Three-Ring Terror (#111)

In 2016, it’s kinda sad to read about the Hardy Boys working a circus mystery.

In the Hardys’ heyday, circuses and the Hardy Boys series were extremely popular. But by 1991, when Three-Ring Terror was published, neither had the cachet they previously held. The Hardy Boys were still popular, of course, but with the original series up to #111 and a dozen titles being published per year across two series, none of the individual books felt as special as they once had. At the same time, the number of circuses was shrinking as their costs rose and ticket sales fell. Today, more than a decade and a half into the 21st century, the Hardy Boys have had their second reboot in less than a decade and seem to be looking for a hook that will attract young readers, while ethical concerns (like the treatment of animals) are chipping away at what little appeal the modern profusion of entertainment options have left circuses.

I believe I’m going to try to forget about that line of thinking and start talking about what happens in the book.

Anyway: Three-Ring Terror. The cover makes it look like some sort of cloning and / or time travel book, with Frank and Joe fighting in the background while Frank and Joe perform on the trapeze in the foreground. But that’s not what the story is about!

Chet wants to be clown, and when the Montero Brothers Circus hits the Bayport Arena with their circus training program, he has his chance. He gets a “clown internship” (4), and he’s planning to spend the entire winter vacation learning the trade; when I was a kid, that would have been extremely unimpressive, as winter vacation was usually about ten days long if you counted Christmas and New Year’s Day. Anyway, Chet’s so eager that Frank and Joe don’t remind him of his numerous hobbies or his propensity for dropping them. In fact, they’re sold on his enthusiasm being more or less permanent: “Boy, you’re serious about this clowning thing,” Frank says after letting out a whistle (26).

Actually, Chet’s already been a clown before, performing as Chesterton the Great for Solo’s Super Carnival in The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47). The last time Chet worked for a circus, in Track of the Zombie (#71), he manned the refreshment stand for the Big Top Circus, which seems like a step back. On the other hand, he planned to stick with the circus for the entire summer, along with Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, and Tony Prito, so who knows what he got up to? OK, he probably quit after two weeks, either because something else caught his fancy or the Hardys needed his help, but the possibility remains he might have performed in some capacity at the Big Top Circus.

When the Hardys first are introduced to Montero Bros. Circus, Frank and Joe are amazed by the tiger act, although whenever tigers pop up in a Hardy Boys book, I can’t help but remember the boys bringing down a tiger by winging rocks at it in the original Disappearing Floor (#19). The tiger is forgotten when a mystery gets its hooks into them: a juggler drops a ball covered with rhinestones and gropes through Chet’s bag for it, and when Frank confronts the juggler about him rifling through Chet’s stuff, the juggler pushes Frank into the refreshment table and makes a break for it. The juggler escapes easily, while Frank is soaked with soda and punch — ha! — but the boys find a secret code inside the ball: CN / 1220, JL / 103, GU / 214.

The boys are on their own, as Fenton is in Philadelphia “to run a check on someone” at police headquarters (perhaps calling in a favor from Commissioner Andrew Crawford that his boys earned in Shield of Fear [#91]), and Gertrude and Laura are in New York to visit friends (23). They can’t consult ask their father for help, then, or even get a hot meal when their simple secret code mystery is superseded / confused by sabotage at the Montero Brothers Circus. OK: Paul Turner, dean of Circus U. and a member of the circus’s board of directors, doesn’t want to believe the series of accidents is anything malicious, but listen, all y’all, it’s sabotage.

Turner’s job is endangered as more “accidents” occur (such as short stilts being sawed partially through, causing Chet to fall *gasp* five feet), and Frank and Joe are stumped by the both the sabotage and the code. But that may be because their brains had a bad reaction to clown white or something: they find “Bo Costello” and “Clown Alley” remarkably funny names, for instance, and after Turner is stuck in a cannon, the opening of the barrel pointed out of reach above their heads, their rescue is delayed for the minutes it takes them to recall the ladder Turner just used to climb into the cannon. Their work ethic is also top-notch again: when they have an indication that something important, perhaps another act of sabotage, will happen at the circus the next day, they decide to take a night off and watch the circus instead: “One night’s not going to make a difference … we need some R and R [after less than two days of work],” Joe says (97).

Eventually, Frank and Joe link the letters in the code to three people: trapeze artists Carl Nash and Justine Leone and Turner’s assistant Georgianne Unger. Nash and Leone are just performers, but Turner thinks Unger might want to oust him in a circus coup so she can take his job. Turner also says Bo Costello, the director of admissions, would be a better choice to take his job.

(Note: “Circus coup” is one of the coolest things I’ve typed in a while.)

The revelation about the initials doesn’t shed any light on the code itself, so the brothers argue about the code’s purpose and meaning. Joe comes up with a cockamamie theory, but he defends it against his brother’s reasonable objections; when Frank comes up with his own hunches, Joe gleefully punches holes in them. It’s the rare sort of not-nice brotherly interaction between Frank and Joe that rings true while maintaining their partnership, and that’s very much to Three-Ring’s credit.

The only progress they make is to ID the juggler who dropped the ball, Ralph Rosen. The boys spot and chase him a couple of times, but he eludes them. The second time he escapes because Frank and Joe are in clown costumes, but they discover Rosen has just handed another rhinestone-encrusted ball to Leone, who admits she’s supposed to give the ball to Nash. There’s no code inside the ball, but one of its rhinestones does turn out to be a real diamond — so add jewel thefts to the crimes in the book.

Oh, about the clown costumes … early in the novel, Joe is adamant that he will not be a clown: “No way will I put on a clown costume,” he says (41). But he already has performed as a clown, as part of the Big Top Circus in Track of the Zombie. (He was also a clown for the school variety show in the same book.) When Chet invites them to the circus, Joe is afraid Chet will show up in his clown getup: “You wouldn’t embarrass us like that, would you?” (89). When Frank suggests wearing clown costumes to blend in, Joe says, “No way are you getting me in that [costume]” (106). Of course he wears the costume; he protests the wig and clown white separately, but gives way both times. Unfortunately, the comedy of the situation is underplayed, with the author not really referring back to Joe’s embarrassment after he dons the costume.

Back to the mystery: Nash is definitely implicated, as he also was the best suspect for a break-in at the Hardy home; the burglar fled through a window in a very trapeze-like move, and the thief roared away in a car with Texas plates. (Nash is from Texas.) Nash showed up to relieve Chet at the refreshment table the first night, after Rosen lost his juggling ball, so Frank and Joe surmise that might have been a botched handoff between Rosen and Nash. Since Costello assigned workers to the refreshment table, Frank and Joe use a safety pin to perform an investigatory B&E to Costello’s office. (Not even lockpicks! I’m disappointed Frank and Joe didn’t come prepared.) They note dates that correspond to numbers in the code — December 20, January 3, February 14 — marked on Costello’s calendar, and then the realize the letters correspond to appreciations for each city the circus is in on those days; Bayport is abbreviated BP, which becomes CN by moving the first letter one forward in the alphabet and the second two back, while Indianapolis goes from IN to JL and Fort Worth is transformed to FW and GU.

As soon as they make this revelation, Frank and Joe are discovered by Costello and Nash. They tie the two up while they admit the code refers to handoffs of stolen jewels; Costello fences the gems in a different city from the handoff. To get rid of the boys, Costello rigs a fireworks explosion in his office, then he and Nash take off. Frank and Joe manage to escape before the pyrotechnics go off, of course, and they easily find Costello and Nash, who aren’t even trying to hide.

The criminals make a break for it, and they climb onto the trapeze to … well, it’s not really clear what the two are going to do after making it onto the trapeze platforms. The narration hints they’re going to try to escape on a catwalk, but that’s not clear. The brothers climb up the trapeze after them and manage to subdue the crooks. This sounds absurd — two newcomers to the trapeze being able to work at such a height and outfight experienced trapeze artists — but Joe and Frank worked the trapeze in “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus in the original Clue of the Broken Blade.

Rosen isn’t captured at the end, most of the evidence the boys needed was in Costello’s office when it blew up, and no one explained why Costello’s gang needed such complicated handoffs, but other than that, everything’s wrapped up neatly. Great job, kids!