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?

High-Speed Showdown (#137)

Power boat racing has reached Bayport in High-Speed Showdown. Unsurprisingly, the Northeast Nationals are also plagued by sabotage. Really, you have to wonder why any organization would hold an event in Bayport. Are the hotels that great? Is the convention center huge? Are the women more attractive?

I’m thinking the answer is massive bribes. Massive, IOC / FIFA-level bribes, with piles of cash, drugs, and complimentary subscriptions to Field & Stream.

Given everything bad that happens at Bayport events, it’s the only real explanation. High-Speed Showdown supports that hypothesis, as the corruption in the powerboat racing circuit the Northeast Nationals is part of is an open secret. The racers, owners, and crew are allowed to bet on all the races, and while the assumption is that each person would bet on their own boat, they are not restricted to betting on themselves. If a governing body allows wagering among participations, corruption is always a danger, as some bright fellow is going to figure out it’s more profitable to lose than to win.

(In addition to the implications of gambling, the book is hazy on the mechanics of gambling as well. At one point, a private investigator based in Las Vegas tells the boys incorrectly what 1-to-4 odds means. The PI suggests a $1 at 1-4 returns an additional dollar on a win, but on a loss the bettor has to kick in an additional $4. This is incorrect. If you bet $1, that’s all you can lose; if you win a $1 bet at 1-4, you’ll receive a an additional quarter.)

When you think about speedboat racing, in which massive, finely tuned engines are harnessed to the lightest hulls possible, you also think of safety, and safety is foremost in High-Speed Showdown. The boys always strap in safely before riding in power boats. The narrator makes sure readers know the Hardys and other boaters know how to pass each other on the water. Before saving a man from drowning, Frank strips off his shoes and shirt and mentions that swimming with jeans is difficult. (Did he keep them on for modesty’s sake?) The brothers have a fire extinguisher on the Sleuth that allows them to take care of a fire on a powerboat. When a speedboat wrecks, Frank stops Joe from going to the rescue: “Let the marshals handle it … if a bunch of civilians like us run straight into the path of the racers, we’ll have a real disaster” (125). When the throttle on the Sleuth breaks, Joe’s first instinct is to shut off the engine rather than flail about with the controls. In the end, as the suspect escapes in a motorboat in the crowded waters of Barmet Bay, Frank elects not to pursue: “Too late! Let him go. He can’t escape. Besides, by trying to run away, he’s just proving that we were right about him” (147). And one of the adult crew members, recalling Frank and Joe’s 15-year-old schoolmate Connie, tells us he’s not into young women: “Cute kid, but way too young for me” (85). He’s totally lying, of course, but at least he’s being cautious about what he says about underage women.

(Another competitor, whom we are supposed to hate, is not so cautious around Connie: “I can handle her kind anytime” [33]. He means he can beat her up if he needs to, but that’s still awful.)

Maybe Frank and Joe have just decided to be boring. They use notecards to try to make links between facts in the case rather than their usual random association of incidents. After learning of a lead in Las Vegas, Frank and Joe contact a PI in that city rather than flying out there. Frank’s so cautious he’s worried he might have upset a member of student government that he says, “I hope we never want something from student government” (89). What I remember wanting from student government, during my high school days, is for student government to go away.

The stakes are very low; no one is injured, except for a guy who has a Hardy Boys concussion and another who was either poisoned or ate bad shrimp salad. The most jeopardy the boys fall into is when they are attacked by men with baseball bats, which is admittedly dangerous for most people, but it’s the kind of thing Frank and Joe handle all the time. The second-most peril they are subjected to is when a firecracker explodes under their van’s hood while they are still in the parking lot. The narration tries to sell by saying Joe heard “a high-pitched whistle … the sound of something deadly coming from under the hood” (117), but that sounds like a bottle rocket, not an M-80. The third-most danger is trying the peach chutney Aunt Gertrude put on their chicken sandwiches.

I won’t go into the suspects except to mention they are all powerboat racers (one of whom has the “gratitude of a weasel” [143], which is well known as the most ungrateful member of the weasel family) or owners plus a couple of student protestors. The actual criminal is a complete surprise — unless you’ve read The Masked Monkey or The Stone Idol or The Vanishing Thieves, in which the criminal thinks Frank and Joe aren’t that bright and hires them to investigate the crimes he himself committed. To be fair, this is one of the books in which Frank and Joe’s career is not widely known; one of their high-school classmates has “heard rumors around school that they’re amateur detectives or something” (35). Magnusson, the event organizer, is surprised when Frank and Joe ask for a copy of a threatening fax, as if he expected them to spend their time investigating running into piers and falling off docks.

But they don’t. They’re too cautious for that.

Actually, one suspect I’d like to discuss is Susan Shire, powerboat racer and television actress. The story isn't that interested in her, not so much dismissing her as a suspect and competitor as just forgetting about her, but Frank and Joe do mention she appears in the TV show Brisbane Lane. What kind of show do you think it is? We’re probably supposed to think it’s a Melrose Place clone, but I think there are other possibilities. Indiana Jones-type adventure show with an Aussie protagonist? Daytime soap? A spy show, set in Australia? I like all my Australian ideas, although the major hitch with them is that the name of the Australian city doesn’t rhyme with “lane” — it’s pronounced BRIZ-bin (or BRIZ-bn).

Weirdly, the book is more circumspect in naming (fictitious) entertainment sources in other places. At one point, Aunt Gertrude says she’s “going to watch a rerun of one of my favorite shows” (55), then asks if Frank and Joe would like to join her. They demur, in part because she won’t even name the show. Later Joe challenges Frank to “a computer game … I’ll spot you two power pills and an invisibility spell” (57). Frank accepts the challenge, even though the game isn’t named.

Despite the possibility of high-speed crashes, High-Speed Showdown is kinda dull, and it doesn’t take advantage of the competitive aspects of the sport. I mean, look at that cover, which promises a dull time; it looks like the Sleuth is blathering nonsense to Frank and Joe while they irresponsibly tow a rubber raft that had a couple of cardboard life-sized standees in it. It’s the kind of book that dramatically asks, “Would their meeting with Magnusson leave enough time for a prelunch snack?” (6).

Some might take exception with my stance. For instance, the Amazon page for the book has a single review, which gives the book five stars; the review, which I reproduce here in full, says, “good.” Hard to argue with that, but I won’t budge from my stance.

Unless someone wanted to try to sway me with IOC-levels of subscriptions to Field & Stream … throw in a couple of years of Outdoor Life, and I might be singing the praises of High-Speed Showdown.