Trouble Times Two (#167)

First proposition: The title of Trouble Times Two makes no sense. While the book does contain trouble, I can find no multiplier of said trouble.

Second proposition: Trouble makes more prescient statements than usual, commenting on the decline of unions and newspapers in 2002, years before their collapse had become national panics, and delivers a pointed statement on the lack of protections for whistleblowers.

Third proposition: The main chum (non-girlfriend division) in Trouble is the brainy Phil Cohen, and his opinions are given more respect than usual: When he convinces the others to watch a foreign film rather than an shoot-‘em-up or romantic film, the entire of gang of teens have a great time. Frank decides he should support Phil’s suggestions more often, since this “rare victory” (50) turned out well.

Conclusion: This means something.

I don’t know what, though. Whether this is an attempt to inculcate liberal values on the Millennial Generation, or whether this is an attempt to reflect the values of the book’s target audience, or whether I’m just a couple of steps from claiming the world is run by lizard people, I don’t know, but again: This means something.

The book starts with Frank drowsing in social studies class and being kept awake only by Callie flicking paperwads at him, which gives credence to the target audience argument. But later in the first chapter, “big, beefy” (8) Biff Hooper gets punched by troublemaker Tom Gilliam, and Biff is too surprised to fight back; that Biff, a character named after his fondness for punching, doesn’t fight back against an unprovoked attack in his only appearance in the book suggests a desire for pacifistic Millennials.

And then again, Tom gets the nickname “Trouble Boy” (3) and is later promoted to “Captain Trouble Boy” (61). Neither is a nickname real teenagers would tag a miscreant with; if an adult used it, it wouldn’t stick. Maybe this non-normal behavior is a hint about the Lizard People … Later, Joe says “the organization” built by Ho Chi Minh gave the United states a “big headache” (11). Of course the Lizard People would minimize the damage done to their world order — unless Ho was a Lizard Person himself? How deep does this lizard hole go?

(The author later writes a car “backs up” “in reverse” [17], which is either a Lizard Person writing or bad editing. I’ve given you the evidence. Only you can choose to see the truth.)

Anyway, Trouble Boy gets stuck in a study group with Frank, Callie, Phil Cohen, aspiring newsie Liz Webling, and Kevin Wylie, whose father is Tom’s father’s boss. For the social science fair — which I’m pretty sure isn’t a thing, or at least shouldn’t be a thing — they decide to report on the effects of / on whistleblowers. Frank defuses Tom’s natural surliness and anger by appointing him the leader of the team’s anti-whistleblower group. However, the team is hobbled by Tom’s five-day suspension for punching Biff, and when the other group members show up at the Gilliam apartment, Tom’s father becomes peeved at his son’s anti-whistleblower stance.

Liz is a character who has slipped beneath my radar, a side effect of my skipping around the canon. Liz first appeared in the early Casefiles as Callie’s friend, but Trouble appears to be her first appearance in the Digests. Liz is also in Kickoff to Danger (#170) and The Test Case (#171), filling the young snoop role one would expect of the daughter of someone in the newspaper game. (Here, she and her father work at the Bayport Gazette; in Kickoff and Test Case, her father is an editor at the Bayport Times, and she works for the school paper, the Beacon. She also reports for the Bayport Cable News in Test Case.) In Test Case, her reporting alienates the Hardys, and — as far as I can tell — she made no more appearances in the series.

That’s the boring school stuff. The mystery begins when Joe runs supplies to Fenton, who has staked out Stinky Peterson’s apartment building, posing as a homeless man. Stinky’s a thief — he’s a pro, according to Fenton, despite being nicknamed “Stinky” — but Joe and Fenton can’t stop him from handing off stolen pearls to a fence. The fence tries to kill Fenton as he drives away, which accords with the Bayport police’s reports of a more violent fence, one who is also more efficacious and has a longer reach. This fence is also suspected of murder, a rarity in a Hardy Boys book.

Con says the fence is from a national syndicate, not a “homegrown organized crime type” (29), which is sad; as every Millennial knows, the best criminal organizations are artisanal, bespoke groups that are committed to consuming the profits of their local region. It’s more responsible, you know? And you get a more personal feel when you’re stabbed or mugged.

The next day, Laura is giving everyone — Fenton, the boys, and the readers — the silent treatment and refusing to make breakfast. This is Laura’s only appearance in the story, and her only purpose is to not say anything. She and Gertrude are mentioned a couple of other times, but they are only mentioned to highlight their absence from the home. (Well, Gertrude also gets to pass a phone to Fenton.) The Hardy ladies could be less present in this story, but in books in which the women aren’t mentioned, their absence occasionally is felt as a presence. Here, they do not even register their lack of presence.

When the teenagers witness Tom’s dad, Russell Gilliam sneaking into Tri-State Express, the shipping company he is an accountant for, late on a Saturday night, the Hardys get suspicious. Frank looks up Russell’s employment history (somehow) and sees he’s had a series of short-term jobs. While Joe thinks he might be “like that famous impersonator guy” (52) — I’m guessing he’s referring to the 1996-2000 TV show, The Pretender, in which a genius imposter on the run takes a new type of job every episode — Frank thinks he’s the advance man for the national crime syndicate.

Fenton’s background check reveals something different; Russell Gilliam received a golden parachute, which Fenton calls a “golden handshake” (63), from each of his employers. His peripatetic job history began at Dynodyne — a name that also suggests Lizard Author / bad editor, especially when they could have used Yoyodyne — when his house burned down, he lost his job, and his wife divorced him and took the kid.

Tom and Kevin posture when Tom’s suspension is over, and while Kevin makes abstract threats with a knife, Tom puts a stink bomb in Kevin’s locker that ignites magnesium Kevin kept in it. Joe, who shadowed Tom, gets the fire under control but refuses to rat out Tom, even when the assistant principal threatens his permanent record. Now trusting Joe, Tom comes clean: His dad is a professional whistleblower, getting payouts and NDAs from his crooked employers. After Tom’s mom died, Tom has lived with his father, wandering around the country; Tom worries his father has lost sight of “the line between being an idealist and being an extortionist” (90).

Things go wrong when Tom decides to solicit advice from Fenton. Fenton isn’t at the Hardy home, but the social-science fair group is, so Tom unburdens himself to them instead. Kevin tells his father, who is using his shipping company to fence goods for a silent partner; Mr. Wylie isn’t good at hiding his tracks, as Kevin’s grandfather tried to hire Fenton to investigate his son-in-law months before. Kevin’s father fires Russell, and Frank and Joe are worried Mr. Gilliam will declare “war”: “I guess trouble is Mr. Gilliam’s business,” Frank says (103), echoing the title of a Raymond Chandler short-story collection.

Despite this link to tough-guy stories, when Russell is lured into a trap and assaulted by Stinky Peterson, Frank and Joe save him and lament that unlicensed investigators like Russell can’t handle the “rough and tumble” (112) of the PI business. I’m pretty sure an accountant would make a great private investigator, and avoiding assault isn’t part of PI certification; in any event, Russell shrugs it off as a warning. Frank and Joe agree, and if there’s anything they know, it’s violent warnings.

(Or maybe they don’t. The Hardys have never been able to tell the difference between warnings and attempted murder.)

The Hardys can’t prevent Tom from being kidnapped the next day; Joe won’t even stick up for Tom from Kevin’s insults. (I’ve said Joe was a bad friend before; this is just more evidence. It’s always easier to punch down, isn’t it, Joe?) The Bayport police won’t look for Tom for 72 hours, even though he’s a minor and doesn’t have a history of being a runaway, because they’re not very good at their jobs, so the Hardys step up. When the Hardy brothers confront the Wylies at their McMansion, the elder Wylie’s silent backer, Nicolai, barges in with goons and takes everyone to the Tri-State offices, where the Gilliams are already being held.

The prisoners are bound, and Tri-State is set ablaze. (Nicolai really does not care about the fire looking like an accident. He has a very low opinion of American pig-dog police.) With the help of a box cutter Tom palmed, they manage to cut their bonds, break down a barred window, and escape with the help of firefighters. Mr. Wylie turns state’s evidence, Mr. Gilliam decides to give up his silent whistleblowing, and everything turns out OK.

Except as far as we can tell, Nicolai is still free, and his organization will probably threaten the Wylies’ lives. And we’re never told what grade the group received on the project that started this fiasco; Tom refuses to argue against whistleblowing, so Frank says “Phil and the other kids” (149) will work something out. “Other kids”? Are you going to give them Werther’s Originals if they do good work?

Or maybe he means, “Phil and the other non-Lizard People.” If so, I was right: this means something.

The Crisscross Crime (#150)

For the hundredth book in the Hardy Boys series, The Secret of the Island Treasure, Simon & Schuster brought back Hurd Applegate, a character from the first Hardy Boys book (The Tower Treasure) and a recurring character in early books. I was hopeful S&S would do something unexpectedly retro with book #150, The Crisscross Crime, but I was disappointed.

The book does have touches that recall earlier mysteries. The title is similar to The Crisscross Shadow’s (#32), although the plots have nothing to do with each other. Bayport’s reservoir is important, like in The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), but the reservoir in Crisscross Crime appears to be a new reservoir, as it isn’t located at Skull Mountain. (It's probably the same reservoir from Dungeon of Doom [#99].) The biggest rush of nostalgia comes when Fenton’s international crimesolving just happens to interlock with Frank and Joe’s Bayport case (The Mystery of Too Many Damn Times to Count). Still, I wish there had been more explicit references to the Hardy Boys’ past in Crisscross. If, as Wikipedia suggests, Crisscross Crime started out as Hardy Boys Casefiles #130 before that series was cancelled, it’s a miracle the book fits with the Digest / original series as well as it does.

Well, I suppose you can count Joe being a headstrong moron and Frank being a plodding dullard being references to the series past — but I’ll get back to that.

The story begins on the baseball field — that’s something else that hearkens back to the good ol’ days, but Frank and Joe were playing baseball for the Bayport Bombers in Danger on the Diamond (#90) as well, so it’s not unusual. Now, if they’d brought back baseball-loving chum Jerry Gilroy, who hasn’t been seen since 1966, then that would have been awesome. Anyway, Joe’s pitching, Frank’s at shortstop, and Biff takes Chet’s old spot behind the plate. The Bayport Bombers are an out from a win with runners in scoring position; Joe hangs a curve, but a diving catch by Frank seals the Bomber victory.

Rather than head to Mr. Pizza, Frank and Joe need to pick up their mother’s car from the shop. While Frank pays, Joe spots a break-in at a nearby bank. The robbers take off when the alarm sounds, and when Frank drives by in Laura’s car, Joe hops in with their video camera and tells Frank to follow that car!

The chase ends in a junk yard, where the robbers abandon their vehicle. But Frank drives Laura’s car into a car crusher — oops! — and as the car is turned into a cube, the boys narrowly escape with their lives and the video camera. I realize this is probably a traumatic moment for them; it would be for me. But our heroes are Frank and Joe Hardy, who have been in traumatic situations from (literally!) Australia to Zurich and everywhere in between, so why do they do so many stupid things afterwards?

For example:

• Joe’s first act after the car is destroyed is to break into the junkyard’s office and snoop around.
  
• Frank and Joe delay telling Laura that her car is no more, and she learns about it by watching the video Joe shot of it turning it into a large die.
  
• When the boys want to learn what happened at a successful robbery that happened just after the break-in they witnessed, Joe poses as a reporter for the Bayport Globe and grills the bank manager, even though the police have told the bank manager not to blab. Why not ask the usually cooperative police, Joe?
  
• When a suspect doesn’t want to talk to the boys, Joe’s reaction is to immediately hop her large wall to force her to talk to them.
  
• When Frank tells his brother to call the cops if he isn’t back from checking a potential bank robbery in ten seconds, Joe’s reaction is to get a couple of baseball bats, give one to Biff, then try to beat up the robber(s), who have guns.
  
• When Frank and Joe are captured by the villains at the end of the book, and Frank realizes the criminals are more likely to kill the boys the more they learn about what the Hardys know, Joe keeps blabbering, letting the criminals know exactly how much the boys have learned.

On one hand, the Hardys have always put justice above property rights or personal safety. On the other hand, Joe might be a nihilist thug, rushing headlong toward the hospital or the grave. (He might have discovered what all those concussions mean for him later in life and be determined not to suffer through the symptoms of CTE.) I realize the above acts are (somewhat) normal for private eyes in fiction, but Frank and Joe are kids with no reason to not cooperate with the police, given how willingly Con will feed them info.

But Frank and Joe never call the police! I’ve joked about the boys considering themselves a law unto themselves, but it’s hard to remember a case on which they have snubbed the five-oh so blatantly. After Laura’s car gets crunched and the boys break into the junkyard office, Frank and Joe don’t call the cops — even though it takes about three hours between the car’s destruction and the arrival of a concussed Biff to pick up the brothers. (A time warp might explain the abnormally long time it takes for a car chase and poking around a room or two, or the boys might have fallen into an alternate timeline: Joe calls Biff “Hoop,” and Biff’s drives a hatchback instead of his usual jeep.) Frank and Joe are determined to investigate, and it takes Frank’s near arrest — the boys’ van was spotted near the botched bank robbery — to get them to hand over their video of the chase.

But they don’t hand over the tape until after they’ve given it to Phil Cohen, who shouts “Enhance!” at his computers a few times and gets a clear look at the license plates. C’mon, guys! If TV has taught me nothing else — and it’s possible that it hasn’t — it’s that the police have a whole unit dedicated to shouting “Enhance!” at video, even though it’s impossible to improve a video past its original resolution.

I suppose the lack of police involvement cuts both ways. When Joe vaults the fence at a ritzy house on tony High Street — the same street the Hardys live on, although the book doesn’t mention that — and are caught, Frank and Joe don’t feel the need to use the police to justify their presence. Fortunately, the suspect lets them out of the trees in which her Dobermans have chased them and doesn’t call the cops herself.

Collig tries to give the boys their comeuppance, yelling at the Hardys for charging into a bank robbery with baseball bats, but his dressing down is interrupted by a grateful bank manager, who tells Collig the boys saved all that federally insured money and only drew a couple of bullets that hit only one bat. Still, Chief Collig gets his momentary revenge at the denouement: When Frank and Joe reveal the villains’ real, final target, he sneers at them, and his officers laugh. Serves you right, boys.

(This antagonism between Collig and the boys makes more sense if the book was originally a Casefile; Collig’s animus against the boys is much greater in that series.)

I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on Frank and Joe. After they describe the initial robbery attempt and chase to Fenton, Fenton tells the boys to call Collig “if they find anything concrete” (30). Fenton: They are frelling eyewitnesses to an attempted bank robbery, and they have videotape of the criminals escaping. I’m not sure your sense of responsibility is everything it should be.

The independent streak he inspires in his sons ends up biting him in the ass, though. When Frank and Joe find the counterfeiter Fenton has been hunting is in Bayport, they ask for Fenton’s number; Laura says she has already spoken that day to Fenton, who said he’s returning to Bayport, and boys decide their information can wait. Sure, why not?

And the boys definitely get their cavalier regard for information sharing from their father. When Frank and Joe try to “soothe” Laura and their Aunt Gertrude after they see Laura’s car being crushed, the women tell the boys to call the police (36). The boys refuse. No reason to listen to hysterical women and their completely legitimate concerns about your safety and the modern crimefighting apparatus!

Because Frank and Joe don’t share info with the police, it’s hard to blame Collig for his reactions. He thinks he’s figured out the pattern in crimes — or more accurately, he figures Frank has figured out the pattern, which he shared with the police in a rare moment of cooperation. Well, the book claims Frank figured it out, but let’s see if you can figure it out yourself. First, as Frank and Joe were getting their mom’s car crushed and the police were responding to the triggered alarm, a bank downtown was robbed. A day or so later, while Joe and Biff foiled the bank robbery with their wooden bats, the police were responding in force to an alarm triggered at a bank on Bayport’s outskirts. Frank’s cognitive breakthrough? He “explained the hunch he and Joe had about all the real targets being downtown and all the false alarms being on the outskirts of town” (108).

That’s not a hunch. That’s recapping what had happened in the book so far

Now, what don’t Frank and Joe share with Collig? In the junkyard office, Frank and Joe find detailed maps of Bayport’s utilities, including the sewer lines and storm drains. Also, Fenton is investigating a counterfeiting case for the government, and the printing plates and ink have already been stolen; one of the suspects tells them the paper U.S. currency is printed on is stored in Bayport. (Seems like Fenton should have been on top of that, really.) The boys — well, Frank, really — put 2 and 2 together, and even though they don’t bother to check whether they should be adding or multiplying, come up with the 4-1-1: The criminals are using the storm drains to move around town, and the last bank robberies will be a double fake. The real target will be the armory where the paper is stored.

While the police are responding to a decoy robbery downtown, the robbers use jackhammers to break into the armory from below, which our crack troops can’t hear. They then escape through the storm drains on jet skis. It’s unusual; I’ll say that, at least. After Frank viciously “clocked” a criminal with a tire iron and steals his jet ski (138), the boys chase the other robbers to the reservoir, survive being tied up to drown in the storm drain (Frank flexes his wrists to escape his wet bonds), and pursue the last of the criminals onto the bay, where they prevent international counterfeiter Herve DuBois from escaping onto his speedboat and the open sea.

At no point do they call the police, but the Coast Guard does show up in time to keep the criminals from drowning.

The book ends with Laura and Fenton showing up at the boys’ next baseball game in her new car; Laura cheerfully tells her sons they will “never” drive it (150). Finally — consequences for Frank and Joe!

Kickoff to Danger (#170)

You know, I’ve never considered the idea that I would ever question a Hardy Boy book’s characterization of Biff Hooper, but now I’ve read Kickoff to Danger (#170), and well, that day is here.

Kickoff is a weird title. On one hand, it’s a Bayport-based mystery that uses the Hardys’ chums and supporting cast. Those kinds of mysteries are really my favorites. The book also makes a concession to reality — more than one, really, as not only does Frank leave the football team to take an advanced computer course, but someone outperforms a Hardy on an athletic field. I approve, and if either of those changes would have stuck, I’d have overlooked all the book’s problems.

On the other hand, too many supporting characters are introduced; it would be OK if I expected to see any of them again, but Kickoff will likely be the only appearance for various school personnel and students. And sometimes Kickoff portrays recurring characters all wrong. For instance, Biff Hooper goes along with what the popular kids are doing, which isn’t too out of character, but what the popular kids are doing is bullying everyone else in the school, and Biff participates, even when the bullying involves ganging up on Chet Morton. Iola Morton doesn’t appear in the book despite Chet being accused of whacking Biff in the head with a coal shovel. A subplot in which a meek teacher is run out of school goes nowhere. In another scene, Frank and Callie discuss football like people who have heard of the sport but are unsure of the terminology. Given that it’s debatable whether the kids speak like real teens (or real humans) in the first place, though, maybe I shouldn’t dock a Hardy Boys book for its dialogue.

What pushes the book into “good book” territory is the violence and a random bit of Hardy Boys continuity. For the former, Biff gets whanged so hard with a coal shovel that he’s put in a coma, and later on, someone gets very close to killing him. The two incidents give a bit of extra weight to the events of the book, even if it’s strange the events go from bullying to assault to attempted murder.

The bit of continuity that is dredged up is that Seneca Tech is Bayport’s cross-county football rival. Do you know what book originally revealed that Bayport vs. Seneca Tech is the big game for both squads? The Sinister Sign Post (#15), published way back in 1936. (Kickoff was released in 2001.) And how did that game turn out? Bayport won, with Joe out with an arm injury. Frank was not on the squad at all — just like in Kickoff.

Kickoff begins with Callie and Frank commiserating over the difficulty of trigonometry. (The “commiseration” extends to physicality, as Callie ruffles her boyfriend’s hair. So that’s what they’re calling it these days!) Both are planning on college; in fact, Frank is taking a toughie of a college computer programming course, which is why he isn’t playing football. The course seems to have removed all of Frank’s fun circuits too, as he calls a football player who jumps off a loading dock on his way to practice a “clown” (4). While watching Joe practice, he spells out the plot to Callie: new student Terry Golden is awesome at the footballs, is getting scouted by college programs, and is a giant jackhole whose entourage wants to be the same as he is.

Callie’s reaction? She’s sad because she “liked dating a football hero” (7). You should have thought of Callie, Frank! It’s not every boy who has a girlfriend who will ruffle his hair, if you know what I mean, and I think you don’t.

After practice, Golden gives a puff-piece interview with the Beacon, the school newspaper; after the reporter leaves, he and his cronies bully Chet, snapping their towels at him. Biff helps them, which takes all the fight out of Chet. The next day, Chet’s still feeling the effects — after Golden steals his dessert at lunch, Chet throws in the towel and tries to get in good with the Golden Boys.

After deciding not to head to Mr. Pizza to see Tony Prito, Frank runs into the aftermath of the rivalry that will drive the book: he finds Dan Freeman, debate club champ and Beacon photog, after he has been pantsed by the Golden Boys. Freeman refuses to rat out his attackers, though. The next day, the Golden Boys shove other students around, and they nearly push Phil Cohen down the stairs; only the quick reactions of Joe and Biff save him. (This is Phil’s only appearance in the story, so all you Cohen fanatics better appreciate it.)

Frank and Joe approach the football coach to have him talk to the unruly athletes, but he refuses, which sets the scene for “tragedy.” After a big win vs. Seneca Tech, the Golden Boys stage an elaborate prank in which they steal the debate team’s backpacks; when the debate nerds follow the thieves into the basement, other Golden Boys are there to pummel them. Chet, who thought he was in on the joke, gets beaten too, and when Frank and Joe follow the chaos, they find Chet with a black eye and a coal shovel in his hand, standing over Biff’s unconscious body. Joe considers violating the rules of the Fentonian Mysteries by wiping the fingerprints from the shovel, but Frank — steady, faithful Frank — chastises his brother for his weakness. The evidence is preserved, and surely those who have kept it holy shall be blessed.

Biff is taken to the hospital, and the Hardys learn he was trying to foil the assault on the debate team. (He did a poor job of it, though.) Chet’s taken to police headquarters, and his name is released on the evening news. Mr. and Mrs. Morton come by, in a panic; additionally, Mr. Morton is in a “blue velour jogging — or rather, leisure — suit” (66), which is inexcusable. Honestly, man, have more pride than that. Also: You should shave our head, since you’ve “lost almost all the hair on the top of his head except for a little tuft just over his forehead” (65-6). You’re going bald. Own it.

Fenton gives the Mortons good advice — get a criminal defense lawyer, not a real-estate lawyer — but he gives the information in a jerkish, “haven’t I done enough for your family?” sort of way. The Mortons are not pleased, and Laura calls her husband on his bedside manner.

The school is useless in the investigation, the TV news has no interest in finding another suspect, and the Bayport Police Department is, after all, the Bayport Police Department. Frank and Joe feed Con Riley a lead — the coal shovel should have been filthy, but it was wiped and had only Chet’s fingerprints, meaning someone else had used it and wiped his / her fingerprints — but that goes nowhere. It’s up to Frank and Joe to investigate! They suspect Golden whacked Biff, although they should have suspected one of the nerdlingers: A shovel is a tool, and intelligent creatures use tools, not knuckle-dragging morons.

They are immediately threatened with a shunning, although a weak-minded Golden Boy reveals his co-conspirators by flinching when Joe guesses their names. Coach Devlin belatedly tries “discipline,” although his version of discipline involves — as it often does for middle-aged men physically in charge of young men — yelling and making the boys run. This doesn’t stop one of the larger Golden Boys from taking a swing at Joe; in response, Joe uses “that move [Frank] taught … where you catch the guy’s wrist when he throws a punch and use that to twist his arm” (95), then tries to stuff the attacker into a locker. (The guy won’t fit, sadly.) Nice move, Joe!

But retribution comes: someone throws a 2x4 at the Hardys’ van, shattering the windshield and nearly hitting Callie. After taking Callie home and securing Con’s help, they randomly accuse Golden Boy Wendell Logan. He cracks, admitting tossing the caber at the van, but he knows little else. And he doesn’t know much about the attack on Biff, either. Frank and Joe are convinced the law would be useless against Logan, so they don’t press charges. They could at least sue the jerk-o for damages!

On the way home, an SUV tries to bump the Hardys off the road repeatedly. After a narrow escape, they learn the SUV was stolen from near Golden’s house. Fenton complains about the repair costs, but we all know the Hardys have SUPER INSURANCE — it’s the only way they could afford their destructive lifestyles — so they should be OK. Nobody files any charges with the police, although Joe does let Con know over the phone.

The next day, Frank ditches a chance to see Callie, instead going with Joe (who is skipping football practice himself) to see Biff at Bayport General Hospital. Frank “silently promis[es] to make it up to her later” (128). No, you won’t, Frank. You never do, you non-football hero.

At the hospital, the Hardys find Dan Freeman battered in the bushes and a fire alarm blaring at the hospital. Freeman tells the Hardys that Golden pulled the alarm and is using the confusion to slip in and attack Biff. While Joe fruitlessly attempts to get hospital security interested in a possible murder — they will be struck down by a righteous, Fentonian god for their inaction — Frank and Freeman go to rescue Biff. Freeman admits he whanged Biff; in the dark, he didn’t know who he was hitting. But Golden worked Freeman over after Freeman backed out of his own plan to kill Biff. Freeman tries to pass his murder scheme as a, you know, thought experiment, but really, once you’ve started thinking about murdering somebody, you’re on thin ice.

Thankfully, Frank prevents Golden from putting an air bubble in Biff’s IV, then beats him up before he can physically assault Biff. He keeps him down until the guard assigned to protect Biff can return. And that is that! No one mentions what Golden is going to be charged with, just that his football career is down the tubes. Freeman is suddenly less attractive to colleges, but no one expects him to serve any jail time for his conspiracy to murder Biff. Joe gets in a dig about “NFL” standing for “National Felons’ League” (147), and Biff is forgiven for his heel turn. We will never speak of this again!

The Money Hunt (#101)

So after Dungeon of Doom (#99), a pretty good (if drawn out too long) digest, The Money Hunt is a letdown. I mean, I literally fell asleep while reading it.

The Money Hunt begins with Frank and Joe planning the route they will take on their fall vacation trip with Chet and Biff to Florida. I’m not sure how many schools schedule a lengthy fall vacation, but Bayport High School certainly seems like the kind of school to do so. Perhaps they even instituted Fall Break in consideration of the Hardys! Or maybe Frank and Joe aren’t in high school; they don’t mention their education at all.

But their vacation plans are hijacked. Fenton gets a phone call from Steve Johnson, a former police colleague — a lot of Fenton’s old pals are mentioned in this book — who’s having trouble at his Maine lodge. Fenton can’t go because he’s injured his ankle, so he volunteers Frank and Joe without asking them if they want to help. Of course Frank and Joe do, but it is inconsiderate for him not to ask first. Just as Fenton doesn’t consider his sons’ opinions, Frank and Joe don’t consider what Chet and Biff want. For Frank and Joe, mysteries are the most important thing in life. Perhaps they could even establish a mystery-based religion, which would allow them excused absences for mystery-related holidays … the Dixonian Mysteries? No, too meta. The Fentonian Mysteries, perhaps. Mystery religions are well established the world over, although this would take the concept in a new direction.

Fenton was injured, not in a life-and-death struggle or because a malefactor got the better of him, but because he “lost the suspect … when he tripped over a flower pot and severely sprained his ankle” (3). That’s just sad, Fenton. It’s not like you were running from a tiger, like in The Disappearing Floor (#19), or shot in the leg with a poisoned arrow, like in The Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28), or even stabbed by Ranse Hobb, like in The Blackwing Puzzle (#82). I admit, he did sprain his ankle in The Short-Wave Mystery, #24, as well, but c’mon, man …

Fenton describes Maine by quoting from the first line of Longfellow’s “Evangeline” — “murmuring pines and the hemlocks,” not the better known, “This is the forest primeval.” He’s trying to get across the idea that he wishes he could go, but it’s not hard to imagine that’s he’s happier in his own home, lying in bed, napping and reading mystery novels, rather than working at a remote hunting lodge. Especially since Steve Johnson’s troubles are so trivial; someone’s setting animal traps that almost hurt Steve’s lodgers, who have also heard mysterious chainsawing during the night. There are also minor thefts and an ATV-riding ghost, but the latter is too stupid to go into. Also — and this is an aside, not important at all, no no no — thirteen years ago, before Steve bought the lodge, four bank robbers from Boston hid out at the lodge while it was abandoned. Three were caught, but only the fourth knew where the loot was hidden.

No mystery is too trivial for Frank and Joe, so they head to Maine to dive head-first into the Fentonian Mysteries. (Chet and Biff can’t go, for some reason.) They fly over Moosehead Lake — which is a real lake in northwestern Maine — on their way to Mirror Lake, which is not. (Well, a few Mirror Lakes exist in Maine, but none of them are near Moosehead.) As Steve drives them back to the lodge in his jeep, the brakes fail from sabotage; rather than cutting the brake line, someone’s removed the brake lining. Certainly a twist on a classic, which I appreciate.

But it’s no more effective than usual, as everyone survives, of course. Steve’s sure one of his guests is behind his problems. Joe tells him they’ll solve the mystery if he can keep his cool: “A happy innkeeper …” Joe starts, and Steve finishes, “Keeps his head?” (38). Is that a proverb? I’ve never heard it, and Google shrugs when I ask it. In fact, Google doesn’t find any proverbs beginning with “a happy innkeeper.”

Let’s keep our heads as well — let’s examine … the suspect pool!

• Mr. Burns, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Buckley: The Three Bs are “middle-aged businessmen from Providence” (38), but they’re evasive about what their business is.
  
• Arthur and Adele Ackerly: She’s a champion trap and skeet shooter, trying out hunting live game for the first time. She’s also a talker; her husband rarely gets a word in edgewise.
  
• Len Randle and Mike Mallory: Len says he’s a writer for Outdoor Life magazine on his first assignment, while Mike is his photographer
  
• Mr. Peters and Mr. Fletcher: Peters is an elderly man who has come to Maine to watch birds. Fletcher is his assistant and caregiver.

The usual shenanigans occur. The ATV ghost, a figure in white joyriding on the lodge’s ATV, rides by Frank and Joe and scares them into falling into the shallow end of Mirror Lake. Someone throws a hunting knife at Joe, and Adele Ackerly seems the only reasonable suspect. A dummy is left in the fridge with a note warning the boys off. When the boys dispose of it, Len Randle thinks it’s a body and calls 9-1-1. (Joe calls 9-1-1 back and cancels the order for police, which is exactly what a murderer would try to do while he murders more people.) Randle then admits he’s trying to sell an article to a supermarket tabloid, In the Know, rather than an outdoors magazine.

Frank and Joe summon Biff and Chet, and for some reason, the chums are now available. It’s Frank and Joe’s first full day at the lodge, just 24 hours or so after they left Bayport; why couldn’t Chet and Biff have traveled with them? While Frank and Joe are poking their noses into everyone’s cabins and the grounds, Frank is locked in a burning shed and is saved by Steve’s handyman, Willy.

When Frank and Joe try to follow the Three Bs, the brothers notice someone has moved the trail markers. More importantly, they literally run into a net trap, and they are saved only by a Chester ex machina: the helicopter Chet and Biff have rented to make it to the lodge flies near them, and Joe uses his red scarf — a not-very-well-made gift from Iola — to flag them down. Fenton managed to get Chet and Biff to Maine quickly by calling on one of his old friends who runs a commuter service, so the two arrive in time to save Frank and Joe’s bacon. Fenton also sends information on the bank robbery, dug up by another old friend at the Bayport Times.

Chet and Biff pretend not to know Frank and Joe. Chet takes on the persona of a worldly hiker, telling everyone about his walking tours in Africa and the Canadian Rockies. His friends give Chet stick for his tales, but he has been to sub-Saharan Africa (in Revenge of the Desert Phantom, #84), and he has been to the Canadian Rockies (in The Mystery at Devil’s Paw, #38). He’s not lying, fellows. But when he and Biff dress up for hiking later, Joe says Chet and Biff look like “an ad for L.L. Bean” (104) in their new hiking gear.

After an attack on Burns by “a ghost,” Frank and Joe use the information Fenton provided to figure out the Three Bs are the paroled bank robbers. Once they reach that conclusion, the real villains — not the Three Bs — move quickly, cutting off the lodge’s radio and telephone communication with the outside world. The kids follow various suspects into the wilderness, but Biff and Chet lose their quarry quickly, and Joe has to turn back when Frank is menaced by a bear. Bears have always been common threats for the Hardys, appearing in seven books in the canon. Seven! And the Hardys have been threatened by all sorts of bears: black, brown, grizzly, polar. This one’s a brown bear. Frank and Joe escape this one, just as they did all the others.

One beast Franklin W. Dixon has never before tried to sell as a threat to the Hardys is a deer, but that happens in The Money Hunt. After recovering from the bear attack, the Hardys and Biff find Chet tied to a tree, with a buck with a “magnificent rack” (121) standing near him. (The buck is described as a six-pointer; I’m assuming the writer is from a state that counts only one side of the rack, which means the deer could have also been described as a more impressive 12-point buck.) Fortunately, the Hardys, Biff, and the Ackerlys frighten it away by using the advanced wilderness technique of “moving closer.” Before it flees, everyone except Fletcher and Peters gathers around, lured by what is evidently the only deer in Maine. Pooling mental resources, they figure out Peters is the remaining bank robber in heavy disguise.

Now, Frank and Joe have been slow on the uptake not to realize this; that’s not unusual. But Frank … he’s supposed to be the smart one, and he’s been frequently wrong in The Money Hunt. He misidentifies the capital of Maine as Portland. He believes the sun sets in the northwest in autumn in Maine. (The book doesn’t correct him on this; that he believes this is supposed to be part of his wilderness lore, and it helps him get his bearings.) He doesn’t realize the musical scale doesn’t include “H.” C’mon, Frank: you’re supposed to be better than this!

When the Hardys return from their forest powwow, they find Peters and Fletcher (an electrical engineer and poacher who found the dying Peters thirteen years before) stealing a float plane. Frank and Joe are kidnapped, of course. Once aloft, Fletcher attaches a device to the plane that will aim it right at the lodge and kill everyone inside (plus Frank and Joe). The two villains, who have the stolen bank loot, will escape to Canada in the confusion. After the villains abandon ship, Frank and Joe loosen their bonds enough so that they can nudge the controls, and the plane miraculously makes an uneventful water landing. Well, it would be a miracle in the real world. Frank expects it. Frank was trained to fly and land sea planes in The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), so maybe he knows what he's — no, I can't finish that thought with a straight face.

Everyone goes back to the lodge for dinner for a celebratory dinner. The criminals aren’t caught, although Frank and Joe are sure they will be: their electrical boat engine wasn’t charged, and the authorities have been alerted. After all, what are the chances that two men who eluded a search thirteen years ago in the Maine woods could do it again?

Interestingly, Peters might be in the clear for the original bank robbery; the federal statute of limitations is only five years, and the Massachusetts statute of limitations is only 10 years. However, there’s a catch: the statute of limitations is paused (“tolled”) if the accused is not a resident or is in hiding within the state. So depending on how Peters spent the time, he might have been untouchable for the crime!

I kinda hope he gets away with everything. Good luck to you, ATV ghost!

Danger on the Diamond (#90)

Ghost-written series books have many problems: absent continuity, the inability to change the series’ premise, inconsistent characterization … the list goes on.

But one of the most frustrating difficulties is when the author uses a character in a role that is obviously better suited to another character. Chet Morton, for instance, is plopped into The Witchmaster’s Key (#55) as Phil Cohen’s companion on a biking tour of Ireland and the Isle of Man. The role is much better suited to a more athletic chum, like Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, or Tony Prito — although Tony always has too many responsibilities to get away for a biking tour, and Jerry hadn't appeared in a book in almost two decades at that point. Still: Biff.

In Danger on the Diamond, one character is described as a practical joker who learned how to pick locks for a magic act he performed a few years before. That character obviously should be Chet, whose character was originally conceived as a jokester and who is forever picking up and dropping hobbies. But no, the role is given to Tony Prito — Tony, the always responsible one who is always working for his father or on another job.

I get that this character has to be athletic enough to attend a baseball camp and play for the Bayport High School baseball team. Tony was a second baseman in The Mummy Case (#63) and an outfielder in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74), but Chet was a catcher on the team in Mummy Case, and the heavyset Chet is not laughable as a catcher. Yes, Chet wasn’t on the team in the revised A Figure in Hiding (#16), but there’s no reason why he couldn't have been in Danger on the Diamond. Chet’s the jokester, dangit, since all the way back in the beginning! [*bangs fist on desk*] His attempted fish prank in The Shore Road Mystery (#6) was hilarious! And Tony’s the worst choice for a lighthearted prankster! [*froth starts dripping from mouth onto keyboard*] Why can’t Franklin W. Dixon get this right?

[*deep, heaving breaths, gradually slowing*] It just makes me mad, that’s all.

Phew. OK, I’m better now.

Anyway, Frank, Joe, Biff, and Tony are attending a baseball camp in Bayport that Chet is not allowed in. (The other members of the Bombers — the BHS nickname, also used in Slam Dunk Sabotage (#140) — are also there.) Dangerous things start happening: the bleachers collapse from sabotage, the pitching machine malfunctions and beans Frank, a rubber ball the pitching instructor squeezes explodes (not in the pitcher’s hand, though), and the locker room’s showers get stuck on very hot, nearly scalding Biff. Tony, whom Biff calls “a clown,” gets blamed for what are believed to be pranks gone wrong. Putting aside that Tony is not a prankster, the Bombers’ willingness to blame Tony speaks to a deeper resentment. Are they angry that his industriousness puts them to shame? Are they indulging in anti-Italian sentiment? Or are they behaving irrationally to further the plot?

That last one, I think. I mean, even Biff keeps blaming Tony. Then again, Biff tries to lure Joe into a shower where they are both intentionally obscured by clouds of steam, so maybe he’s not being written in character either. (He claims it’s to create a “steambath,” but I’m not sure whether filling the shower stalls with steam and take a shower together with a friend is something that would appeal to a heterosexual teenager.)

The incidents bring up larger concerns, none of which are connected to the plot. Perhaps the most interesting is that the author actually takes concussions seriously. Frank is hospitalized briefly after getting beaned, and he keeps a follow-up appointment with the doctor. The doctor says the headaches Frank experiences are normal, which is true, but they’re normal post-concussion syndrome symptoms as well. Since Frank doesn’t seem to experience any of the other symptoms, we’ll let that go. On the other hand, Joe is dazed after getting clubbed in the head and knocked down, but no one cares about that because he doesn’t have a boo-boo on his head like Frank did.

The writer doesn’t seem to have a good handle on baseball, which is worrying. Frank can’t hit at the beginning, so he consults an instructor to improve. The big realization that improves Frank’s hitting? That the hitting instructor “never took his eyes off the ball” while hitting (19). Although this is technically impossible — the visual angle of the human eye and speed of thrown pitches makes it impossible to see the ball the entire way from the pitcher’s hand to the plate — that same advice has been given to every kid who has ever played baseball. Repeatedly. Perhaps every practice. Who gets to their senior year of baseball without knowing this? Perhaps this shoddy coaching is why the Bombers seem so awful; the players we follow — Joe, Biff, and Frank — seem pretty bad, striking out and making constant errors.

Also: Taking his eyes off the ball is how Frank gets beaned by a pitching machine, so, you know, maybe he needs a few more reminders.

The kids are also amazed that the former major-league instructors are so much better than them at baseball. Of course they are! These guys made it to the top of the profession, and they’re not out of shape; they’ve been playing baseball at camps like these for years. Of course they can school cocky little twerps like you.

Whether they should is a better question. Is making all the attendees look awful a good business plan? I honestly don’t know. The consequences of the blow to the kids’ little egos argues against that tactic, but the tear-them-down-to-build-them-up school of thought says you need to make them realize how bad they are before they’ll listen. Since only fifteen players, all from the Bombers, are at the camp, I don’t think the camp can afford the defections this approach would cause. Maybe humiliating players has already had an effect; perhaps rumors about the camp’s techniques discouraged other schools, like intra-county rival Seneca Tech (from The Sinister Sign Post, #15), from sending their players.

The instructors seem committed to the abuse. When Frank and Joe approach the former major league pitcher, Zeke Horner, he tells them to “get lost”; when Joe protests, Horner says, “I’ll say anything I want … Keep your mouths shut and maybe you’ll learn something” (30).

The most worrying part of the plot is that the author expects us to believe that one of the coaches was kicked out of baseball for association with gamblers, and no one heard about it. That’s asinine, although I have the benefit of having seen the Pete Rose investigation unfold; Danger was published in 1988, while Rose was investigated and banned from baseball the next year. Major League Baseball couldn't keep a lid on the investigation into Rose for much more than a month. Even during a time when the players and press were much more cozy, like the ‘60s, the rumors would have been rife. If MLB could have hushed it up at the time, the story would have leaked in the intervening years. And I’m not convinced MLB would have kept it quiet. A chance to frighten the players by crucifying a minor player would have been too good to pass up.

Anyway. After a series of “accidents” and assaults, the Hardys throw themselves into the investigation. Technically, the Bayport Police Department also investigates, but we know how effective they are. This time, Chief Collig settles on Tony as a likely suspect, does nothing about it, then abandons the case. It’s clear the BPD doesn’t care: when Frank finds a tie-clip at an arson site, Collig tells them to bring it to the police station the next day. Chain of custody? Forensic evidence? Nope! That’s going to reflect negatively on the department when the Hardys give them their evaluation.

(To be fair: Frank just picks up the suspicious tie-clip from the ground and carries it to Collig, so it’s not like he’s concerned with good investigative techniques either.)

Frank and Joe’s plan for the case is to make accusations and browbeat the victims of the crimes they witnessed. It turns out this is an effective technique — they get the owner of the camp, Spike Nolan, to admit what’s going on, and Horner agrees to meet them at the Bayview Motel to discuss what’s going on — but they’re working on the wrong assumptions. Frank and Joe assume the accidents and damage are part of insurance fraud being pulled by Nolan or his employees, but a loanshark / gambling kingpin’s attempts to blackmail and extort Nolan and Horner are the reasons for the accidents.

(By the by: The Bayview Motel appeared in the revised Figure in Hiding (#16), way back in 1965! The years have not been kind to the Bayview, which is now “a rundown motel on the edge of town” (117). Bayview Beach was mentioned in Tic-Tac-Terror, but there’s no solid evidence the two are close to each other.)

Frank and Joe’s haphazard interest in this “evidence” thing they’ve heard about is especially galling when they quote Fenton: “It’s just like Dad’s always saying: Solid investigative skills usually pay off with good results” (110-1). Geez. Tell that to the driver who got run off the road by gangsters who thought it was the Hardys’ van. If Frank and Joe had, you know, alerted the police about the danger, perhaps an innocent’s life wouldn’t have been jeopardized.

Anyway, to get more this “evidence,” Frank and Joe get a bug from Phil Cohen before they head to the Bayview Motel. Phil insists on accompanying them, and Frank and Joe reluctantly agree. Why they are so reluctant to let Phil run electronic equipment in the van? I dunno, but he comes in handy after Frank and the victim are kidnapped by hired goons. While Joe goes to rescue his brother, Phil gets the cops. The BPD arrives too late, of course, and are forced to take possession of the criminals Frank and Joe have already captured. Oh, and they probably are forced to extinguish the conflagration that once was the goons’ van, which exploded when Joe ran into it with a lawnmower. I wonder if the van's manufacturer based its design on the Corvair or the Pinto? To be fair, it must have been a super lawnmower, because Joe managed to catch up with the van while riding the lawnmower.

Anyway, the bad guys are taken into custody, and Nolan — cleared of gambling allegations that got him banned from baseball — gets an offer to coach from a major league team. Does he take it? No! He’s going to stick to running baseball camps. Why? Because he’s stupid, just like this book.

Maximum Challenge (#132)

Plot: Frank, Joe, and four of their friends compete on the TV show Maximum Challenge when it comes to Bayport; at the same time, a rash of burglaries also hit Bayport.

“Borrowing” from the past: Hurd Applegate calls the Hardy home in the middle of the night, wanting the family to look for his stolen coin collection. The Hardys have helped Hurd before, recovering his stolen jewels and bonds in The Tower Treasure (#1) and his lost stamps in While the Clock Ticked (#11). Hurd turned into a staunch ally of the Hardys, even helping bail them out of jail in The Great Airport Mystery (#9) after they were arrested for robbing the mail. Frank’s down on Hurd in Maximum Challenge, calling the elderly Applegate “weird” (20). Frank also says, “We managed to nail the last few people who ripped him off” (20), alluding to The Tower Treasure, While the Clock Ticked, and perhaps The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100), in which Frank, Joe, and Chet keep Hurd from being double-crossed by the people digging up the buried treasure on an island Hurd owns.

Joe says Bayport General Hospital is the best in the city. Bayport General appeared in A Figure in Hiding (#16), The Sign of the Crooked Arrow (#28), and Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). For some reason, though, no one trusts their ambulance; the Hardys transport a man with a broken clavicle to the hospital in their van instead of waiting for the ambulance. Of course, the injured man had to wait for them to change their clothes before they took him to Bayport General, but the important thing is that he didn’t have to ride in an ambulance.

Bayport’s newspaper in Maximum Challenge is the Times, which is the most common paper in the original canon. Fans of the Banner, Star, Press, and News will no doubt be disappointed.

The show: Maximum Challenge is based on the show American Gladiators, a syndicated 1989-1996 show in which amateurs competed against each other and the show’s cast of athletes in physical challenges. The show had several different events, such as an obstacle course (called “the Eliminator”), jousting with padded sticks on raised platforms, a maze, and a climbing wall. All these events, with some modifications, were used in Maximum Challenge.

Maximum Challenge’s shooting schedule is extremely inefficient, though. Each of the five competitions of Bayporters vs. Maximum Challenge’s Champions are held on separate nights. This is grossly inefficient for a TV show. To lower production costs, TV shows will film as much as they can in one day — the game show Jeopardy!, for instance, films five episodes per day. Tearing down and reconstructing Maximum Challenge’s obstacle courses makes recording everything in one shot more difficult, but the show could easily have fit the taping into two nights. That way, they wouldn’t have to pay rent on the venue or pay per diems and travel expenses for the crew for an entire week.

Maximum Challenge also stole from the kid’s game show Double Dare, which aired on Nickelodeon from 1986 to 1992. Double Dare combined trivia questions with “physical challenges.” Maximum Challenge has no trivia, but it did have “gloop,” a green, slimy concoction that competitors splashed into when they fell from heights. “Gak” was a similar disgusting substance that figured into many of Double Dare’s physical challenges.

Iola!: In the original canon, it’s hard to say what the boys see in their favorite dates. Neither Iola nor Callie has much of a personality, other than being generally pleasant and absurdly agreeable. Both are pretty; I suppose that’s more than enough for most teenage boys. Callie was valedictorian of their high-school class in The Great Airport Mystery (#9), so Frank may have an appreciation of her intelligence that explains why he’s attracted to her. Iola … well, she “understood the finer points of baseball” (34), according to The Wailing Siren Mystery (#30), which Joe regarded as a plus. Joe also called her a “capable sleuthing assistant” (15) in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34), but he rarely allowed her to help with mysteries.

We’ve gotten a better idea of what Joe might see in Iola in other digests. In Past and Present Danger (#166), Iola seems to have temper that leads her to give Joe a couple of “playful” punches. The violence is alluded to in Trouble in Warp Space (#172) as well. In Maximum Challenge, Iola is still fiery, but her emotions are all over the place.

The best description of her is “mercurial.” At the beginning of the book, she kisses Joe when their team wins a spot on Maximum Challenge. A kiss is pretty intense for Joe and Iola, but ten pages later, she was “glaring … hard at Joe” (11) after a practical joke is played on them by the Maximum Challenge crew. She complains that it’s unfair that the Maximum Challenge team has more experience than she and her team do, which seems to miss the point of the show. Before one of the competitions, she engages in a little lighthearted gunplay, pointing a loaded prop gun at her teammates and pouting when it’s taken from her. When she learns the gun had a bullet under the hammer, she faints. Later, Joe accuses her of baying for an opponent’s blood. Before the final competition, she complains when Frank’s nervous and can’t control the volume of his voice.

I’m not saying any of these actions are unbelievable, nor are they unbelievable when taken together. What I’m saying is that no one else is allowed to swing between emotions and criticize their friends like Iola does. I’m also not saying we should blame Iola; as I mentioned in >Past and Present Danger, Joe may have driven her to it. In Maximum Challenge, he mentions that he’s “hugged one or two girls” in his life (106). I doubt Joe’s stopped at hugging, though … he probably moved on to the dreaded K-I-S-S-I-N-G after that.

Speaking of euphemisms … : A heckler — later revealed as one of the pros the Hardys’ team will be competing against — “pointed a mocking finger” at them. I’ve never heard of the middle finger described as the mocking figure before, but live and learn, I always say.

Near current events!: After Iola’s shocking lack of gun safety — not unlike her brother’s in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8) — Joe mentions a movie where a live round ended up in a gun and killed the star. Joe is probably referring to The Crow, in which a jury-rigged round accidentally lodged in a revolver's barrel, causing the round's bullet to be fatally fired at star Brandon Lee when a blank round was discharged.

Where is Bayport?: The team wins the Maximum Challenge competition for “New York area” groups (2). That doesn’t narrow it down much, but it’s another data point.

I don’t think that’s how it works: A woman tells Frank and Joe she had received a gymnastics scholarship to a school she couldn't afford. Usually, this is good news; scholarships pay for college educations, so the question of whether she could afford the college becomes moot. She continues her story as if this meant she couldn't attend the school. Either she meant the scholarship was partial, not covering some aspect of the college experience (room and board is most likely), or NCAA regulations prevented her from making the money necessary for incidental expenses.

In case you were wondering: Frank uses a “five-cell flash” when staking out a jewelry store. That’s a flashlight that requires five batteries — probably D batteries, in this case — to work. As you might imagine from anything using that much battery power, it’s pretty bright.

In the future: After catching the cat burglar, a woman who was blackmailed into robbing local merchants, Joe says he doubts he will ever be a cop — evidently the frisson between ethics and law is too much for him. On the other hand, he doesn’t recognize one of the Maximum Challenge athletes at the beginning of the book because he is wearing a very thin disguise — a raincoat — so maybe he’s looking for a job that will give him a little more leeway when it comes to competence.

Other people depend on you, you know: Frank and Joe actually decide not to investigate the burglaries at first so they can be properly prepared for the competition. A wise choice; with four teammates who would suffer if Frank and Joe were unprepared, it would be selfish for them to spend the night running about looking for a cat burglar. I mean, of course they are eventually going to get drawn into the mystery, but that’s because it’s part of the series conceit.

A new front in the war on language: With this book, I’ve given up complaining about the use of “bro” in these books. I hold out hope, though, that “dude,” which Joe uses once, will not be repeated.

Comments: Although the idea of Frank and Joe (and their friends) excelling at yet another thing and increasing their fame beyond all rational bounds is absurd, the actual mechanics of Maximum Challenge are occasionally exciting. The first competition, which combines rock climbing with sniping, is a nice twist, and the maze challenge, which is portrayed as much as problem solving as athletic competition, is genuinely exciting. Also, it gives Phil Cohen a chance to shine, which is nice. The other competitions are less original and exciting, but they are solidly based on American Gladiators, so I can’t complain. I preferred the reality show in Warehouse Rumble (#183), although that’s because the post-apocalyptic trappings of the obstacle courses gave them a little extra oomph.

The kids all act like normal teenagers. I mentioned Iola before, but Biff thinks he can win a contest of strength with a professional athlete and has no idea how absurd that is. The Hardys and their friends endure a great deal of ribbing at school after Maximum Challenge plays an on-air prank on them, and even Aunt Gertrude gives them guff. I think the most realistic moment of the book — perhaps the entire canon — is when one of Iola’s friends laments her defeat in the rock-climbing competition. Iola had an early lead but was overtaken by her professional opponent, and her friend later says, “We were rooting for you guys … Iola did so well at first” (35; emphasis mine). Everyone expects things to keep going the way they start, no matter how much the odds are against it.

The criminal mastermind’s plan itself is stupid. Frank says, “Working for a traveling show would be a great cover for a burglar” (85), which is true — except that the high-profile burglaries could easily be matched to the show’s stops. Which the Bayport police do. The mastermind has insulated himself from the actual thief, so it’s possible he doesn’t care about that. However, he has the thief make the final drop of the stolen goods on the Maximum Challenge set, which is stupid. It’s where everyone can see you! And you might be filmed picking up stolen goods!

Grade: B.

The Mark of the Blue Tattoo (#146)

Plot: Chet is kidnapped during his first day as an ice-cream man, and the incident may have something to do with increased gang activity — but not necessarily gang violence — in Bayport.

“Borrowing” from the past: Frank and Joe visit Fenton’s study, looking for advice. In Blue Tattoo, the study has an “old leather couch” and bookshelves with Fenton’s “impressive collection of crime literature” (119). The office first had a couch in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). Fenton has often had a library of crime-related books, but it was located in its own room, not in his study.

In other mysteries, the study has contained Fenton’s collection of trophy firearms (The Missing Chums, #4), disguises and souvenirs of past cases (While the Clock Ticked, #11), comfy chairs (The Sign of the Crooked Arrow, #28; The Shattered Helmet, #51; The Mysterious Caravan, #54; and The Pentagon Spy, #61; and the revised Mark on the Door, #12, and Melted Coins, #23), a short-wave radio (The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo, #47, and the revised Secret Warning, #17), criminal records (Crooked Arrow; The Secret of the Lost Tunnel, #29; The Secret Agent on Flight 101, #46; The Apeman’s Secret, #60; and the revised Hooded Hawk Mystery, #34), a safe (Hooded Hawk and The Mystery of the Chinese Junk, #39), and a TV (The Four-Headed Dragon, #69).

Gertrude makes a strawberry-rhubarb pie for the boys. Gertrude made a strawberry-rhubarb pie for the boys in the revised Mystery of the Flying Express (#20) and a rhubarb pie in the revised Clue of the Broken Blade (#21) and The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48). Gertrude submits “strawberry rhubarb pie” as an entry in the Freddy Frost Ice Cream Company’s new flavor contest, and of course she wins.

After Joe swings from the top of a moving ice cream truck through its small side window and into the truck’s storage area, a man asks Joe, “Did you ever think about joining the circus?” (145). Frank makes the standard “as a clown” joke, but seriously, Joe was a clown for the Big Top Circus in Track of the Zombie (#71). Both brothers also worked as trapeze artists (among other things) for “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21).

Two-thirds of the way through the book, Chet balks at taking on gangsters and murderers, but he’s done so before without blinking. The boys took on organized crime in The Night of the Werewolf (#59) and The Shattered Helmet (#52) and attempted murderers in The Pentagon Spy (#61), Sky Sabotage (#79), and The Swamp Monster (#83) without backing down. Heck, he’s even helped the Hardys fight terrorists, who are much more frightening than anything in The Mark of the Blue Tattoo. So why’s Chet being such a chicken now?

It was the ‘90s: When Frank wanted to run a license plate, the first thing he did was “logged on to the Net” (26). The dial-up modem sound wasn’t described, but from that description, I can hear it — followed a few seconds later by “You’ve got mail.”

Also, the Freddy Frost ice-cream truck trucks stop at several playgrounds, both municipal and school. That just makes sense in a commercial sense — you go where the customers are, right? — but in the 21st century, concerns about childhood obesity might get ice-cream trucks banned from such child-heavy (and heavy child) areas.

When Chet is kidnapped by two men in ski masks, Frank hypothesizes that it might be part of a hazing ritual, which Iola equates with “a practical joke” (12). Given the attention hazing has received, especially hazing incidents that have resulted in injury or death, hazing today is considered much more serious than a practical joke.

Bayport Chamber of Commerce: Since it’s a book based in Bayport, Frank and Joe patronize several local businesses. Frank and Joe grab a slice at Mr. Pizza and a grilled cheese and soda at the Starlight Diner. The brothers also accidentally on purpose run into Officer Con Riley at the Coffee Spot, where they pick up coffee and doughnuts. Chet works for Freddy Frost Ice Cream Truck.

Congratulations, ghost writer and editor! This may be the first book that featured Bayport business names that I didn’t laugh at.

When you’re a Hardy, you’re a Hardy all the way: Frank and Joe are astonished to be mistaken for gang members by Hedda Moon, the city’s peace broker to the teens. However, if she’d phrased it differently, it would have made more sense; Iola talks about the “clout” (58) the boys wield, and Joe’s favorite teacher, Mr. Bennett, claims Frank and Joe have a great deal of influence on other students. Later on, when investigative reporter Aaron McKay is about to tell Frank and Joe he’s decided they aren’t gangsters, Frank and Joe grab him by the arms, and Frank says, “Time for a casual stroll and a friendly talk” (105), which is what gangsters say to the guy they’re about to stuff in the trunk of a car and bury in a shallow grave in the desert.

Metafiction: McKay suggests he wants to write a fictionalized version of the Hardys’ adventures, which he expects to be popular: “It wouldn’t surprise me if the publishers decided to do a whole series of books about you” (63). Frank stalls McKay, but one can almost imagine Joe winking at the camera and saying, “That’s ridiculous, don’t you think?”

Later, when Iola goes missing after investigating on her own, Joe thinks, “If anyone had harmed Iola, he would pay them back with whatever it took” (135). Iola was killed in the first book in the Hardy Boys Casefiles series, Dead on Target, which led to a longstanding vendetta between the Hardy boys and the Assassins, who planted the bomb that killed her.

Dumbest teen gangs ever: First, everyone knows Marlon Masters is the “most powerful gang leader at Bayport High” (4), but the Hardys haven’t actually done anything about Masters or any of BHS’s many gangs. Second, one of these teen gangs is named the Gimps. The Gimps! They change their name to the superior “Mad Martians,” and their biggest rivals switch from “Gutfighters” to Comets. (Joe dislikes Comets, which does lack an intimidation factor, but Gutfighters is awful.)

Thirdly, the gang the Hardys are fighting is the Starz, which most people think of as an off-brand HBO or Showtime rather than a name for an intimidating gang. Fourthly, the Starz’s biggest tough backs down when Joe looks at him funny. Fifthly, the Starz’s revenge consists of pushing and tripping the Hardys and their friends. Sixthly, when they want to get back at Callie for snooping, they dump her looseleaf binder on the floor, and it takes her ten whole minutes to return the pages to the proper order. That’s intimidation!

Ahead of the curve: The Freddy Frost Ice Cream Company is running a contest to suggest a new flavor. Chet, eager to make a good impression on his employer, comes up with quite a few suggestions, like lasagna and champagne, that disgust his friends. Two stand out: “hash” (94), which could refer to three different meanings (beef, hash browns, or hashish), and “guacamole sherbet.” The latter is an intriguing idea that I think would appeal to modern foodies, and the sherbet’s low milkfat content would be nicely offset by the fattiness of the guacamole. Also, Joe’s suggestion of a corn chip cone, offered in jest, is really a nice touch. Chet was enthusiastic about the idea, although like all his ideas, he abandoned it quickly. I can see a semi-upscale restaurant making it a specialty, although it might be hard to sell from an ice cream truck.

The po-po ain’t on your side, man: Once again, Frank and Joe decide to cut the police out of their investigation. Frank warns Chet not to pass along a bit of important evidence (the star tattoo on one of his kidnapper’s wrist) to the police, although to be fair, he might just have been peeved that he and his brother were not immediately recognized by officers and that Callie was frisked. Later, it doesn’t occur to Joe to contact the police when someone tries to kill him with an ice-cream truck. Near the end of the book, Frank and Joe pump Con for info without reciprocating.

Maybe Joe considers reporting crimes to the police to be in the same category as snitching to teachers, which he considers “against his principles” (46). Or maybe both brothers realize the police are hopelessly out of date; Con laments that the “rumble has gone out of style” (126). The next thing you know, they’ll tell Con that gang violence no longer involves musical numbers!

I find your lack of faith disturbing: When Frank and Joe lead the hunt for Chet, Joe says they’ll do everything they can to find their friend. Iola asks, “What if that’s not enough?” and wants to call in the police. Iola: Frank and Joe’s best has always been enough to find Chet, as it was in this case. I mean, their fourth case, The Case of the Missing Chums, was entirely about finding a kidnapped Chet (and Biff).

Iola also complains about being left out of the case, which is a fair complaint. (Callie gets to do all sorts of things to help the investigation, although to be doubly fair, she also works hard to find things to do.) Rather than complaining directly to Joe about being forgotten, Iola has Chet deliver the message. It immediately slips Joe’s mind that he’s supposed to include Iola, but rather than seizing the moral high ground with a blistering lecture, Iola slips out of the Morton house and gets thrown into an ice-cream locker to freeze to death. That’ll certainly show Joe!

Frank and Joe — awesome teens, great job!: Joe is described as having the “casual grace of a star running back” (1). When the Starz prepare to attack Frank and Joe, the brothers slip into the “unfocused attention of a trained martial artist” (31).

Have you been paying attention?: When someone pours glue over a library book and Frank’s notes, Frank gets blamed and sent to the principal’s office. The principal believes him, but she wonders what the perpetrator’s motive is. C’mon — Frank and Joe pick up enemies everywhere, and the school had already asked the brothers to investigate an extortion ring.

Blessed are the peacemakers: After Frank says he was talked into a peace conference with the Starz, Tony Prito is appalled: “The nerve … I’d like to negotiate some knuckles on that guy’s … nose” (54). Hot-headed Italian stereotype or hot-headed teenager stereotype?

Opinions: Blue Tattoo has a lot to recommend it. It does a good job looking at the role Frank and Joe occupy in Bayport High School. They aren’t universally adored by the student body; in fact, it seems as if the Hardys are isolated, able to rely only on their immediate circle of friends. This isn’t the way other digests portray the Hardys — a new friend always pops up — but it’s more realistic that the only real friends they have are Biff, Chet, Tony, Callie, and Iola. Frank and Joe are too busy to dedicate much time to friendship, and they need to guard against people who want to associate with them only because of their fame.

It also shows that Frank and Joe’s aggressive crimefighting lifestyle has left them blind to problems in their own backyard. Bayport and BHS seem riddled with teen gangs, and the boys have done nothing about it. They pay the price, too; their classmates are intimidated by the gangs, unwilling to discuss them with the Hardys. Frank and Joe’s teachers range from sympathetic toward them to oblivious to the brothers’ reputation; the school librarian doesn’t buy Frank’s claim that someone else vandalized his library books, and Ms. Amity makes Frank (and the rest of his English class) study The Return of the Native, written by local boy Thomas Hardy.

On the other hand, the book has its flaws. Frank and Joe are not top-notch investigators, oblivious that the Frosty Freddie ice cream trucks are being used as part of a criminal network even as they watch it happen. It’s not obvious that the trucks are being used to run numbers, although the OTB the truck stopped at should have been a clue. It is obvious that they’re being used for something illegal, though; several times the truck the brothers followed drew a large crowd of adults, but children were frequently ignored. Frank and Joe just think it’s weird, part of the business world they don’t understand.

Also: the blue tattoo on one of Chet’s kidnapper is never used to identify the kidnapper, although everyone assumes the tattooed star means the kidnapper was a member of the Stars. And Hedda Moon never should have used a nom du crime (“Lunatic”) that referred back to her; the astronomy-related gang names she chose after taking over the gangs also were a poor choice.

Grade: A-. A strong Bayport and high school setting will cause me to forgive the book’s weaknesses.

The Baseball Card Conspiracy (#117)

Plot: Counterfeit baseball cards start popping up at shows in the New York / Bayport area; when Biff gets burned, Frank and Joe are on the case.

“Borrowing” from the past: For dramatic purposes, Shore Road is considered to be “dangerous,” even to the point of washing out in very wet weather. Frank and Joe take Shore Road to Southport, but it hasn't been used to reach a specific local destination very often. In The Tower Treasure, the road is rutted and rough, and in 1931’s What Happened at Midnight (#10), Shore Road “doesn’t lead anywhere in particular” (pg. 196). It became the main road to the new airport by The Great Airport Mystery (#9). In Danger on Vampire Trail (#50), it merges with a superhighway several miles from Bayport. By The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), much of its rush-hour traffic was diverted by expressways, completing its evolution from a back road to main artery and back to secondary road. Perhaps The Baseball Card Conspiracy is implying it is about to fade back into back road status.

Biff Hooper’s home is said to be in one of Bayport’s “newer” housing developments. Given that the city hasn’t grown in population in 70 years, that may not be very new. The only time the Hoopers’ house was mentioned in the original canon was to place it within walking distance of the boys’ boathouses in The Shore Road Mystery (#6).

Frank and Joe — mostly Frank — identify a symbol used in geometry: parallel lines with a backslash is called a transversal. Frank and Joe were last seen in geometry class in 1930, in The Great Airport Mystery, so they're demonstrating an impressive memory.

At one point, Joe claims to have collected stamps in the past; that’s never been stated before, although Hurd Applegate’s stamp collection was a plot point in While the Clock Ticked (#11) and Elroy Jefferson's stolen stamps were the MacGuffin in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8).

Bayport’s baseball team — semipro? minor league? Heaven forbid, major league? — is nicknamed the Blues. Frank mentions the team was founded in the 1890s. In The Wailing Siren Mystery (#30), Bayport’s nine is named the Bears. This may not be a mistake since many bush-league teams have switched their names over the years, even switching back to previous names.

Biff trails one of the thugs down to the Bayport Mall. For those of you who are interested in how American consumerism is portrayed in popular culture, the mall just barely managed to show up during the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s ownership of the books — 1984’s The Blackwing Puzzle was the mall’s first appearance.

On the cover of the Hardy Boys: I don’t say this often — I can’t imagine why — but I really like the cover to Baseball Card Conspiracy. Frank and Joe look like plausible teenagers, albeit ones who are a little too buff. The criminal, who looks like a red-haired James Dean or Luke Perry, is literally escaping the illustration, with his foot and hand outside the border. Frank is running onto the illustration, with his foot cut off by the cover’s edge. There’s a lot of details, like the strewn cards and the bystander’s barely greeked Pirates’ cap (the Pirates’ “P” is replaced with a “K”), the pennants, the baseball equipment. The two bystanders look like the same person, unfortunately, but that’s a minor quibble.

For those who are curious, the jersey in the background — a #8 in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ colors — is probably meant to be that of Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, who played his entire career for Pittsburgh. Although this book was published in 1992, when the Pirates won their third straight National League East title, I think we have to consider the cover artist — “Daniel R. Ho????” (it’s cut off by the cover’s cropping, but it’s almost certainly Daniel R. Horne) — is a Pirates fan. According to Wikipedia, he was born in Pittsburgh in 1960, which would have made him 19 when the Pirates last won a World Series.

Talkin’ baseball: The counterfeited cards are those of Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry, and Ken Griffey, Jr. The manufacturer and year of the cards are never mentioned. The cards were fairly valuable when the book came out, but the baseball card market crashed in the '90s and didn't recover until the pandemic. Now they're valuable again, decades after mine were stolen — not that I'm bitter ...

Anyway, Franklin W. Dixon isn’t an economist either. The counterfeiters in The Baseball Card Conspiracy are selling the fake Mattinglys for $10 a pop. Biff buys his from a dealer for … $10. Obviously, in this case the dealer won’t be making any money. Dixon is making the classic collector mistake: the price-guide price is retail price. If you sell to a dealer, he will give you much less than that amount; the dealer has to make a profit, and the seller doesn’t have the customer base to sell the collectible (or didn’t, until eBay). The counterfeiters likely would have been selling the fakes for somewhere between a quarter and three-quarters of the price-guide price.

Police employment: Frank and Joe drop off a screwdriver used to commit sabotage at the police station, with Frank blithely commenting that he’ll see if the police can match the fingerprints for them. Do the police work for Frank and Joe? It usually seems so, but at one point, Con Riley and an officer confront Frank and Joe after a tip-off and find them with a bunch of (planted) counterfeit cards. Con explains how he has observed their civil liberties — it figures the first time anyone’s civil liberties are respected, it would be the Hardys — but despite being caught redhanded, Frank and Joe weasel their way out of an arrest and avoid being treated like regular folks. This is especially ironic since they later marvel at two crooks exercising their right to remain silent just before the brothers break into an innocent man’s mansion to prove he’s guilty. They also leave the scene of an accident (admittedly, no Hardy was driving) without giving those at the scene a way to contact them to help with the accident report.

Fortune favors the prepared: On their trip to Southport, Frank and Joe’s vans get two flat tires, courtesy of a sniper. Frank and Joe have learned from their adventures, and the van actually comes stocked with two spare tires. Both Frank and Joe also carry a spare packed overnight bag in their van.

Even the prepared mind can be baffled: Fenton is working on a case involving a stolen duplicating machine / printer of uncanny resolution. Frank and Joe are working on a case that involves many copies of excellent forgeries of baseball cards. The boys see a connection between the cases … and that connection is that maybe the person who Fenton is helping can inform them about printing technologies. So close!

Time catches up with all of us: Fenton seems to be in a bit of a decline. He literally is unable to escape from a cardboard box at one point. Near the end of The Baseball Card Conspiracy, he goes to the police to get them to search for Frank and Joe after only a single night’s absence. That’s either too much time or too little, and I can’t figure out which.

Ami d’hypocrite!: In Panic on Gull Island (#107), Joe absolves Iola for looking at guys while she’s on Spring Break with a friend. (He doesn’t do it to her face, of course, since she’d probably hit him and make him cry for saying it.) In The Baseball Card Conspiracy, Joe flirts with and even asks for the phone number of a woman who was bilked by a counterfeiter. Sure, he says it’s to notify her if her money is recovered, but I think we all know what’s going on here.

March of technology: The Hardys recover a 3 ½-inch diskette that helps them figure out what’s going on. This is amusing from a modern perspective for two reasons: one, the diskette is an outmoded form of data storage, and two, Dixon had to distinguish it from the even more outmoded 5 ¼-inch diskette. Someday — by which I mean now — people will be saying, “Remember CD-ROMs? Man, I haven’t seen one of those in forever!”

On a similar note, Frank and Joe have to go to a public library to search through old telephone directories. Although those directories are still useful to many people, a lot of libraries have thrown them out, and any real private investigator would have purchased a subscription to a database that would do the same thing.

Nothing half-hearted about this guy: Usually, you wonder why the villains don’t just kill the Hardys and be done with it. That’s not the case with the main thug in The Baseball Card Conspiracy, who tries to throw Frank from a train, shoots out their tires while they are driving on Shore Road, attempts to firebomb their van, and hits both boys in the head with fastballs before clubbing Joe in the skull with a baseball bat. (That probably should have been debilitating, if not fatal.)

Double Entendre Theater, where we like what we see, if you know what we mean: One morning, Frank goes to the breakfast table and finds his parents “lingering over breakfast.” They had been up late the night before … “discussing the case.” So that’s what the kids call it these days.

Yes, I know it’s juvenile. I don’t care.

Opinions: I was surprised by this one. I had low expectations, but this book managed to function on two levels for me: a time capsule of the time when collecting baseball cards was a craze and as a solid digest. As I mentioned, economics is not this book’s long suit, but there are a few touches that show the author knows the Hardys, and the plot is simple enough, with just enough good suspects, to keep the reader guessing.

Grade: B+ — although if you don't have fond memories of collecting baseball cards, it might not get much above average for you.

The Test Case (#171)

Plot: Tony Prito and Joe are suspended from Bayport High after being found with a copy of an upcoming state test, and the entire gang pitches in to clear their names.

“Borrowing” from the past: At times, the book feels entirely retro; it starts with a skating party and a rousing game of crack the whip. They also play “monkey in the middle,” which seems a mildly offensive name for keep away. (I’m not sure to whom it would be offensive. Just feels that way. Wikipedia mentions the name is common in eastern Canada and New England.)

There’s also the old Bayport Times, which has been publishing since the ‘40s. (Bayport’s also seen the Banner (first mentioned in the 1930s), the Star (also the ‘30s), the News (1950s), and the Herald (1980s), but the Times seems the most durable.) Gertrude mentions people didn’t travel as much when she was growing up — and given that she grew up in the 19th century, that’s true. Fenton tells Frank and Joe to search his files for a criminal, which he often did in the old days — but now the files are password-protected databases rather than folders in a filing cabinet. Fenton gives out some of his patented advice, but this time it’s an old political saw rather than detective pointers, so it doesn’t really qualify. Frank uses a pay phone from inside the school; that’s positively antiquated.

One of Frank’s teachers cleverly tells him to solve crimes during summer vacation rather than the school year. That is the most used excuse for why the Hardys can gallivant around, solving crimes, but given how much summer vacation the boys used, they must have been crimefighting over several years.

On a more normal note, Frank uses his “martial arts training” at one point, and Joe thinks about a “martial arts class” — given the range that term covers, perhaps it’s the Hardys’ own art, kung kwankido jujudo, a devastating combination of ignorance and plot convenience. In actuality, Frank’s used jujitsu, judo, and karate. He also uses tai chi in this book; while tai chi is a real martial art, its popularity among seniors and those recovering from injury make it sound as ludicrous as when Batman used yoga to fight criminals in his early days.

Tony’s listed as a second baseman. He was listed as a second baseman in The Mummy Case (#63) but as a “hard-slugging” outfielder in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). Second baseman seems right to me. He also played baseball with his friends on the beach in The Secret of Pirate’s Hill (#36).

Perhaps the most surprising is the return of Jerry Gilroy. Oh, he’s only “an outfielder named Jerry,” but I know who he is. Gilroy was one of the original Hardy Boys chums, a star outfielder who loved baseball so much he actually organized a summer league in Bayport (The Missing Chums #3). Try doing that today. But he gradually faded away because there was nothing unique about him — an athlete like Frank and Joe, a chowhound like Chet, etc. He was in eleven of the first twelve stories, then disappeared for more than a decade before popping up in The Melted Coins (#23), then wasn’t seen again. He was mostly edited out of the revised stories as well, although he pops up occasionally. But he’s back here. Yay, Jerry!

I will not have you acting as normal teenagers in my nostalgia!: Iola and Joe act somewhat … well … flirtatiously toward one another. I know, I know! It’s near impossible to believe, especially since they’ve been dating since the Hoover administration. But Iola steals Joe’s stocking cap at a skating party, giving Joe a “catch me if you can” sort of order, and when he does catch her, he … he … he lifts her up! Actual contact! Sure, it was through several layers of clothing, but if Iola hadn’t pulled the cap over Joe’s eyes, there might have been kissing next! Frank and Joe also hug their girlfriends after Bayport High wins a close hockey game; I think we can all agree that’s a rather thin rationalization for personal contact.

Sometimes, characterization is overrated: The chums get personalities in this book, which would normally be good. On the other hand, Biff is a moron, and Tony is suspicious the Hardys are trying to fit him for a frame, and Iola and Callie get to be girlfriends who fear for Frank and Joe in a fight. (Have you never seen them fight? They never get hurt — well, they don’t get hurt much.) On the other hand, Laura puts some crappy school administrators in their places, so it isn’t all bad.

Right: The kids worry a bad grade on State Achievement Battery will keep them out of the college of their choice. Sorry, no: as long as the topic of their admission essay is “How I Helped Fight Transnational Crime Before I Was Allowed to Vote,” I think most entrance boards will overlook a low score on some half-baked standardized test.

Do you know who you’re dealing with?: Laura complains the high school administration doesn’t even bother to inform her or Fenton of Joe’s suspension, and that’s probably the least objectionable part of the administration’s actions. They don’t check the test or boxes for fingerprints, and the school seems to launch no investigation at all, just sitting around waiting for everything to turn out all right. Futile, when you’re dealing with the Hardys. Laura gets the idea the principal wants everything to go away, and so he puts pressure on a couple of minors to sign false confessions. Laura threatens to hire a lawyer, which still prompts no response from the school, but the threat of Fenton donating his time to investigate the crime and everyone connected with the school would have made the principal wet himself. “You wouldn’t want that incident with the squirrel, the gasoline, and the comic books to get out, would you? Of course not.”

Just a normal day in the Hardy household: A hockey puck flies through the Hardys’ living room window, so Frank and Joe calmly clean up, get a piece of foam-core posterboard they have on hand, and tape it in place. Then they get milk and butterscotch raisin cookies from the kitchen. Nothing unusual here!

Opinions: There’s a lot to recommend this one. It has an old-school feel, it has a manageable scope, and it uses the supporting cast very well. That can’t be underestimated; part of the appeal of the older stories was how Frank and Joe had friends they could rely on. Here, Joe and Tony need friends very badly, and they come through for them. That’s part of what we remember high school as and what we want it to be.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of holes. The action scenes are often clunky at best and unbelievable at worst. (You try jumping onto a cart full of boxes rolling at you at high speed, and see if you can stay on.) The school administration is played as extremely stupid so the kids have a chance to investigate the crime. The lingo is occasionally laughable. (“Turkey”? “Straight stuff”? Really?) I think the capper is when Frank and Joe go to a sporting goods store to see if anyone remembers a guy who bought athletic socks on a Saturday. That seems … tenuous.

Grade: B+. The plotting and character use outweigh the dodgy stuff, because, hey, you expect the occasional plot hole and bad dialogue in a Hardy Boys book.