Farming Fear (#188)

Farming Fear is one of the few digests with a reasonable setup that is able to deliver on that setup.

In Farming Fear, written by Stephen D. Sullivan — and yes, Officer Gus Sullivan makes his appearance, as disinterested in doing his job as ever — Chet and Iola are concerned about their grandparents. Dave and Marge Morton live on a farm outside of Bayport, the old Morton family farm, but things aren’t all relaxing and bucolic there: “shadowy figures” (2) are lurking around the property, the animals are spooked, and small tools are missing from the barn. Chet and Iola’s parents are on a Caribbean cruise, so of course Frank and Joe are willing to help! (Callie — who is definitely Frank’s girlfriend, according to Farming Fear no matter what Hidden Mountain, #186, says — is skiing with her family.)

Despite the book having a huge retcon — the Morton farm is owned by Chet and Iola’s grandparents, not their parents, and the latest generation of Mortons has never lived on the farm — Sullivan wants to link the book to the series’s past. The farm was founded in 1927, the year of the first three Hardy Boy books, and Dave and Marge have lived there since Bayport was a “tiny seaside village” (3). This ignores that Bayport has always had a population of 50,000; I imagine when the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts they heard of a large but boring city down the coast. Since it’s winter, it’s vague what the Mortons farm, which is consistent with past depictions; I was never sure what Mr. Morton raised either. In Farming Fear, Dave and Marge have a lot of fields, which suggests they grow row crops, but the fields have a lot of ponds, which suggests they raise livestock. Yet Iola says they have only a couple of cows, and Chet says they keep the cows and some horses “for tradition” (9). The Mortons had horses and cows in the original canon, and the land contained a bog, but in Farming Fear there are no orchards and no vineyards, no mention of pigs or poultry; the only heavy equipment seems to be one tractor. What are Dave and Marge growing?

(Also retconned, inasmuch as anyone cares: Chet and Iola’s grandfather is Ezekiel Morton, not Dave, in both versions of The Crisscross Shadow [#32]. Old Mr. Smith has land abutting the Morton farm in both versions of the next book, The Hooded Hawk Mystery, and the Abby Sayers estate is next door in The Four-Headed Dragon [#69], but neither is mentioned in Farming Fear; I admit both are prime candidates to be bought out. An apple orchard is mentioned several times in the canon but isn’t mentioned at all in Farming Fear; according to The Melted Coins [#23], Chet and Iola’s father bought the farm, but Farming Fear says it’s been in the family for five generations. In The Pentagon Spy, #61, Mr. Osborn is the Morton farmhand, although Farming Fear does mention the Mortons cut back to one farmhand during the fallow months, so Osborn could be laid off for the winter. Or throwing pumpkin bombs in New York.)

Soon after Frank and Joe go with Chet and Iola to the Morton farm, a tractor charges them from the barn. The Mortons’ farmhand, Bill Backstrom, claims someone rewired the tractor to start up unexpectedly and jammed both the gas and brake, but … well. Later, when the kids go on a horse ride, someone shoots at them. Well, maybe someone shoots at them; they hear the crack of a rifle several times, but it’s not like they hear bullets whistling by or the smack of a bullet into a tree or rock, and the only person they see with a firearm is the Mortons’ crotchety neighbor, Vic Costello, and he has a shotgun, not a rifle. Could’ve been a hunter, for all they know.

The next day, the Mortons’ sheepdog, Bernie, is stolen. The Bayport PD sends a pair of officers out, but they aren’t very interested. Why should they be? The crime didn’t happen in Bayport. Shouldn’t the Mortons have called the sheriff of whatever county they are in? Besides, it’s winter, which means Bayport is never more than six hours from a possible blizzard, and the cops have better things to do than look for a missing dog. It’s probably a prank, according to Officer Sullivan: “Farm kids have strange sense of humor, sometimes” (49), which — as a former farm kid myself, with absolutely no ability to self-reflect — I have to say I resent.

Because officers Gus Sullivan and Julie Scott shrugged their way through the interview, the kids decide to investigate. They track snowmobile tracks in the Mortons’ motorized buggy, which is an old, stripped-down VW Beetle with no body panels on it. After Chet makes a Batman reference, they follow the snowmobiles to a ridge which marks the border between the Morton property and a neighbor, and the Hardys trigger an avalanche. Chet and the owner of the neighboring property, Leo Myint, dig the Hardys out.

After that … well, mysteries like Farming Fear makes me wonder about Frank and Joe’s efficacy. No, even though the initial problems are always ignorable — although maybe only barely — before they investigate, you can’t blame them for the increased violence and destruction. And yes, they solve the mystery … more or less. On the other hand, when Frank and Joe get involved in one of these vague cases, things escalate quickly. I mean, they get out of hand, fast.

Nobody gets stabbed in the heart with a trident, of course, but the two snowmobilers Frank and Joe catch in the barn that night attempt the American equivalent: trying to run them through with pitchforks. (Frank and Joe pursue them, but Frank drives the buggy into one of those pesky ponds.) A blizzard hits the area, knocking out electricity and telephone service. A realtor, Patsy Stein, keeps pressuring Dave and Marge to sell their farm so they can build yet another mall in Bayport. (Given commercial trends over the last fifteen years, I think Dave and Marge are doing her a favor.) Frank and Joe get treed by Vic Costello’s dogs, which he claims someone set loose. Someone tries to burn down the barn, and only with the help of Backstrom and neighbor J.J. Zuis do they get it under control. (For some reason, while putting out the fire, they don’t think to use the abundant piles of solid water, a.k.a. snow, to put it out.) The farm’s water tower is sabotaged, collapsing as the teenagers try to draw water for the night.

All this is dispiriting to Dave and Marge, who tentatively decide to sell out. I mean, they blame “foreign trade” and “market fluctuations” (130), but they admit all the problems are making the modern farming world less attractive to deal with. Iola and Chet are stunned, but Frank and Joe don’t give up. While the teenagers are pulling the buggy from the pond, they spot the snowmobilers, Chet and Iola go for help; Joe drives Frank after the snowmobilers. They discover the two snowmobilers are opposed to each other; one, driven by Costello’s son, crashes, and while Frank and Joe load the teenager onto their buggy, the other returns, firing a rifle. The boys flee, and in a story as old as time, the villain shoots a power line, causing it to snap and crackle, and accidentally electrocutes himself. Oops!

The boys unmask — unhelmet? — the rifleman and reveal he’s Leo Myint, who didn’t want the Mortons or Costello holding up the development because his industrial park is hemorrhaging money. (The other guy who tried to pitchfork Frank and Joe was one of Myint’s employees.) But it doesn’t matter, really; it could have been Backstrom or Stein or J.J. Zuis or J.J. Yeley or J. Jonah Jameson. As long as the Hardys caught someone, the mystery can end, they can recover Bernie the sheepdog, and the Mortons can back out of selling their land. (Although at one point I thought Joe might be behind the sabotage — the only time he gets to touch Iola is either when he pulls her out of the way of danger or when he’s comforting Iola with a “sturdy arm” [25].)

In any event: it’s a back-to-basics book, with plenty of emphasis on chores and winter sports and little concern with “investigating” or “thinking.” It could be better, possibly; it most definitely could be worse. As it is, Farming Fear is pleasant, and with only a few books to go, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

No Way Out (#187)

By the time you get to pg. 3 of No Way Out, you’ve got a decision to make: Do you reject the reality of a story set on Cape Breton Island and based around a “Mazemaster” named Chezleigh Alan Horton, or do you roll with it? If you decide to roll with it, you’ll have to make the same decision every few pages: Do I care how Frank and Joe have known Ray and Kay, Horton’s twin children, “for years” (2) despite being, well, from Cape Breton Island? Why are mazes celebrated with a RenFaire? Would the opening of a new hedge maze really draw multiple news outlets, and would it draw a raucous crowd who supply thunderous applause?

A reasonable person would reject this weird reality at some point. As someone very close to having read all the Hardy Boys digests, I do not qualify as “reasonable,” so I marched through No Way Out.

You — again, supposing you to be a reasonable person — would expect that since the story begins with a Mazemaster (ugh) unveiling a brand-new maze as part of a maze competition, then mazes would be a key element in the story. Hell, put aside a reasonable person’s expectations: The laws of storytelling demand the maze figure prominently in the mystery. But no, No Way Out mostly ignores the maze and its inherent dramatic possibilities. (This will disappoint anyone who wanted a Shining homage in a Hardy Boys book.) Without the maze, the title is nonsensical; I mean, it’s hard to find a “way out” of a maze if you don’t go in, but that’s a technical distinction reasonable and most unreasonable people overlook.

Instead of the maze, the story piles up other elements that go nowhere and add nothing: codes, espionage, a ghost story, rumors of a lost family treasure, Olympic archers. It’s all so pointless — even more so than the standard Hardy Boys story.

And we never do find out how Frank and Joe know Jay and May.

The story begins, as too many Hardy Boys stories do, with the Hardys meeting previously unrevealed friends in a far-off place, bonding over an unusual hobby. The far-off place is ostensibly exotic but as in reality as dull as the places your parents took you for family vacations; the hobby is supposed to be interesting but is presented in a way that makes a museum on a Wednesday morning seem livelier. In this case, the Hardys have arrived on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, for a maze competition. But just as Chezleigh Alan Horton — he goes by Alan — unveils his maze and announces some medieval competitions, like jousting, that will lead up to a main mazerunning event, someone shoots an arrow into the maze, setting hedges on fire. Oh noes! And while extinguishing the fire, Alan discovers the interior of the maze has been wrecked as well. Double oh noes!

The obvious suspect is Vincenzo Blackstone — of the Roman Blackstones, I suppose. He’s a rival … *sigh* mazemaster who allegedly sabotages rivals to make up for his lack of talent. Unfortunately, no one other than the Hardys can be arsed to figure out whether he’s on Cape Breton Island. Joe hacks into Blackstone’s computer to get background and contact info; Frank copies it into his PDA, an act that is about as early 21st century as a story gets, and it helps distract readers from the improbability of Joe the impetuous meathead being a hacker.

Joe shows his lack of respect for privacy doesn’t extend only to villains’ private info; he also wanders into Alan’s private sanctum without knocking. When Alan snipes that his family knows not to “invade my little den unless they’re invited” (39), Joe says, “I hear you” — and then doesn’t leave or apologize. When Alan’s private phone rings and Alan pointedly holds off answering until Joe leaves, Joe still stands around like a lump. You’re a great houseguest, Joe.

During another ceremony at the maze’s Renaissance Faire, Alan is attacked on horseback by a rival antiquities collector, Bruce David MacLaren. See, in addition to being a … in addition to designing mazes, Alan has a metric ass-ton of medieval artifacts: “A barrel of gauntlets,” according to Faye, and “crates and rooms full of other stuff,” according to Tay (22). Alan has so many medieval tchotchkes he gives them away as prizes; when Joe wins the amateur jousting competition, perhaps drawing on some of the skills he learned as a knight in Crusade of the Flaming Sword, he receives a burgonet. For fourth place, Frank receives a leather belt with a dragonhead buckle — less cool, but more practical.

Then Alan disappears. His wife says she didn’t notice because she left the festivities early: “I got a headache during the last jousting match” (62). Headache, jousting … I get it — *wiiiiiiiiiink*. Because the area — maybe all of Cape Breton — has only one constable, and he doesn’t seem to care enough to call in provincial or national police forces for help investigate a kidnapping, Frank and Joe have a free hand, leading the search for Alan and the two suspects. Instead of finding the victim or culprit, though, they find an abandoned marble mine and a caretaker’s shack that isn’t as abandoned as it should be. (The Hardys don’t investigate the shack, instead noting the discrepancy and moving on.) Joe is lured into a cunning trap that involves a peregrine falcon, which slices up his calf enough to be dangerous to his health but not badly enough to cause lasting damage.

The constable finds Blackstone and his fire-eating henchman — the man is literally a fire eater — and the latter admits he and Blackstone trashed the inside of the maze. But he denies setting the fire or kidnapping Alan, which leads the Hardys to believe the pair is innocent of that charge. It’s not like kidnapping is a very serious charge, while vandalism isn’t! I can’t imagine anyone perpetrating that sort of deception to divert attention from his major crimes.

So the brothers have to find MacLaren. To find information on MacLaren and Alan, Joe taps into Fenton’s computer, which gives him access to secret information governments had given the elder Hardy. I’m sure all those governments would be thrilled Fenton has given access to a pair of “trustworthy” teenagers!

Before we get to the end, we have to endure a great deal of nonsense, the sort of nonsense the Hardy Boys books thrive upon: the revelation that MacLaren is an Olympic archer, that the previous owner’s ghost allegedly haunts the estate, that Alan’s house has secret rooms and a secret elevator into the mine, that Alan is a spy who uses his code name, EagleSpy, as the name of his estate (or vice versa; it’s not clear which), that the previous owner’s brother is searching the estate for a hidden treasure, that the brother killed the previous owner, an “accident” during a “physical fight” (136) … It’s an exhausting concatenation of lazy revelations.

Finally returning to the caretaker’s shack with about fifteen pages left in the story, the brothers find John Brighthall, the previous owner’s brother. Brighthall admits killing his brother and covering up the crime, and Frank and Joe seem mostly fine with that — I suppose being siblings themselves, they’ve probably had fantasies / nightmares about such things. Brighthall admits MacLaren caught him at EagleSpy and took his maps of the marble mines as payment for his silence. The brothers cajole / blackmail Brighthall into helping them, forcing Brighthall into offer Joe as a hostage for ransom to MacLaren. Joe will be wearing a GPS, which, despite using satellites, will work perfectly in a mine, and when MacLaren takes Joe away, he’ll lead Frank and the police to wherever he’s holding Alan.

Of course the police are late, forcing Frank to act on his own, but everything turns out fine. MacLaren confesses to everything during his grand villain moment, Frank and Joe easily beat him up, and the police arrive in time to take MacLaren into custody. MacLaren does not say, however, why he attacked Alan in front of a large crowd by charging him on horseback when his plan was to capture the spy and ransom him — something that would have had a much higher chance of success if Alan (and others) didn’t know he was around. Just par for the course for No Way Out …

Because I am a fair-minded person (HA!), I admit I unironically enjoyed some elements of the story. When Alan goes missing, Frank and Joe take control of the situation, outline what needs to be done, and assigns tasks to each member of the Horton family. Given how often the Hardys have been in this situation — the story specifically points out the boys have had to search for Fenton before, and even though the narration doesn’t mention any specific mystery (*ahem* The House on the Cliff, #2), it’s good to know someone remembers this — they should be able to lead the search efforts in the absence of competent law-enforcement officials.

I also liked the secret rooms and passages in the Horton home. Secret passages and secret rooms are cool.

But none of that is enough to make up for all of No Way Out’s flaws. In the end, the book is a bunch of loose ends hoping — in vain, I think — to ensnare some unsuspecting reader. Better luck next time, Franklin W. Dixon!