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!

Of Time and the Hardy Boys

In the early books of the Hardy Boys canon, from The Tower Treasure (#1) to The Great Airport Mystery (#9), ghost writer Leslie McFarlane and / or the Stratemeyer Syndicate made an effort to create a coherent chronology. Those first nine books follow the brothers and their chums over three years — essentially from late in their sophomore years in high school to graduation. The books cover three springs (#1, #6, and #9, all of them late spring), two winters (#5 and #8) and a lot of summer (#2, 3, 4, and 7).

After that, the Hardys stopped aging, went back to high school, and never worried about time making sense again. Seriously: time was more linear in a season of Doctor Who than in any five consecutive hardcover Hardy Boys books after that. But that was OK, really; the books were released once per year, and it didn’t matter that readers couldn’t fit together consecutive stories in a coherent timeline. After waiting all year for another book, who cared if they didn’t match up exactly? And as for the back catalog of books — well, who had access to all 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 of them? Those who could read all of them were overjoyed to experience the wealth of Hardy Boys stories.

When the Hardy Boys books came out in paperback, though, Simon & Schuster started releasing several books per year. The only way that would work, as a publishing strategy, is if they expected readers to actually buy more than one book per year — consecutive books, most likely. And in that case, skipping around the calendar becomes more distracting. It’s harder to believe in a fictional world when Frank and Joe Hardy have come unstuck in time.

After finishing Crusade of the Flaming Sword, I’ve read #130 through #141, which coincidentally covers all of the digests released in 1995 (#130-5) and 1996 (#136-41), so I decided to see if the Hardys obeyed the calendar.

Surprisingly, the 1995 books did! Sidetracked to Danger (#130) is set in February, probably about the time the book was released. Although Crusade (#131) has no specific chronological setting, Frank and Joe spend several days without going to school — so it’s set during spring break or summer. They’re back in school in Maximum Challenge (#132), which means it could be set between spring break and the end of the school year; they’re out of school again in Crime in the Kennel (#133), presumably during the summer. Cross-Country Crime (#134) occurs during Thanksgiving vacation, and The Hypersonic Secret (#135) is set only a couple of weeks later, in the run-up to Christmas. So not only can these books fit in a single calendar year, they were mostly published at the same time they were set.

I admit, I was impressed.

The next year’s releases aren’t so well coordinated. The action in The Cold Cash Caper (#136) falls during the February Winter Festival — again, the book take place roughly the same time of year it was released. Unfortunately, it’s not clear when the next book, High-Speed Showdown (#137), occurs, but it’s warm enough for boat racing on Barmet Bay, so it can’t be fit between Caper and The Alaskan Adventure (#138), which ends just before the beginning of the Iditarod in early March. Chet begins a summer job at the zoo in The Search for the Snow Leopard (#139), but Slam Dunk Sabotage (#140) jumps ahead to February (or perhaps early March) for the end of the high school basketball season. The Desert Thieves (#141) is set in early January — probably close to the book’s publication, although on the wrong side of the New Year.

That’s a freakishly small number of summer books — somewhere between two and four out of the twelve books. More than two-thirds of the first 85 books are set during the summer, so that’s quite a change.

1995’s releases show the books could create a sense of time; why couldn’t Simon & Schuster have spread their 1996 releases throughout the year? Of the six, four books were set in the first 80 or so days of the year, with none of them occurring in August or later. Would it kill someone to have a fall mystery? (Maybe it would; there must be a reason why Hardy Boys books are so rarely set in the fall.) I’m sure such things were not a major concern of Simon & Schuster, which had many more pressing concerns — writing outlines, wrangling freelancers, editing manuscripts, marketing, selling — but I suppose I’m saying I would have appreciated it.

Of course, I wasn’t buying the books back then and was well out of the series’ target age range. I also didn’t read the books until more than a decade after they were written. But why wouldn’t Simon & Schuster decide to cater to me?

Crusade of the Flaming Sword (#131)

In Crusade of the Flaming Sword, the RenFaire — sorry, the medieval fair “Avalon” — has come to Bayport. Chet, Joe, and Iola have volunteered to serve as knights and ladies for Avalon; Chet likes fighting in armor and being a knight, while Joe was roped into being a knight by Iola. He complains about it, which is stupid. You’ve already agreed to do it, Joe. Keep your mouth shut — because you really like Iola, because you want to make her happy, because she might have a knight fetish. Keep your eyes on the prize, man.

Iola is volunteering because she gets to be a princess —not just a princess, but Princess Rowena, the daughter of Avalon’s King Bertram (actually Avalon’s owner, Art Growtowski). How did Iola get this plum part? I’m guessing because of her natural imperiousness (read: bossiness), which we’ve seen in other mysteries. It comes to the fore here, as she orders around a woman portraying a handmaid; she does it “playfully,” the text says, but you know it’s playful in the way a popular kid is playful when coaxing a shy kid into doing something amusing or uncomfortable. In other words, it's thinly veiled bullying.

Perhaps Iola is just getting into the role: Legend says Rowena was an Anglo-Saxon princess who was a seductress and a wicked stepmother — if she existed, which is doubtful. Walter Scott repurposed the name for the Saxon love interest of the knight Ivanhoe in the knight’s eponymous novel.

Because he isn’t working at the fair, Frank doesn’t get in for free, and he complains about the $10 admission price. That's $10 in 1995; more than three decades later, in 2026, that’s the equivalent of $22, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator. I suppose that’s steep for a teenager without a job, and he probably — well, might have — paid for Callie as well. Still, it doesn’t seem exorbitant, given that he gets to witness armored knights fighting, see falconry demonstrations, and watch jugglers and magicians while soaking up “medieval” atmosphere. In any event, Frank gets his revenge by using faux Olde English dialogue and being an exposition machine (“What are the dates on [the Middle Ages]?” he asks his brother, irrelevantly) until I was wisingh a plague rat would bite him.

But Frank’s “methinks” and “approacheth” are in keeping with Avalon’s signage, which invites people to buy “foode,” “drinke,” and “leather goodes.” The place deserves to go out of business because of those crimes against the language, but no — Avalon’s going to go out of business because of “the Knight of the Flaming Sword,” who performs such dastardly tricks as sawing halfway through a grandstand support, releasing a tasty bunny during a falconry demonstration, and putting glass in the mud pit. Oh, yes, Avalon has “mudde fights,” and the Hardys and Iola pressure Callie into taking part against another woman (or “damsel”).

Yes, that’s right: this book has Callie mud wrestling another woman. Not in a bikini or anything like that, but still! This is the most exploitative I’ve ever seen the series get. Plus, the book has a “Drench a Wench” booth, with the shy Carla — Iola’s favored target for bullying — getting dunked. I’m not sure whether “exploitative” is worse than “ignored,” which is the default setting for women in the Hardy Boys books, but the book does balance the medieval period's less-than-ideal-beliefs on womens' roles with an increased role in the books for women; Callie at least gets to follow a “creepy” suspect, and Carla is an expert horsewoman who is handy with a sword. Still: mud wrestling and Drench a Wench.

Anyway, the shape of things is easy to see: Avalon is being subjected to sabotage, which might drive it out of business. Growtowski doesn’t want the bad publicity of a police investigation, so he asks Frank and Joe to look into things. The brothers agree, although they tell Growtowski not to reveal they are detectives. Surprisingly, Growtowski, the Hardys, and their friends manage to keep the secret throughout the book.

To the suspects!

• Growtowski himself. Insurance fraud, perhaps? The possibility is quickly discounted.
  
• Alvin Sing, Avalon’s business manager. With Phil Cohen’s hacking, the Hardys discover Sing wants to start “Prophecy Fair,” a competitor to Avalon with sci-fi touches. Given that Avalon is a wandering fair, I’m not sure why anyone would think he needs to eliminate Avalon to be successful — he could just ply another territory or get investors to support a single location, a la a theme park. Still, any excuse to get Phil into the book is fine by me.

  Sing either was a copyright violator or really liked Windows marketing; his computer screensaver was very similar to the then-current Microsoft slogan, “Where do you want to go today?” (The final word was absent on Sing’s computer.)
  

• Kev Dyson, Avalon’s best knight. A method actor and very intense, he — or his character — idolizes a medieval knight who went nuts after the Crusades and started murdering peasants. Joe doesn’t like him because when the two spar, he disarms Joe, then keeps attacking him. Joe somehow thinks he should be allowed to lope over to his sword and re-arm himself during (mock) mortal combat. Joe is a sore loser.
  
• Charlie Krause, a new reporter for the Bayport Star. Krause, who thinks being assigned to write about a Renaissance fair is a waste of his time, has an annoying tendency to report on the sabotage. This results on bad publicity, which makes Frank suspect him — maybe he’s creating havoc so he can write about it? That’s not the case, but what he does do is break into the Hardy home and leave a glove dripping fake blood pinned to Frank’s headboard along with a threatening note. Evidently, being out investigated by a couple of student reporters (Frank and Joe’s cover identity) drove him off the deep end. Or perhaps it’s his colleagues not telling him who Frank and Joe really are that brought his latent psychopathy to the fore.
  

  The brothers don’t turn him in, unfortunately. They know a little something about B-and-E; after all, they broke into Sing’s computer (using floppies!) and printed out his business plan on the laser printer (I expected a dot-matrix printer).
  

Also factoring into the boys' dislike of Krause is Joe mentioning, early in the book, an aversion to the press after his picture appeared on the front page of the Star because of “that flying saucer incident.” Does anyone know what this is referring to? (ETA: Evidently this is a reference to The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping. Thanks, Adam!)

You won’t be shocked to know that none of these are actually the Knight of the Flaming Sword. You will be similarly unsurprised when you hear that someone is trying to buy Growtowski’s authentic medieval longsword, and that the someone trying to buy the longsword is behind the sabotage. The sword is named Chauvency, which is appropriate for a medieval fair; “Le Tournoi de Chauvency” is a narrative poem about a tournament and its accompanying revelry from the 13th century. (Growtowski says it’s named after castle, but I can’t find a real castle with that name. The town Chauvency is in northern France, near the Belgian border.)

It is obvious the sword is the knight’s goal when the sword’s existence is casually dropped into the text, and it’s obvious when the boys begin to investigate the angle. It is probably obvious even to the pre-teens who are the book’s intended audience. Unfortunately, the Hardys discover the villain’s true motive not through investigation or “logic” but through Frank stumbling across the destructive knight’s true identity (Carla) and paying “a visit to her motel room.” Carla isn’t there, but the boys pick her lock and find her address book, which reveals her uncle is an antiquities dealer.

The brothers pay a visit to the uncle, Tony Morslip, and while Joe distracts him, Frank uses floppies and instructions provided by Phil to prove Morslip has been hacking into Avalon’s computer system. Unfortunately, Morslip knows exactly who the brothers are and imprisons them in his authentic reconstruction torture chamber. He’s read too much Poe, though, as he ties the brothers to a table while a swinging pendulum slowly drops from the ceiling. I doubt that’s an authentic medieval device, but that’s what Morslip and the author have decided to go with, so we’ll just have to roll with it. It’s just one absurdity in the scene; I can’t think of how the pendulum with a long distance from its pivot to its weight could menace both brothers without hitting the table they’re tied to, and Frank manages to stop the pendulum with his stomach — presumably at the end of its swing, but who knows? He should have been gutted.

The brothers escape, using the pendulum to sever the bonds and a judo kick to destroy the door. They talk their way through Morslip’s security guards and make it to Avalon before anything stupid happens; however, the ineffectiveness of the police allows Carla to make a final attack on the fair. Frank and Joe begin a stupid chase, which ends with Carla and Morslip’s capture. King Bertrand offers the boys their choice of damsels; Frank chooses Callie, but Joe hesitates over his choice until Iola hits him. I’m beginning to think Joe is a bit like Dave Foley’s character on NewsRadio: He’s attracted to his girlfriend most when she’s angry at him.