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!