Friday, May 24, 2019

The Dangerous Transmission (#184)

The Dangerous Transmission coverThe Dangerous Transmission has precisely two things going for it: 1) a surprisingly metal cover illustration, with a raven, the scavenger of battlefields, holding an electric tooth in its beak, and 2) a title that could have easily fit in among the early Hardy Boys canon. (It’s a better title than The Secret Warning and more era-appropriate.)

That’s it, really. And it’s just those two specific elements — the cover itself isn’t great, and the title has flaws. Despite the picture that serves as the not-at-all fictional thrashcore band Electric Raventooth’s logo, the cover itself is dull, giving nearly as much room to the stultifying notebook-and-file-folder trade dress while minimizing the psycho corvid. The cover tag line, “Somebody’s got a sweet tooth for crime!,” is nonsensical, given that no sweets are mentioned in the book; that line has me primed for a criminal who has trained crows to steal either candy or cavity-filled teeth — both, maybe. The trade dress gives much too much room to that phrase for me to ignore it. Similarly, the book has no transmissions, either by radio or as part of an automobile, so it’s impossible to say the transmission is dangerous or perilous or even benign. The transmission doesn’t exist.

There’s a story that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Superman editor Mort Weisinger thought readership would turn over every few years, so he’d recycle popular stories. I have no idea whether The London Deception (#158) was popular — I kinda doubt it, but I don’t have access to Simon & Schuster’s numbers — but the two books’ setups are identical. Frank and Joe are in London for a vacation, forcing an English exchange student who had stayed with the Hardys to pay back the hospitality. Rather than being drawn into the world of the London stage by high-school student Chris Paul, as they were in London Deception, this time they’re staying with London orthodontist Jax Brighton, who had stayed with the Hardys for a semester “a few years earlier” (2) while studying at Bayport College.

Jax isn’t just an orthodontist; he’s also a taxidermist, a pursuit he picked up because of his father, a professional taxidermist. This isn’t the first time taxidermy has appeared in the Hardy Boys: Taxidermy popped up as Chet’s hobby in the original Short-Wave Mystery (#24). In fact, it’s Chet’s second hobby ever, after old coins and the digging for them in The Melted Coins (#23). Setting the course for later stories, Chet makes his usual hemi-glutteal mess of his taxidermy efforts, creating a “lopsided” and “bulgy” (213) deer and then getting two pre-teen boys to finish the job. It would have been nice if the boys had mentioned this: “Boy, our friend Chet sucked at this!” they might have said. “But you’re actually good!”

Also something Frank or Joe could have mentioned: This is the second time they’ve come to the UK and immediately run into someone whose livelihood is teeth. In The Witchmaster’s Key (#55), Joe starts the book by getting a wisdom tooth pulled by Vincent Burelli, who is a) named after the book’s author, Vincent Buranelli, 2) is the book’s villain, and iii) is also known as “He-Goat.” I think any book would be improved by adding a guy named “He-Goat.”

Jax is making false teeth for an exhibit on the medieval period at the Tower of London, which means the Hardys get to tour the grounds with Jax and his friend, Nick Rooney, when there are no tourists around. It also means that when the exhibit catches fire and arson is suspected, Jax is politely but firmly questioned. Well, the police question him until Frank and Joe, who keep lurking around as Jax is questioned, drop Fenton’s name, and then that plot thread is snipped neatly off after Fenton vouches for Jax’s character.

But taxidermy and orthodontics aren’t all Jax has to offer the world. No, he’s invented the Molar Mike, which is a receiver / transmitter embedded in a false tooth and not — not, let me emphasize — a male stripper who wows the ladies with his gleaming teeth. Although Jax believes the Molar Mike is his ticket to riches, it’s actually the beginning of his troubles: a break-in that ends with an assault on Frank, a lawsuit from his downstairs neighbor over the Molar Mike’s creation, another break-in that sends Jax to the hospital, the Molar Mike’s theft and ransom for 100,000 Euros. (Euros — or “Euro dollars,” as they’re referred to on pg. 79, are the only currency mentioned; maybe this Dixon or his editor thought the UK had switched to Euros from pounds, because there’s no reason for Frank to pay for his “lemon drink” with Euros. In fact, there’s no reason for Frank to have Euros at all, unless he was going to the Continent later in the trip.)

The suspect pool is limited. There’s a soccer coach from Toronto, who is pushy and aggressive but is so obviously a red herring I’m not going to look up his name. There’s also “AA42,” a former Soviet secret agent Frank spots following them in London; the Hardys learn her code name because Fenton tracked her down a few years before, and they have access to his casefiles. She’s eliminated from suspicion because Fenton tells the boys she’s a double agent now, helping … I don’t know, somebody — “basically on our side,” according to Fenton (125). (I doubt she’s an asset to either side; in her home territory, she’s easily spotted and identified by two American schoolboys.) I’m not sure how Fenton knows so much about her or why she’s in her files; maybe he’s still working with SKOOL against UGLI, as he was in The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46).

Still, a goon is hanging around her, and the thug pulls Frank’s arm hard enough to strain his rotator cuff. This man is never mentioned again as a threat or suspect again. Despite his pain, Frank doesn’t seek medical attention for his injury immediately, setting a bad example for all the boys reading Dangerous Transmission. Instead, he treats his injury with a “tube of medicine” (70), presumably Icy-Hot or Ben-Gay or some other similar brand. He eventually does go to the hospital, but when Joe gets kicked in the ribs and knocked onto the Underground tracks, he too uses the tube of medicine to seek relief. I would say the boys are being too masculine for their own good, but the head injuries might be taking their toll, causing them cognitive difficulties; when Jax is knocked unconscious while retrieving a stuffed raven, falling with the raven on his chest, Frank “smacked the stuffed raven away” (71) like he was afraid the raven would attack him or Jax. Maybe he’d seen the electric tooth on the cover and was afraid it was the raven that was electric.

Oh! When Joe is kicked onto the tracks, the attacker loses his custom-made athletic shoe. This is a clue that goes exactly nowhere.

That’s because this Dixon has failed to set up that the actual criminal, Jax’s friend Nick, has prescription shoes. I mean, there’s enough in the book for the readers to realize Nick probably isn’t on the up-and-up — he’s the only other person who could have set the fire in the Tower of London, he’s worked all over the world and has “contacts everywhere” (108), and he knows enough karate to take care of the Hardys — but nothing about his shoes. Anyway, Nick is caught ridiculously easily at the ransom drop, so we don’t need to talk about him or Dangerous Transmission again.

Although I will mention plug London tourism. As Dangerous Transmission mentions, you can make brass rubbings in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; it’s a classy souvenir, and I have a rubbing hanging in my hall. The Tower of London is also a neat place to see if you’re in London, even if you do have to visit while other tourists are there. I also recommend Sir John Soane’s Museum, which Frank and Joe don’t visit but should have; that place is chockablock with all the things a 19th century collector would have found interesting, including a mummy. I don’t know what to make of the Black Belt, a fictional karate restaurant Frank and Joe visit. At least I hope it’s fictional; I’m not quite prepared for a restaurant that hosts karate exhibitions and has such an on-the-nose name to emerge from a Hardy Boys book into real life.

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