, the Flaming Skulls seem to be competent at keeping people in line. The Skulls also have another power, one they share with the Hardy boys: They can have conversations over the roar of motorcycles, which they use to taunt stunt riders at the Bayport Arena. This causes Frank to give Joe a “disgusted” look (61), although it’s unclear whether his disgust is because of the insults or the Skulls appropriating the boys’ abilities.

Chet blows their cover when he runs into them at a diner, although there’s no way he could have known the Hardys were undercover. (Lesson: Always tell Chet when you’re undercover.) Someone attacks their van, giving them a flat tire. Frank and Joe manage to prevent more flat tires because of the warning given by the weakest car alarm ever, which gives off a “faint peep! peep!” (110), presumably from a key fob. Later, a driverless truck is aimed at them, Tucker, and Jessica, and they manage to escape, with Joe performing a ridiculous stunt to stop the truck.

After following a man who had a mysterious meeting with Keith and Bruce and asking clever questions at the man’s hotel, Frank and Joe discover what Keith and Bruce’s deal is: they’re still friends, but they are pretending to have a rivalry to provide some juice when they jump to another show. All their little “accidents” — even Bruce losing his wheel — were in service of this fake rivalry. Tucker is more amused than dismayed by their plan.

The extortion payoff is scheduled to happen during the big TV show. Frank makes the drop while Joe hides in a nearby truck bed. When he sees someone approach the drop point, he jumps out, surprising Jessica, who heard about the drop and wanted to help. Unfortunately, they are surprised by the extortionist, who clubs them both and locks them in a car truck. Even worse, the car is scheduled to be crushed by the monster truck Bigfoot. Frank rescues the two, but not before the money is taken and a Flying Skull bracelet left nearby. With the help of the Flying Skulls and crew, the backstage is searched and sealed, allowing Frank and Joe to reveal Matt, who stopped performing not because of his injury but because he lost his nerve, as the culprit. Matt is arrested, although Tucker promises to pay for his lawyer.

On the way home, Frank and Joe are given an escort by the Flaming Skulls, showing their thanks for finding the real culprit after Matt tried to frame them. As far as rewards go, the gratitude of a motorcycle gang is pretty good one. (Given the trouble the brothers had with motorcycle gangs in The Shattered Helmet (#52) and The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60), having some influence with bikers might help them avoid some pain.)