Hide-and-Sneak (#174)

I have mentioned many times that I find the Bayport-based books that make use of the chums and explore the city are the best Hardy Boys books. Hide-and-Sneak, despite the mediocre, first-draft name, is another volume that supports my theory.

The story begins with Chet harassing Tony about the use of his boat. The boat’s name is never mentioned, but long-time readers of the series will remember it’s the Napoli. (I honestly don’t know whether Tony’s boat has ever been mentioned in the Simon & Schuster paperbacks.) Tony is too involved with his job at Mr. Pizza and moonlighting as a security guard at night at his father’s construction site to deal with Chet’s nonsense, though. (It’s been a while since the industrious Tony has worked for Prito Construction.)

Chet wants the boat because it’s a prerequisite for appearing in a student movie, as advertised in the Bayport Alternative. (Bold for an alternative paper to just label itself “alternative,” although I think a corollary of the Rule of Cool — nothing that labels itself “cool” can be cool — applies here.) Since his appearance in the sci-fi TV show Warp Space in Trouble in Warp Space (#172), he’s caught the acting bug — well, not the acting bug, because he has rejected working with local theater groups, like Frank suggested. I can’t blame him much; if working with the Hardys will teach you anything, it’s that you can’t think small; if you think small, you don’t get to go to Australia or Hong Kong or space. Also, the last time he was in a local play, in Cast of Criminals, Callie was almost killed over stolen diamonds. Since being with the Hardys means attempts on your life, again: You can’t think small. It’s the old scene-stealer’s adage: Might as well be murdered for a movie as a play.

Anyway, Frank and Joe have the Sleuth, “an older-model Chris-Craft boat that Frank and Joe had bought with their own earnings ad some help form their dad” (3). The Sleuth hasn’t been mentioned in literally years: It last came up in High-Speed Showdown, which was about six years before Hide-and-Sneak. It may have been even longer since the boys were paid for anything they did; in the original hardcover stories, they were paid all the time, but I’m having trouble remembering any rewards or fees they’ve collected since then. Still pretending their amateur status is intact for competitive purposes, I suppose.

The Hardys exist in a world in which money is ignored, which means class is as well — except as a signifier of a person’s worth. This becomes plain when the Hardys sign on for the student movie; no one asks if there’s any money involved for the actors. But for the actors, wealth is a proxy for class; the middle-class Hardys with their older but reliable motorboat are good, while Willow Sumner, who is using her father’s expensive powerboat, is a snobby bitch, and working-class Andy Slack and his friend, who have borrowed Andy’s father’s fishing trawler, turn to crime and treachery at the first sign of difficulties. (They are also so bad at both crime and treachery they come out of things with no money and are forced to switch sides back to the Hardys’.) The production itself has money woes, and the director is eager to smooch the hinder of the first rich person who will give him the time of day in order to increase the budget from shoestring to cruise-ship hawser.

I will give the Dixon full points for making the boys’ chief rivals a trio of girls without a) pairing them off with the boys or b) making one of them the fat one to match Chet / counteract Chet / be a lazy writer. Such arrangements happened occasionally from the ‘60s to the end of the Syndicate books, but they haven’t occurred often in the S&S digests. I mean, Joe takes the opportunity to get to know Willow’s friend Trisha Eads and ask her out — Joe calls her “fiesty” (106), so at least he has a type — but that’s just the way Joe rolls.

The movie, named Hide-and-Sneak, is improvised, lacking a script, to be filmed with digital cameras over three days on Barmet Bay. The actors’ goal is to find and keep the McGuffin, an unwieldy modern art project, while the cameras — one to each boat — capture enough footage to cobble together an interesting 80 minutes. I have my doubts, but that’s what the director and the producer, Joan Athelny, want.

Frank maintains an arch, cool demeanor throughout the planning stages despite his clear interest in drama. He’s unfamiliar with the term “McGuffin,” but he has seen the Shore Point Players’ production of The Miracle Worker, which featured Willow as Helen Keller, and Fenton and Laura had taken Frank to New York to see improv. (He’s also the one who suggested Chet take to the theater.) Frank works out the power struggles between writers, director, and producer as if he has been reading Variety. Frank obviously has some interest in theater or movies; why else would he have seen the Shore Point Players’ do anything? And yet he has no interest in the stage. He stayed out of the cast in Cast of Criminals, The Giant Rat of Sumatra (#143), and The London Deception (#158). He doesn’t use the investigation in Reel Thrills (#127) to force an entrance into the movie world. What is Frank’s endgame?

Whatever it is, Hide-and-Sneak doesn’t do anything to advance it. Each team gets a doggerel poem leading them to the McGuffin. The clues point toward places like Merriam Island and Shipwreck Cove; the latter is new, but the former — and its lighthouse keeper, whom Joe mentions is now buried on the island — appeared in The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), as Frank and the Sleuth ended up on the island after running out of gas. The boys also mention the Barmet Shoals, which appeared in The Phantom Freighter (#26). This is pretty tight continuity work for a Dixon who thinks the Hardys live on Oak Street (81).

Because Joe’s attempts to lose the girls’ boat gets the Sleuth pulled over by the harbor patrol, Willow and her friends get the MacGuffin first. The boys climb the cliff at Shipwreck Cove, which is the location of the construction site Tony had been guarding — still was guarding, actually, as he jumps the Hardys’ cameraman. From the cliff, they spot the girls in another cove, but they don’t see the McGuffin; Joe correctly surmises the girls are using it as an anchor, and before dawn the next day, he cuts it loose and steals it for his team. The other two teams tear after the Sleuth, which ducks and swerves between small islands, eventually hiding behind a yacht. But the yacht is deserted, like the Mary Celeste (Frank tells the story of the doomed ship as they investigate); when Chet spots the owner swimming nearby, they rescue him, and the story comes to a screeching halt.

Peter Buckmaster — a name truly worthy of the Stratemeyer Syndicate — is the owner of the yacht, a Wall Street bigwig, and the owner of the construction site above Shipwreck Cove. He sweeps up the director and the cast, taking them to his under-construction home, and the director’s obsession with getting more funding for Hide-and-Sneak stalls the production for an entire day — long enough for Joe to ask Trisha out and for Buckmaster’s entire financial empire to crumble. Once the news of his financial misdeeds hits the air, Buckmaster hops on his yacht, which explodes in a fireball before it can get far from the cove.

Suicide? Frank’s not convinced. He thinks a strange woman in disguise has been lurking around the movie, both before and after the explosion, and he’s sure someone’s still skulking around the construction site; he sets a trap, but the intruder escapes in the blinding rain when Chet has to save Joe from tumbling off the cliff. Another trap nets Buckmaster’s ex-wife, who is both the producer and the woman in disguise. She financed the movie to get extensive footage of Barmet Bay, where she suspected her ex-husband was hiding himself (and his money); she suspects Buckmaster faked his death.

While the Hardys, Chet, and Mrs. Buckmaster search for Buckmaster’s hidden money, they are interrupted by Andy and his friend, who decide to steal Willow’s dad’s boat. Frank uses his “martial arts” to deal with Andy and his knife, but Buckmaster returns from his watery grave with a gun. Andy and his friend throw in with Buckmaster, claiming to be capitalists like him; Buckmaster has Andy tie up his friend, Chet, and the Hardys before pistol-whipping him. “Now you know the first two rules of successful capitalism,” he tells Andy’s unconscious body. “Never do anything you can get someone else to do, and never pay for anything unless you have to” (122). Good advice for a villain too!

While Buckmaster takes the powerboat, removes the bilge plug from the trawler, cuts the Sleuth loose, and makes his getaway with his ex as a hostage, Chet gets another hero moment: He crawls over to Andy’s knife and uses it to cut Frank loose. After everyone is free, Andy and his pal go for help while Joe retrieves the Sleuth and hotwires its damaged ignition. They set out after the powerboat, but unable to catch up with it, they attract the harbor patrol by shooting a gas can they have tied behind their boat with a flare gun. I would think the flare would be more than enough to attract police attention, but I am not a boy detective!

The combination of the harbor patrol attracted by the explosion and police alerted by Andy catch Buckmaster. Chet, after his two hero moments, takes the Hardys’ advice to try out for a production of South Pacific. Frank and Joe decline to do any more acting, ending the book by telling Chet, “If you’re going to be a star, it’s better to shine alone” (135). It’s good advice, even if Chet will never achieve anything without the Hardys, but at least that exit line allows the book to wrap up more than 10 pages early, just like End of the Trail (#162).

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.

The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100)

Plot: Hurd Applegate sends Frank, Joe, and Chet to represent his interests in digging up a buried pirate treasure in Barmet Bay.

“Borrowing” from the past: The return of Hurd and Adelia Applegate! Hurd showed up in the first Hardy Boys mystery, The Tower Treasure, where he and his sister, Adelia, have been robbed of valuable jewels and securities. He blames the father of one of the boys’ friends, they investigate, Hurd thinks they’re incompetent fools, etc. You know how it goes — a story as old as the hills. He pops up again among the auto thefts in The Shore Road Mystery (#6). In his next appearance in the series, The Great Airport Mystery (#9), he and Elroy Jefferson bail the boys out of jail. His last appearance was in While the Clock Ticked (#11); Hurd gets mixed up in their investigation of death threats to Raymond Dalrymple when he claimed Dalrymple stole his stamps. Hurd saves the boys from a bomb, and the boys find Hurd’s missing stamps. A good time was had by all.

The Hardy Boys also return to Tower Mansion, the site of their first mystery (the theft of $40,000 worth of Applegate’s jewels and securities). In Island Treasure, Frank even mentions Joe falling off the stairs up the tower. Before this story begins, Applegate has sold the mansion, and it’s being turned into condos. Hurd reveals his father, Major Applegate, was the mansion’s first owner.

The Tower Treasure was also the basis for a serial on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1957, titled “The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.” In that case, the boys (played by Tommy Kirk and Tim Considine) were looking for a pirate treasure, as they are in Island Treasure. The introductory song mentions Applegate’s treasure as “gold doubloons and pieces of eight”; while speculating what the treasure might be in Secret, Joe asks, “Gold? Jewels? Old Spanish doubloons?”

Just as in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8) and The Secret of the Lost Tunnel (#29), when there’s a simple substitution cipher to be solved, Frank’s your man. Frank manages to decipher a code on a dug-up stone for the location of the treasure.

History is just one fictional thing happening after another: There is a lot of Bayport’s maritime history in this one, and all of it is made up out of whole cloth. Damien, the archaeologist along with the expedition, tells the boys Barmet Bay was discovered by Dutch explorer — fictional, of course — Henrik Schuusten in 1574. (Possibly a play on the name of publisher Simon & Schuster?) Chet chimes in that Schuusten named it Baarmuter Bay, after some important person in the Netherlands. That seems to be fictional as well. (Also: Chet gets to know something neither Frank or Joe knows? Shocking!) Also, as far as I can tell, the Dutch made no major North American expeditions to the New World until the early 17th century, when Henry Hudson claimed New York for the Netherlands.

Damien also says the ocean near Barmet Bay was extensively patrolled by pirates in the 17th century. As for the pirate who left the treasure on Granite Cay, he lists the fictional Henry Dafoe as the chief suspect, although he also mentions Captain Kidd.

Damn teenagers: Frank, Joe, and Chet are told to report to the marina “bright and early” for a day of treasure hunting. Although Joe does arise, chipper, at 7 a.m., they don’t arrive at the marina until 9. That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, bright and early. That’s when bankers show up for work.

Pot. Kettle. Black: Frank nearly gives himself a hernia while trying to throw an anchor overboard, evidently surprised that an anchor would be heavy, even though, as Joe says, “It’s supposed to hold the boat in place.” Frank then calls Joe a “dipstick,” which, although inaccurate, I find charming.

Weirdly, it seems Chet has stolen some of the brothers’ intelligence. Besides knowing about Barmet Bay’s history, he also has timely survival advice: when Joe falls in quicksand and complains that the harder he tries to escape, the more he gets sucked in, Chet tells him, “Then stop trying to get out.” I find this inversion of roles both disturbing and strangely alluring.

Why does Franklin W. Dixon hate Joe?: Maybe it’s an alliance of Franks, but the worst thing that happens to Frank is that he almost falls down the stairs in the tower. Joe falls into quicksand, gets knocked out and almost drowns when the mining pit floods, is the one who almost gets caught by a partially severed rope trap, and is the one who falls unconscious when the pirate poison gas attack is sprung.

Your edumacation for the day: The island treasure plot is largely stolen from the real-world treasure hunt on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. In many ways, that’s fitting, since many parts of the Oak Island story are probably legends rather than fact.

It’s also fitting since the story begins with three teenage friends in 1795. The three discovered a depression in the dirt on Oak Island beneath a tree with a tackle block on one of the branches, suggesting someone had hoisted something into a hole that had since been filled and settled. The walls of the pit had visible pick marks, there was a layer of flagstones just below the surface, and every ten feet, there was a layer of logs. The boys gave up at 30 feet, which is a hell of a feat for three boys. Remarkably, there are no records of this attempt until 60 years later.

About a decade later, another attempt was made by different hands; this time they dug down to 90 feet, finding logs every ten feet and a layer of charcoal, putty, and coconut fiber at 40, 50, and 60 feet. Before they gave up, they found a stone (since lost) with a coded description translated to say, “Forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried.” The pit flooded before more digging could be attempted; it was believed a channel (never found) lined with coconut fibers between Mahone Bay and the pit allowed the pit to flood when the protective seals (putty, charcoal, and coconut fiber) were removed. No one has ever gotten closer, and the bottom of the pit collapsed (either through a booby trap or natural means) in 1861. More modern technologies have given tantalizing glimpses below, but no one has actually found anything of value on the island.

In Island Treasure, many of those details are kept. The diggers find flagstones, one of which has a coded message that says, “Twenty feet below lies the greatest treasure of them all.” The flooding trap is unsealed when they open a door, but Damien quickly defeats it with cement at the source of the channel. There’s also a wooden platform (albeit one with a door in its middle.) On the other hand, they didn’t find the skeletons of pirates on Oak Island, so Island Treasure is one up on them there. They also didn’t find a treasure chest booby-trapped with poison gas, but exhaust from pumps in the pits tended to have the same — albeit more deadly — results. Four members of the Restall family excavation died from fumes in the 1960s.

Bad archaeology is what he needs: It’s obvious Damien has sold out to the Man on this one. When the Hardys, Chet, and other workers start unearthing skeletons at the bottom of the pit, Damien doesn’t even try to do any real archaeology work. Just put them in the bucket and keep using those big shovels to get to the bottom, boys! Don’t worry about spade marks on skeletons or disturbing artifacts! Get the treasure!

Read more in the Pansy-atic Adventure Series!: At the end of the novel, Hurd tries to interest the boys in finding a hidden South American silver mine. Uncharacteristically, Chet is gung-ho about finding it, but even more uncharacteristically, Frank and Joe want absolutely nothing to do with it. Cowards!

Opinions: When you’re going to steal, steal from the best, I always say. The Oak Island Treasure is a story worth adapting to the Hardy Boys, especially as the generally hemi-glutteal attempts made at finding the treasure in the 19th century matches up with the general standard of competence in the Hardy Boys. Using characters from The Tower Treasure for the 100th book is also a great idea; Hurd and Adelia should show up more often, but of course, they don’t. Not hip, those old people.

The actual treasure hunting is done briskly, taking a total of 60 pages (and three days) to get from ground breaking to GOLD! There’s not much mystery here — the culprits are kinda obvious if you care about such things, and I can totally understand if you don’t — but that’s not a problem when you’re digging up trapped treasure chests and pirate skeletons every few pages. I could have done without the hurricane threat, but it wouldn’t be a Hardy Boys book without some sort of natural disaster; besides, hurricanes follow the boys around (see Hurricane Joe, #11 in the Undercover Brothers series, Typhoon Island, #180, The Hidden Harbor Mystery, #14 revised, The Secret Warning, #17 revised, and The Four-Headed Dragon, #69). Hurricane Celia is supposed to be the worst to hit Bayport in 20 years, but, eh, who knows? It just sort of blows in one evening and out the next, as did the storm in Hurricane Joe.

Grade: A. Nostalgia + excitement = one of the best, if not the best, digests.