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.