Eye on Crime (#153)

I picked up Eye on Crime while killing time in a northern Virginia mall — Crystal City? — half a year after the book came out (December 1998). It was the first of the post-Syndicate digests that I had read, and I wasn’t that impressed by any aspect of the book. Still, I remembered the general plot: A TV variety-show host, alternately described as “fast becoming one of the hottest” things on TV by the narrator (1) and “two-bit” (110) by the Hardys, hypnotizes teenagers into enacting various action scenarios, which are then edited into security footage to implicate the teens for jewel robberies. It’s ridiculous; that’s the reason I remembered it.

Rereading Eye, though, after covering my gaps in the original canon and reading dozens of digests and other Hardy series, I am fascinated by the dynamics between the Hardys and their girlfriends. The first fifteen pages or so are portraits of teen relationships that are somewhere between normal and careening toward disaster. (Although from what I remember, “careening toward disaster” is pretty normal for teenage dating relationships too.) Frank and Joe have taken Callie and Iola to a taping of the Monty Mania TV show, which is hosted by the aforementioned hypnotist. The boys start by ignoring their girlfriends to read the newspaper (Bayport Times, this time). Frank apologizes, blaming the front-page news, but Iola (of course) asks, “And this excuses your poor behavior now?” (2).

And rather than taking this as a hint to socialize, like a normal teen — hell, a normal person — Frank and Joe immediately go back to the newspaper. I thought Iola had Joe under some sort of control, but obviously not.

Later, when Iola and Callie complain about how Frank and Joe’s mystery solving cuts into their relationship time, Joe decides to play relationship chicken: “Are you getting jealous? … Do you miss us that much?” (4). Iola snickers at the idea, but the boys are convinced it’s true, even after both girls decline Frank’s offer to include them in crimesolving. The discussion (from Frank and Joe’s POV) / argument (from the girls’) ends as “Callie and Iola sneered at the brothers, putting on their grimmest we-don’t-find-you-funny looks” (5).

During the show, Callie and Iola volunteer to be hypnotized, even though they’ve been told audience members who appear on the show will have to stay after the show, and the foursome have agreed to meet Chet and Tony at the Pizza Palace. Frank’s solution? He and Joe will abandon the girls, letting Callie and Iola catch up with the rest of them at the Pizza Palace.

Frank … Frank, Frank, Frank. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Your girlfriend has just complained about not seeing enough of you, about your being emotionally and physically distant. The correct answer is you call the Pizza Palace on a payphone or your cell phone to let Chet and Tony know you will be late, then WAIT FOR YOUR GIRLFRIENDS.

Then Frank pulls another weird move, as if he’s already trying to shift the blame for the failure of the relationship: When the host of Monty Mania asks Frank and Joe if he can “steal” their girlfriends, Frank says, “Seems to be the theme of the day” (9). This is the first time anything like this has come up! And anyway, other than kidnapping, you can’t really steal a romantic partner. Women and girls have agency, Frank.

Then Frank and Joe participate in Iola’s and Callie’s hypnotic humiliation, with Joe saying the girls should be made to impersonate their favorite animals. Later, while still under hypnotic control, Callie and Iola admit they are envious of Frank and Joe’s crimesolving activities and wish they could be more like the brothers. That’s kinda creepy — or it would be if the text (and most of the other books) indicated this were true, but nothing in the rest of Eye on Crime indicates they want to be like Frank and Joe.

Joe wants to use this admission against Callie and Iola — “rub it in a little” (13) — but Frank tells him not to. Joe: relationships are frequently a power struggle. You can’t use your ammunition willy-nilly. You have to save it up — and given Iola’s strong will, you’ll need all the help you can get.

Or maybe discretion is better: When Iola comes home late and Joe hopes “everything is OK,” she says, “I’m fine” (26). The next day, when Frank and Joe express concern, Iola asks, “What could possibly be wrong?,” and Callie says, “Nothing is wrong” (28). If you have to ask, you’re already doomed, Frank and Joe.

(Speaking of creepy, while on the subject of relationships: Chet and Iola’s father “looked like an older version of his son,” while their mother is “a dead ringer for her daughter” [23]. Did the Mortons procreate asexually, like through mitosis or by budding?)

And that’s about the only glance we get at the Hardys’ romantic relationships. We learn Callie and Iola are friendly but not close friends (a characterization that clashes with previous books), and Callie and Iola are more emotionally demonstrative (embraces) than usual after the boys come to their investigative rescue. But that’s not enough to satisfy the reader’s appetite after the glimpse we get — not that I buy all that we are told, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

*****

The rest of the story isn’t much. Footage of the hypnotized Iola and Callie is spliced into security footage of a robbed jewelry story, just as it was for a pair of baseball players at rival Shoreham High, who are also accused of being jewel thieves. Frank and Joe are slow to catch on, but while sticking their beaks into crime scenes and other people’s private property, the Hardys realize TV host Monty Andrews and his hypnotism is a key element to the crimes, as is the robbery victims’ reliance on Eye Spy Security. After Frank and Joe saves Andrews from a pair of goons, Andrews tells them he’s a patsy. He owes a lot of money at high interest to Ronald Johnson, the owner of Eye Spy and a loan shark, and Andrews’s hypnosis scenarios, focusing on teen audience members, were dictated by Johnson.

The Hardys’ solution? Allow themselves to be hypnotized, and then … profit? Iola and Callie are supposed to keep an eye on Frank and Joe and give them an alibi (probably?), but hypnotized Joe disables the girls’ car, and the Hardys disappear for the night. (They don’t have Chet and Tony, who wait at the Hardy home, or Fenton do anything.) Frank and Joe are arrested for robbing a furrier, with evidence planted in their van, but after smirking at the cops, making bail, and snooping at Eye Spy, they figure out the next target and watch Andrews’s goons rip off another jewelry store. The Hardys and their friends follow the goons back to their hideout, and even though Chet and Tony are captured because they don’t follow Frank and Joe’s orders, Frank and Joe get the goons to confess the entire scheme, and the teens capture the goons. Iola even whacks one of them over the head with a lamp.

Even though no direct evidence links Johnson to the crimes, the teens are all in the clear. Frank and Joe are back at school the next day, ready to play Shoreham. Before the game, Shoreham’s exonerated players offer Frank and Joe an autographed baseball and bat. It’s a bit of shade thrown at the boys in addition to a thank you: The items are autographed by the defending state champions from Shoreham High School.

*****

Although I commend the Dixon for his / her relationship work despite Simon & Schuster’s romantic strictures, she / he shows some inexperience with the series and how high school works:

• In Eye on Crime, Tony is a waiter at the Pizza Palace, rather than a manager at Mr. Pizza; interestingly, Pizza Palace was mentioned in the revised Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), but many digests have used Mr. Pizza as a setting: Danger on the Air (#95), Spark of Suspicion (#98), Terminal Shock (#102), The Prime-Time Crime (#109), Rock ‘n’ Roll Renegades (#116), The Mark of the Blue Tattoo (#146), Trick-or-Trouble (#175), and probably others. Mr. Pizza is also mentioned in Dungeon of Doom (#99) and The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping (#120), The Crisscross Crime (#150), and Kickoff to Danger (#170). Mr. Pizza has been in too many books to ignore, is what I guess I’m saying.
  
  
• Monty Mania is filmed at WBAY, which was a rock-format radio station the only time it was previously mentioned (Program for Destruction, #87). WBPT is Bayport’s main TV station, featured in Danger on the Air, Spark of Suspicion, The Prime-Time Crime (#109), and Beyond the Law (Casefiles #55).
  
  
• Shoreham started baseball practices a week before Bayport. When schools can start their practices is almost always set by a state athletic committee, and any coach who didn’t start his or her own practices with a few days of that date would be seen as derelict in duty to their students and employers and / or incredibly lazy. The latter seems likely; the day after Bayport’s first baseball practice, Bayport is scheduled to play Shoreham … and then play them again the day after that. High schools don’t normally have games on back-to-back days, especially against the same team, unless they are in a tournament or similar competition.
  
  
• Unlike in The Crisscross Crime, Biff is not the Bayport catcher. As far as the text goes, he isn’t on the team at all, although previously unseen characters Michael Shannon (catcher), Novick (pitcher), and Gitenstein are.
  
  
• Chief Collig is paranoid about teenage gangs infiltrating Bayport, going to extraordinary lengths to curb the Shaws’ and Mortons’ free speech and right to association. (I’m pretty sure the police don’t have the authority to institute a gag order by themselves, but I admit I may be wrong; New York or Bayport may have some gang / organized crime statute on the books to prevent accused criminals from talking to those who might be able to help with their defense.) But if teen gangs are appearing in Bayport, it would not be a new development. The Mark of the Blue Tattoo, which came out the year before Eye on Crime, was entirely about teen gangs in Bayport High School, and although Frank and Joe are seen as a power nexus within the high school cosmology, they were clearly not seen as a gang per se.
  
  
• When Chet tells Joe to let nothing happens to Iola and Callie, Joe says, “Never have” (34-5). Obviously, that’s not true in the Casefiles, in which Iola was killed in the first book; in that light, I’d say Joe’s comment is an ironic statement.

*****

This Dixon also has a proclivity to get too clever with names. BHS’s baseball coach is Coach Tarkanian; Jerry Tarkanian was the basketball coach for UNLV from 1973 to 1992, winning an NCAA national championship in 1990. (He also briefly coached the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs in 1992, then returned to the NCAA with Fresno State from 1995-2002.)

One of the wrongly accused Shoreham players is named Pepper Wingfoot. The surname is really strange; the only place I’ve ever seen it before in the Fantastic Four comics from Marvel, where Wyatt Wingfoot is a friend of the Human Torch and the Fantastic Four. Given that association, I wonder if “Pepper” came from Iron Man’s secretary / on-and-off girlfriend, Pepper Potts. On the other hand, I have no idea where the name of his partner-in-non-crime, Roberto Rojas (Robert Red?), comes from.

This Dixon also named a goon “Spicolli,” which I thought was a tribute to the character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But that character’s name was spelled with only one L, and given that his partner in goon-itude was “Zybysko,” it’s more likely the names were chosen for wrestlers Larry Zybysko and Louie Spicolli, who feuded in the mid- to late ‘90s WCW.

There is a limit to the Dixon’s cleverness: One of the robbed jewelry stores is “Golden Palace,” which sounds like it should be selling Chinese food instead.

The Rocky Road to Revenge (#151)

My first disappointment with The Rocky Road to Revenge is that it contains no revenge. I admit: The title is a good one, but it doesn’t fit the story. The only attempt “revenge” in the story is a botched extortion scheme that ends up with the blackmailer abducted and nearly murdered.

The second disappointment is that Rocky Road is a clear attempt to cash in on the X-Files craze in the late ‘90s, yet nothing about the title or front cover gives any indication of that. It’s a waste, even if the back cover copy does try to get the UFO angle in the book across … although even the back cover botches the details, as the second paragraph starts, “It begins with a strange green light in the sky.” No, the book clearly says it’s an orange light: “The color reminded Joe of a Halloween pumpkin” (7).

The mystery involves abductions in Colorado, where Frank and Joe are spending part of the summer with a classmate, Terry Taylor, who is working at a resort. (I don’t think many parents who would allow their teenage sons to visit a classmate of the opposite sex more than halfway across the country without adult supervision, but we know Laura and Fenton trust / have abandoned all responsibility for Frank and Joe.) Rocky Road pushes the theory that the victims were taken by aliens, linking the disappearances with the bright orange light seen in the Colorado skies during the first chapter.

Rocky Road hits most of the highlights of UFOs and UFO abduction that any X-Files fan would know: electrical failures, lost time and fuzzy memories of the abduction, abandoned vehicles on deserted roads, bright lights. Frank and Joe debate the alien-abduction theory, with lunkhead Joe pushing the idea, and Frank batting it aside. Disappointingly, the experts they talk to don’t hit some of the points real experts on UFOlogy would; Rocky Road doesn’t mention the “Wow!” signal when discussing evidence of alien life gathered by radio telescopes, no one mentions the words “panspermia” or “Fermi paradox” (although Joe describes both ideas to bolster his claims), and the word “probe” is never once mentioned in relation to alien abductions.

The final disappointment is that Rocky Road plays the alien angle too straight. This is a Hardy Boys book, not a serious novel, and no one should expect a Hardy Boys book to be rooted in strict reality. I wanted a winking acknowledgement that the orange light or the mysterious night hobo who always wore sunglasses had something alien about them; I wanted Alex Trebek as a man in black. Instead, Rocky Road drops both the light and drifter, referencing the light on the final page in the same way the original Disappearing Floor (#19) picked up the mystery of its beginning pages, ending with the boys promising to find Harry Tanwick.

*****

After the orange light in the sky gets the attention of the Hardys, Terry, and everyone else at the Silver Crest resort and the nearby town of Parnassa, Colo., the Silver Crest’s owner, Clay Robinson, disappears, his jeep abandoned on the side of a lonely road. Local UFOlogist (and former SETI scientist) Alistair Sykes takes down eyewitness accounts of the lights, exposits the basics of UFOlogy to the Hardys, and plays up Robinson’s disappearance as a possible alien abduction to the local press (such as it is). Soon after, though, Sykes vanishes as well, and that means it’s time for a Reprobate Roll Call:

1. Myra Hart and Bev Kominski, two former employees of Silver Crest and “drifters” (12). Robinson fired them for stealing from his office, and the two bear a grudge against him (and Terry, who reported seeing them exit Robinson’s office at the time of the theft). After denying the theft through most of the book, Myra and Beverly eventually claim they were only getting compensation for overtime Robinson declined to pay them. They also have no regard for anyone’s personal safety; they puncture a raft so that it will cause problems in the middle of the rapids, and while riding bicycles, they swing wide on a blind curve, causing Frank to either plow into them or drive off the cliff. (He uses his amazing driving ability to put Robinson’s jeep into a controlled sideways skid instead.) Myra also strands Joe and Terry on a ski lift for a while.
   
   
2. Max Jagowitz, general store owner and local crank. Jagowitz is opposed to Robinson’s plan to create a ski resort called the Golden Dream. As a member of the local council, he’s steamed that Robinson managed to get the votes for the approval of the Golden Dream despite his opposition. (He essentially accuses those who voted for Robinson’s development of corruption. Democracy!) Jagowitz lies about his family history, claiming they emigrated to America in 1889 from Yugoslavia, even though Yugoslavia didn’t exist until the Treaty of Versailles, thirty years later, and didn’t exist when the book was written either. He also keeps accusing Joe of stealing a bag of potato chips, although to be fair, Joe should have waited Jagowitz to ring up his purchase rather than just dropping a couple of quarters on the counter.
   
   
3. Clay Robinson. Clay’s a genial fellow, and Stella, his dog, loves him, but he’s ruffled a few feathers getting the Golden Dream project approved. Sykes doesn’t like him either, making cryptic comments about Robinson stealing moonstones. Also, Robinson tells the Hardys, “When Clay Robinson gets it into his head to do something, by golly, he does it. Always remember that, boys. Stick to your guns, no matter what” (6). Frank says it’s good advice, and I know it sounds that way in a “never give up on your dreams” sense, but taken to its extremes, it becomes delusional or psychopathic. Sure, he disappears early in the book, but he could be staging his abduction for nefarious purposes.
   
   
4. Alistair Sykes, a scientist / UFOlogist. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence let him go after their funding was cut — according to him — and now he’s working from his home, with a radio telescope and equipment he paid for himself. He too has an (unspecified) grudge against Robinson, so perhaps he abducted a man he doesn’t like to play up the alien-abduction angle and even used his own abduction to drum up publicity and the funding he needs for his work.
   
   
5. Aliens! No, not really — but what’s up with that weird guy who keeps wandering around at night in sunglasses?

After Robinson disappears, Frank and Joe uncharacteristically agree to call the cops, but Sgt. Bunt and his team inspire no confidence. Terry asks the Hardys to investigate, even though she claims she’s not supposed to know they’re detectives. “Word gets around school,” she says, and the narration claims, “They tried to keep it quiet” (32). This is in contrast to The Ice-Cold Case (#148), just three books before, when even a classmate’s father knows they’re detectives.

(Speaking of uncharacteristic, Frank is the B&E King this book rather than Joe; Frank uses his lockpicks to break into a couple of places, setting off the burglar alarm in one location. Also uncharacteristic: When their raft is sabotaged, Frank gets dumped into the water, which causes Joe to pity him: “It could have happened to anyone” [30], which is the Hardys’ version of “Don’t worry: It happens to all guys.” Perhaps he should pity Frank — he and Joe were outstanding white-water rafters in The Roaring River Mystery (#80], so falling out of a raft is a huge step down for him.)

They visit with Sykes and learn that despite all his fancy equipment and learning, he’s decided that an invented language, known only by him, is the best way to communicate with aliens, and he almost concludes a powerful Mexican radio station playing salsa music is an alien signal. Later, after a possibly alien-caused electrical outage at the Silver Crest, he disappears, with only an open window to suggest where he went.

Not uncharacteristic is Joe’s ability to put himself in danger. Joe and Terry visit Moondance Peak to sightsee and give themselves something to do while Terry exposits to Joe about the area and Robinson. (There’s no romance here, no, no! Joe has no hormones — or at least not the ones that would cause a teenage boy to react when alone with a female classmate in a beautiful setting.) While Joe and Terry are on the way down, Myra, the ski-lift operator, shuts the lift down; Joe tries to climb down a nearby pole but nearly falls to his death instead. The lift starts up again soon after. This almost exactly like what happened in Carnival of Crime (#122), when Joe almost falls to his death getting out of his gondola on a stalled Ferris wheel to help a kid who doesn’t actually need his help.

Because of his belief that the government is concealing proof of aliens, Joe cashes in some of Fenton’s chips with his friend, General Radman. Radman sets up a meeting with General Webster at NORAD, who essentially tells the boys to stop grasping at straws and act like rational adults rather than conspiracy freaks. Joe is more or less satisfied, and we all have to agree as taxpayers that this hour-long conference, soothing the paranoia of a teenage boy, is a great use of a military officer’s time and expertise.

On their way back to Silver Crest, Frank is forced to stop on a lonely road by a bright light. After a “quick jab of pain” (107), Frank loses consciousness; when he awakens, Joe is missing, and he claims something had hit him over the head. (Nothing hit him in the head; he was jabbed with a knockout drug.) Frank and Terry immediately confront Myra and Bev; Frank thinks they are “downright mean and capable of just about anything” (113), and I can’t decide if that’s a damning statement from Frank (he’s seen a lot of crimes) or if Frank’s imagination is so limited he can’t think of anything truly awful. Terry bluffs and gets Myra and Bev to admit they stole a moonstone necklace from Robinson’s safe.

Then Joe shows up on a bicycle after Bev and Myra slip away from the interrogation and, without consulting his brother, puts Bev in a headlock. You know, as one does. It’s not like he has any reason to suspect the ladies. He woke up in a cow pasture with Robinson, then ran into Frank and Terry. He only beat up on a woman because it looked like she and her friend were fleeing, and if that’s not an allegory for modern police practices, I don’t know what is.

Neither Joe nor Robinson remembers anything helpful. Despite the lateness of the hour, Robinson goes to complete the task his kidnapping prevented him from completing days before: talking to his lawyer. That’s a good idea, because Frank — after a visit to Jagowitz — works out that Robinson is behind everything. When Sykes saw Bev wearing a moonstone necklace that had been stolen from his mother decades before, Sykes realized Robinson had been the thief and tried to blackmail him. Robinson decided not to take extortion lying down, staging his own kidnapping before abducting Sykes (and later Joe).

I must admit: I very much admire how Frank figures out the motive, working through an A.B.C. Murders setup. At first, he conjectures Robinson was the true target, and Sykes and Joe were taken to muddy the waters. When Joe and Robinson turn up, he switches gears — Sykes was the real target, and Robinson and Joe were kidnapped to obscure the real motive. Frank shows he’s the intelligent one, for once, rather than Dixon just telling us.

The Hardys track Robinson and his dog, Stella, to a mine — Frank finds the hidden door to the abandoned mine after he “ran his flashlight over the mountain” (134), which … wait, the entire mountain? — and after leaving Stella outside, they find Robinson about to blow up the mine to kill Sykes. Frank tries to convince Robinson he’s not a killer, but Robinson reminds Frank of the advice he gave Frank at the beginning of the book: “I said once you’ve got it into your head to do something, you stick to your guns” (145). Fortunately, Stella wanders into the mine — Joe didn’t actually tie her up or put her in their vehicle or anything — and Robinson can’t bring himself to harm his dog. He’s put in jail for his stupid, stupid crimes.

The Crisscross Crime (#150)

For the hundredth book in the Hardy Boys series, The Secret of the Island Treasure, Simon & Schuster brought back Hurd Applegate, a character from the first Hardy Boys book (The Tower Treasure) and a recurring character in early books. I was hopeful S&S would do something unexpectedly retro with book #150, The Crisscross Crime, but I was disappointed.

The book does have touches that recall earlier mysteries. The title is similar to The Crisscross Shadow’s (#32), although the plots have nothing to do with each other. Bayport’s reservoir is important, like in The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), but the reservoir in Crisscross Crime appears to be a new reservoir, as it isn’t located at Skull Mountain. (It's probably the same reservoir from Dungeon of Doom [#99].) The biggest rush of nostalgia comes when Fenton’s international crimesolving just happens to interlock with Frank and Joe’s Bayport case (The Mystery of Too Many Damn Times to Count). Still, I wish there had been more explicit references to the Hardy Boys’ past in Crisscross. If, as Wikipedia suggests, Crisscross Crime started out as Hardy Boys Casefiles #130 before that series was cancelled, it’s a miracle the book fits with the Digest / original series as well as it does.

Well, I suppose you can count Joe being a headstrong moron and Frank being a plodding dullard being references to the series past — but I’ll get back to that.

The story begins on the baseball field — that’s something else that hearkens back to the good ol’ days, but Frank and Joe were playing baseball for the Bayport Bombers in Danger on the Diamond (#90) as well, so it’s not unusual. Now, if they’d brought back baseball-loving chum Jerry Gilroy, who hasn’t been seen since 1966, then that would have been awesome. Anyway, Joe’s pitching, Frank’s at shortstop, and Biff takes Chet’s old spot behind the plate. The Bayport Bombers are an out from a win with runners in scoring position; Joe hangs a curve, but a diving catch by Frank seals the Bomber victory.

Rather than head to Mr. Pizza, Frank and Joe need to pick up their mother’s car from the shop. While Frank pays, Joe spots a break-in at a nearby bank. The robbers take off when the alarm sounds, and when Frank drives by in Laura’s car, Joe hops in with their video camera and tells Frank to follow that car!

The chase ends in a junk yard, where the robbers abandon their vehicle. But Frank drives Laura’s car into a car crusher — oops! — and as the car is turned into a cube, the boys narrowly escape with their lives and the video camera. I realize this is probably a traumatic moment for them; it would be for me. But our heroes are Frank and Joe Hardy, who have been in traumatic situations from (literally!) Australia to Zurich and everywhere in between, so why do they do so many stupid things afterwards?

For example:

• Joe’s first act after the car is destroyed is to break into the junkyard’s office and snoop around.
  
• Frank and Joe delay telling Laura that her car is no more, and she learns about it by watching the video Joe shot of it turning it into a large die.
  
• When the boys want to learn what happened at a successful robbery that happened just after the break-in they witnessed, Joe poses as a reporter for the Bayport Globe and grills the bank manager, even though the police have told the bank manager not to blab. Why not ask the usually cooperative police, Joe?
  
• When a suspect doesn’t want to talk to the boys, Joe’s reaction is to immediately hop her large wall to force her to talk to them.
  
• When Frank tells his brother to call the cops if he isn’t back from checking a potential bank robbery in ten seconds, Joe’s reaction is to get a couple of baseball bats, give one to Biff, then try to beat up the robber(s), who have guns.
  
• When Frank and Joe are captured by the villains at the end of the book, and Frank realizes the criminals are more likely to kill the boys the more they learn about what the Hardys know, Joe keeps blabbering, letting the criminals know exactly how much the boys have learned.

On one hand, the Hardys have always put justice above property rights or personal safety. On the other hand, Joe might be a nihilist thug, rushing headlong toward the hospital or the grave. (He might have discovered what all those concussions mean for him later in life and be determined not to suffer through the symptoms of CTE.) I realize the above acts are (somewhat) normal for private eyes in fiction, but Frank and Joe are kids with no reason to not cooperate with the police, given how willingly Con will feed them info.

But Frank and Joe never call the police! I’ve joked about the boys considering themselves a law unto themselves, but it’s hard to remember a case on which they have snubbed the five-oh so blatantly. After Laura’s car gets crunched and the boys break into the junkyard office, Frank and Joe don’t call the cops — even though it takes about three hours between the car’s destruction and the arrival of a concussed Biff to pick up the brothers. (A time warp might explain the abnormally long time it takes for a car chase and poking around a room or two, or the boys might have fallen into an alternate timeline: Joe calls Biff “Hoop,” and Biff’s drives a hatchback instead of his usual jeep.) Frank and Joe are determined to investigate, and it takes Frank’s near arrest — the boys’ van was spotted near the botched bank robbery — to get them to hand over their video of the chase.

But they don’t hand over the tape until after they’ve given it to Phil Cohen, who shouts “Enhance!” at his computers a few times and gets a clear look at the license plates. C’mon, guys! If TV has taught me nothing else — and it’s possible that it hasn’t — it’s that the police have a whole unit dedicated to shouting “Enhance!” at video, even though it’s impossible to improve a video past its original resolution.

I suppose the lack of police involvement cuts both ways. When Joe vaults the fence at a ritzy house on tony High Street — the same street the Hardys live on, although the book doesn’t mention that — and are caught, Frank and Joe don’t feel the need to use the police to justify their presence. Fortunately, the suspect lets them out of the trees in which her Dobermans have chased them and doesn’t call the cops herself.

Collig tries to give the boys their comeuppance, yelling at the Hardys for charging into a bank robbery with baseball bats, but his dressing down is interrupted by a grateful bank manager, who tells Collig the boys saved all that federally insured money and only drew a couple of bullets that hit only one bat. Still, Chief Collig gets his momentary revenge at the denouement: When Frank and Joe reveal the villains’ real, final target, he sneers at them, and his officers laugh. Serves you right, boys.

(This antagonism between Collig and the boys makes more sense if the book was originally a Casefile; Collig’s animus against the boys is much greater in that series.)

I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on Frank and Joe. After they describe the initial robbery attempt and chase to Fenton, Fenton tells the boys to call Collig “if they find anything concrete” (30). Fenton: They are frelling eyewitnesses to an attempted bank robbery, and they have videotape of the criminals escaping. I’m not sure your sense of responsibility is everything it should be.

The independent streak he inspires in his sons ends up biting him in the ass, though. When Frank and Joe find the counterfeiter Fenton has been hunting is in Bayport, they ask for Fenton’s number; Laura says she has already spoken that day to Fenton, who said he’s returning to Bayport, and boys decide their information can wait. Sure, why not?

And the boys definitely get their cavalier regard for information sharing from their father. When Frank and Joe try to “soothe” Laura and their Aunt Gertrude after they see Laura’s car being crushed, the women tell the boys to call the police (36). The boys refuse. No reason to listen to hysterical women and their completely legitimate concerns about your safety and the modern crimefighting apparatus!

Because Frank and Joe don’t share info with the police, it’s hard to blame Collig for his reactions. He thinks he’s figured out the pattern in crimes — or more accurately, he figures Frank has figured out the pattern, which he shared with the police in a rare moment of cooperation. Well, the book claims Frank figured it out, but let’s see if you can figure it out yourself. First, as Frank and Joe were getting their mom’s car crushed and the police were responding to the triggered alarm, a bank downtown was robbed. A day or so later, while Joe and Biff foiled the bank robbery with their wooden bats, the police were responding in force to an alarm triggered at a bank on Bayport’s outskirts. Frank’s cognitive breakthrough? He “explained the hunch he and Joe had about all the real targets being downtown and all the false alarms being on the outskirts of town” (108).

That’s not a hunch. That’s recapping what had happened in the book so far

Now, what don’t Frank and Joe share with Collig? In the junkyard office, Frank and Joe find detailed maps of Bayport’s utilities, including the sewer lines and storm drains. Also, Fenton is investigating a counterfeiting case for the government, and the printing plates and ink have already been stolen; one of the suspects tells them the paper U.S. currency is printed on is stored in Bayport. (Seems like Fenton should have been on top of that, really.) The boys — well, Frank, really — put 2 and 2 together, and even though they don’t bother to check whether they should be adding or multiplying, come up with the 4-1-1: The criminals are using the storm drains to move around town, and the last bank robberies will be a double fake. The real target will be the armory where the paper is stored.

While the police are responding to a decoy robbery downtown, the robbers use jackhammers to break into the armory from below, which our crack troops can’t hear. They then escape through the storm drains on jet skis. It’s unusual; I’ll say that, at least. After Frank viciously “clocked” a criminal with a tire iron and steals his jet ski (138), the boys chase the other robbers to the reservoir, survive being tied up to drown in the storm drain (Frank flexes his wrists to escape his wet bonds), and pursue the last of the criminals onto the bay, where they prevent international counterfeiter Herve DuBois from escaping onto his speedboat and the open sea.

At no point do they call the police, but the Coast Guard does show up in time to keep the criminals from drowning.

The book ends with Laura and Fenton showing up at the boys’ next baseball game in her new car; Laura cheerfully tells her sons they will “never” drive it (150). Finally — consequences for Frank and Joe!

The Chase for the Mystery Twister (#149)

The Hardy Boys mysteries are usually set in fictional places — Bayport is fictional, the small towns around Bayport are fictional, and the small towns across the world the Hardys wend their way to are fictional. They do spend time in real places, of course; New York has always been a staple of Hardy Boys crimesolving. But mostly the Hardys are not visible from the world outside your window.

For many years, I rarely thought about this practice, but lately it has been bothering me. Bayport and its fictional environs are fine, I’ve decided: The milieu created for the absurdly powerful crimefighting family could hardly be mixed up with the real world. But when they wander into some fictional town in an identifiable part of the real world, it feels strange. The Hardy Boys books aren’t the most subtle and incisive observers of humanity, and these fictional places give leave to the authors to abandon reality and make somewhere real into something unreal, where stereotypes and bizarre characterizations dominate.

Take, for instance, Lone Wolf, Okla., where most of The Chase for the Mystery Twister takes place. Allegedly, all these things are true about Lone Wolf:

• It is large enough that a television station is located in the town.
  
• The TV station thinks its audience is learned enough but also bored enough to care about atypical tornado debris patterns.
  
• It is small enough that the town’s sheriff also holds a full-time job as a barber.
  
• It is large enough that people remark about how long it takes to get from one side of the town to the other.
  
• It is small enough that there is only one motel in a 25-mile radius of Wolf Gap.
  
• It is the self-declared Tornado Capital of the World, even though it is part of “Twister Alley,” rather than “Tornado Alley.” This title seems to bring no tourism to the town, as evidenced by the one motel.
  
• The air is so clear and the land so flat that vehicles can not only be seen more than a mile away (and their relative size distinguished), they can be seen despite the lessened visibility created by storms and tornados.
  
• Somehow a Hispanic man who introduces himself to newcomers with a hearty “Buenos dias” has been elected sheriff in the largely white community in rural Oklahoma.
  
• The early spring corn in Lone Wolf is tall enough to block Joe’s view of a thresher, despite corn being barely shoe-top level until some time in May in most of the Northern Hemisphere.
  
• Joe is able to practice bilocation, being at a bank and a barnraising at the same time.

The most amazing fact about Lone Wolf, though, is that it’s a real place. Or at least the Lone Wolf in Mystery Twister is based on a real place — the 500 people who lived in the real Lone Wolf in 2000, two years after Mystery Twister was published, wouldn’t have been able to support the two rival insurance agents / scamsters that are at the heart of the book, let alone have a television station or a sheriff.

(I was also shocked to learn that the National Severe Storm Laboratory is a real thing. I mean, National Severe Storms Laboratory just sounds fake. But no, it’s a real part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

The real Lone Wolf also presumably doesn’t expose homoerotic urges like this book suggests. When Joe grabs Phil with his “muscular arms,” “Joe knew there was no time to be delicate”; there’s also mention of Phil being “roughly yanked” and of putting body parts in hole (54). The scene is supposed to show Joe rescuing Phil from a fire, but you have to read between the lines. I think Joe is carrying Phil to the fire … in his pants. Later, when an attacker pins Joe against the dirt, words like “wriggled,” “bucked,” “tried every move he knew” and “got a hold of the man’s hair” are used (88). Sure, it’s supposed to be a fight, but it seems ... charged, you know? By the time Phil urges, “Get it up, Joe!” (127), I was blushing at the explicitness.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Lone Wolf is a place and a state of mind. What is The Chase for the Mystery Twister?

****

It’s a bad book, that’s what it is.

I’m not going to suggest an editor slid a worn-out VHS copy of Twister to this book’s Dixon, said “Go wild,” and then belched instead of giving the author an outline — heavens no. But if you’d like to make a little bet on the matter without letting the authorities know, then you know how to contact me.

During Spring Break, Frank and Joe fly to Lone Wolf — fly commercial, mind you, like peasants — to meet up with Phil Cohen. What’s technophile Phil, who was complaining about going out in the cold in the previous mystery, doing in BFE Oklahoma? Why, he’s working for a team of stormchasers, a pursuit he has never showed any interest in before. Phil has been in Oklahoma for a while, much longer than a mere spring break internship would allow — has he already graduated high school, or are his grades good enough that he doesn’t have to show up for classes?

Phil and the other stormchasers work for Lemar Jansen, who apparently doesn’t have a doctorate in meteorology or anything else (everyone calls him “Mr. Jansen”). His team is opposed by Greg Glover, a former colleague who has his own team. Glover’s team has corporate sponsorship, but Janson’s doesn’t because he “doesn’t want anyone pressuring him or telling him what to do” (109). This raises questions: What kind of businesses sponsor stormchasers? What do they get out of the deal? What do they pressure stormchasers into doing? And why — why sponsor people who drive after tornados?

No — asking “why” never gets anyone anything but a headache. We’ll press on.

(NOTE: I apologize for not knowing the evil rival tornado chasing team comes from the movie Twister, which Mystery Twister is obviously based on. I should have done the research, but I thought Twister was an excuse to watch wind destroy buildings and pick up cattle and didn't bother with a “plot.”)

Jansen and Glover’s teams are fascinated by a house that a tornado has leveled near Lone Wolf; the debris left by the tornado has been strewn in an atypical pattern. Jansen and Glover have seen this anomaly once before, but like the previous time, they find no clues as to what caused the strange pattern — all the local weather radars were jammed, and evidently NOAA has no interest at aiming its weather satellites at a probable tornado event. Poking around the house’s wreckage, Joe finds a piece of the owner’s “Ming vase” (35), but the shard is stamped “Occupied Japan” (40). Bayport’s education system must be lacking severely if Joe thinks a vase labeled “Occupied Japan” could be a genuine Ming.

Anyway, Frank, Joe, and Phil find other clues that the homeowner was defrauding his insurer, which is poised to pay out more than a million dollars, although the homeowner’s insurance agent doesn’t seem too concerned. At the same time, Lone Wolf’s other insurance agent disappears, causing suspicion to fall on the Cherokee grandfather of the absurdly named Snowden Parlette. While investigating the fraud and disappearance, Joe pressures Phil into breaking into every place with a locked door. Frank performs a Buster Keaton impersonation at a barnraising, then Joe has his sexually charged fight before fleeing from a thresher that corners like a rally car. (Joe ends up hiding under a tractor rather than climbing over or through the tractor. What a farm noob!) When the man with the destroyed Ming vase shows up with the sheriff in tow, accusing the brothers of “slander and threatening him in public” (90), Frank and Joe are nice enough to not point out that slander is a civil crime, outside of the purview of a sheriff.

A videotape of the tornado that left the weird debris patterns — dubbed the “mystery twister” by Frank — shows up without provenance or credit; Frank and Phil debunk the video after Frank steals it from Glover. While Frank is realizing the homeowner and his insurance agent are colluding on their scam, Joe gets Phil into trouble by breaking into the villains’ semi; Phil is knocked out, and when yelling for help while the truck is roaring down the highway predictably fails, Joe manages to knock down the rear door with a “huge” tractor (118). (If you think a huge tractor will fit in a semi-trailer, you too are a farm noob, sadly uninformed about tractor sizes.) The tractor is part of the fraudsters’ insti-tornado kit, which they used to knock down the house with the weird debris pattern; I think the amount of damage the kit would have to pull off in a short time is only a little more believable than a supervillain keeping his lair secret when it has been constructed by a crew of hundreds.

Even with the tractor, Joe can’t get the door down until the semi is going over a cliff; Phil and Joe implausibly jump free of the trailer and tread water in the quarry pit until they are rescued hours later. In the last ten pages, the boys are chased by an F5 tornado on the way home, capture the fraudsters, prove the missing insurance agent was in on the scam, exonerate their friend’s grandfather, and recover most of the money stolen by both corrupt insurance agents. Also in the last ten pages: Joe runs at a monster truck that is driving toward him, leaps on its hood, and subdues the truck’s driver, so it’s pretty clear the Dixon just threw up his hands, said “Screw it,” and crammed everything he needed to into the last few pages without regard for pacing or logic.

It's a poor ending, but then again, it’s a poor book.