No Way Out (#187)

By the time you get to pg. 3 of No Way Out, you’ve got a decision to make: Do you reject the reality of a story set on Cape Breton Island and based around a “Mazemaster” named Chezleigh Alan Horton, or do you roll with it? If you decide to roll with it, you’ll have to make the same decision every few pages: Do I care how Frank and Joe have known Ray and Kay, Horton’s twin children, “for years” (2) despite being, well, from Cape Breton Island? Why are mazes celebrated with a RenFaire? Would the opening of a new hedge maze really draw multiple news outlets, and would it draw a raucous crowd who supply thunderous applause?

A reasonable person would reject this weird reality at some point. As someone very close to having read all the Hardy Boys digests, I do not qualify as “reasonable,” so I marched through No Way Out.

You — again, supposing you to be a reasonable person — would expect that since the story begins with a Mazemaster (ugh) unveiling a brand-new maze as part of a maze competition, then mazes would be a key element in the story. Hell, put aside a reasonable person’s expectations: The laws of storytelling demand the maze figure prominently in the mystery. But no, No Way Out mostly ignores the maze and its inherent dramatic possibilities. (This will disappoint anyone who wanted a Shining homage in a Hardy Boys book.) Without the maze, the title is nonsensical; I mean, it’s hard to find a “way out” of a maze if you don’t go in, but that’s a technical distinction reasonable and most unreasonable people overlook.

Instead of the maze, the story piles up other elements that go nowhere and add nothing: codes, espionage, a ghost story, rumors of a lost family treasure, Olympic archers. It’s all so pointless — even more so than the standard Hardy Boys story.

And we never do find out how Frank and Joe know Jay and May.

The story begins, as too many Hardy Boys stories do, with the Hardys meeting previously unrevealed friends in a far-off place, bonding over an unusual hobby. The far-off place is ostensibly exotic but as in reality as dull as the places your parents took you for family vacations; the hobby is supposed to be interesting but is presented in a way that makes a museum on a Wednesday morning seem livelier. In this case, the Hardys have arrived on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, for a maze competition. But just as Chezleigh Alan Horton — he goes by Alan — unveils his maze and announces some medieval competitions, like jousting, that will lead up to a main mazerunning event, someone shoots an arrow into the maze, setting hedges on fire. Oh noes! And while extinguishing the fire, Alan discovers the interior of the maze has been wrecked as well. Double oh noes!

The obvious suspect is Vincenzo Blackstone — of the Roman Blackstones, I suppose. He’s a rival … *sigh* mazemaster who allegedly sabotages rivals to make up for his lack of talent. Unfortunately, no one other than the Hardys can be arsed to figure out whether he’s on Cape Breton Island. Joe hacks into Blackstone’s computer to get background and contact info; Frank copies it into his PDA, an act that is about as early 21st century as a story gets, and it helps distract readers from the improbability of Joe the impetuous meathead being a hacker.

Joe shows his lack of respect for privacy doesn’t extend only to villains’ private info; he also wanders into Alan’s private sanctum without knocking. When Alan snipes that his family knows not to “invade my little den unless they’re invited” (39), Joe says, “I hear you” — and then doesn’t leave or apologize. When Alan’s private phone rings and Alan pointedly holds off answering until Joe leaves, Joe still stands around like a lump. You’re a great houseguest, Joe.

During another ceremony at the maze’s Renaissance Faire, Alan is attacked on horseback by a rival antiquities collector, Bruce David MacLaren. See, in addition to being a … in addition to designing mazes, Alan has a metric ass-ton of medieval artifacts: “A barrel of gauntlets,” according to Faye, and “crates and rooms full of other stuff,” according to Tay (22). Alan has so many medieval tchotchkes he gives them away as prizes; when Joe wins the amateur jousting competition, perhaps drawing on some of the skills he learned as a knight in Crusade of the Flaming Sword, he receives a burgonet. For fourth place, Frank receives a leather belt with a dragonhead buckle — less cool, but more practical.

Then Alan disappears. His wife says she didn’t notice because she left the festivities early: “I got a headache during the last jousting match” (62). Headache, jousting … I get it — *wiiiiiiiiiink*. Because the area — maybe all of Cape Breton — has only one constable, and he doesn’t seem to care enough to call in provincial or national police forces for help investigate a kidnapping, Frank and Joe have a free hand, leading the search for Alan and the two suspects. Instead of finding the victim or culprit, though, they find an abandoned marble mine and a caretaker’s shack that isn’t as abandoned as it should be. (The Hardys don’t investigate the shack, instead noting the discrepancy and moving on.) Joe is lured into a cunning trap that involves a peregrine falcon, which slices up his calf enough to be dangerous to his health but not badly enough to cause lasting damage.

The constable finds Blackstone and his fire-eating henchman — the man is literally a fire eater — and the latter admits he and Blackstone trashed the inside of the maze. But he denies setting the fire or kidnapping Alan, which leads the Hardys to believe the pair is innocent of that charge. It’s not like kidnapping is a very serious charge, while vandalism isn’t! I can’t imagine anyone perpetrating that sort of deception to divert attention from his major crimes.

So the brothers have to find MacLaren. To find information on MacLaren and Alan, Joe taps into Fenton’s computer, which gives him access to secret information governments had given the elder Hardy. I’m sure all those governments would be thrilled Fenton has given access to a pair of “trustworthy” teenagers!

Before we get to the end, we have to endure a great deal of nonsense, the sort of nonsense the Hardy Boys books thrive upon: the revelation that MacLaren is an Olympic archer, that the previous owner’s ghost allegedly haunts the estate, that Alan’s house has secret rooms and a secret elevator into the mine, that Alan is a spy who uses his code name, EagleSpy, as the name of his estate (or vice versa; it’s not clear which), that the previous owner’s brother is searching the estate for a hidden treasure, that the brother killed the previous owner, an “accident” during a “physical fight” (136) … It’s an exhausting concatenation of lazy revelations.

Finally returning to the caretaker’s shack with about fifteen pages left in the story, the brothers find John Brighthall, the previous owner’s brother. Brighthall admits killing his brother and covering up the crime, and Frank and Joe seem mostly fine with that — I suppose being siblings themselves, they’ve probably had fantasies / nightmares about such things. Brighthall admits MacLaren caught him at EagleSpy and took his maps of the marble mines as payment for his silence. The brothers cajole / blackmail Brighthall into helping them, forcing Brighthall into offer Joe as a hostage for ransom to MacLaren. Joe will be wearing a GPS, which, despite using satellites, will work perfectly in a mine, and when MacLaren takes Joe away, he’ll lead Frank and the police to wherever he’s holding Alan.

Of course the police are late, forcing Frank to act on his own, but everything turns out fine. MacLaren confesses to everything during his grand villain moment, Frank and Joe easily beat him up, and the police arrive in time to take MacLaren into custody. MacLaren does not say, however, why he attacked Alan in front of a large crowd by charging him on horseback when his plan was to capture the spy and ransom him — something that would have had a much higher chance of success if Alan (and others) didn’t know he was around. Just par for the course for No Way Out …

Because I am a fair-minded person (HA!), I admit I unironically enjoyed some elements of the story. When Alan goes missing, Frank and Joe take control of the situation, outline what needs to be done, and assigns tasks to each member of the Horton family. Given how often the Hardys have been in this situation — the story specifically points out the boys have had to search for Fenton before, and even though the narration doesn’t mention any specific mystery (*ahem* The House on the Cliff, #2), it’s good to know someone remembers this — they should be able to lead the search efforts in the absence of competent law-enforcement officials.

I also liked the secret rooms and passages in the Horton home. Secret passages and secret rooms are cool.

But none of that is enough to make up for all of No Way Out’s flaws. In the end, the book is a bunch of loose ends hoping — in vain, I think — to ensnare some unsuspecting reader. Better luck next time, Franklin W. Dixon!

Hidden Mountain (#186)

I’ve breezed my way through these digests, and by and large, they’ve blurred as I passed them by. Some of them I have a hazy-but-fond memory of, some I vaguely recall disliking, but most blend into a flavorless paste that disappears into the wrinkles of my brain. Occasionally, I have stumbled across something like The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100), one of the best digests, or The Case of the Psychic’s Vision (#177), which spectacularly misjudges what a Hardy Boys book should be. Nothing comes close to the disasters like the original Disappearing Floor (#19) or Flying Expess (#20) or triumphs like the original House on the Cliff (#2) or Mystery of Cabin Island (#8).

Hidden Mountain is more Psychic’s Vision than Flying Express, but this book is closer to catastrophe than you might think. (Like Psychic's Vision, Hidden Mountain is written by George Edward Stanley, according to the University of Southern Mississippi's libraries' archives.) Hidden Mountain doesn’t have Flying Express’s continuity errors or Disappearing Floor’s ludicrousness; rather, Hidden Mountain has a strange idea of what makes a Hardy Boys story a Hardy Boys story. Had this been an adventure of the Generic Teen Detectives — well, if it had been an adventure of the Generic Teen Detectives, I wouldn’t have been reading it, because “Generic Teen Detectives” is a horrible name for a mystery series. But if it had been part of that series, and I had read it, I wouldn’t have liked it, but I wouldn’t have found it so awful either.

To start off with, Hidden Mountain posits a group of teens who don’t feel like the Hardys and their friends. Neither Frank nor Joe is in a “serious relationship” (1), and they date Callie and Iola only “from time to time” (1). The Mortons live in an older part of Bayport, which I suppose is the new status quo, but it still feels weird — and honestly, I feel the Mortons should live in a newer development, as refugees from rural poverty. At the Mortons’ home, Chet complains about all the food his mother has made, saying, “‘Good grief, Mom!’ Chet cried. ‘You’re not feeding an army!’” (7). It’s a bit like Cookie Monster labeling cookies a “sometimes food” — perhaps for the best, but weird and wrong at the same time.

Plus, Chet owns a shortwave radio.

The shortwave radio used to be a vital part of the Hardys’ crimefighting arsenal, but with the advent of cell phones, the shortwave radio lost its importance; the radio (called a “ham radio,” which is more or less the same) was last mentioned in The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), as far as I can tell. Here, though, the narration reframes radio’s role in the Hardys’ lives: Joe “and Frank had solved a couple of mysteries that involved shortwave, but it was almost always the bad guys who used them” (10). Boo! If Stanley had reframed shortwave as a Hardy thing — Fenton or Gertrude with an old set in the attic, or a childhood hobby Frank and Joe set aside but Chet seems have mastered — I would have been supported or even lauded the decision. But no, shortwave radio is no longer cool enough for Frank and Joe to have ever used.

Anyway, Chet gets a message over the shortwave from Darren Wilkerson, a former classmate who left Bayport suddenly with his family. Darren is in trouble in Hudson’s Hope, British Columbia, Canada, and he needs Chet to get a message to Frank and Joe — but the transmission is cut off before Darren can get off more than a request for help. If I had more confidence that this Dixon and his editor knew the series’s history, I would suggest this book was homaging to The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), a book which involved shortwave radio and a trip to Canada. (And during which Frank killed a lynx with a radio antenna, while Chet took up taxidermy. These were two completely unrelated events.)

After Fenton pretends to exercise parental oversight over the boys, he gives in, arranging for backup in Hudson’s Hope and buying Frank and Joe hiking / mountaineering equipment. Once the boys’ “school vacation” (13) begins* two days after the shortwave call, they are off to Canada, flying from LaGuardia to Edmonton to Dawson Creek, B.C. — a real city of 11,000, not the place named after a James van der Beek character. At this point, the book becomes filled with weird details that go nowhere.

Gertrude laments over a friend in Wisconsin whose house has burned down, and the house was uninsured because her husband might have Alzheimer’s. Neither Wisconsin nor Alzheimer’s (or any other form of dementia) come up again; for that matter, neither does Gertrude. Chet can’t come with Frank and Joe because Mrs. Morton has decided to redecorate the house in “New Mexico style” (19), so she’s going to New Mexico and needs Chet to schlep paintings around. Chet frequently has lame excuses to avoid adventures, but this is a strange yet strangely detailed excuse. At LaGuardia, Frank and Joe inexplicably meet their old babysitter, Annie Wilson, who is working for the airline, and she fawns over them; on the plane to Edmonton, two flight attendants (Bonnie and June, rather than Benny and Joon) give the boys an extra meal each and stop barely short of flirting. This sounds like an airplane fantasy, although that may be because I don’t believe an airplane would serve an in-flight meal, let alone a steak dinner with anyone getting an extra portion, after 2001.

(Flying through Edmonton reminds me of The Viking Symbol Mystery, #42, a clunker that deserves more vitriol directed at it for having the boys casually rack up 5,000 miles of travel in Canada in less than two weeks, flying from Calgary to Saskatoon to Edmonton to Fort Smith, over and over again. At least in that story, Fenton was supervising them from the same province.)

In Dawson Creek — again, a real place — Fenton’s “good friend” (13), Rupert Kitimat, meets the boys when they get off the plane. Rupert is supposed to be a private detective, but the book frequently refers to him as “Detective Kitimat.” That title is almost never used for private detectives; “Detective,” as a courtesy title, is reserved for police detectives. Plus, there’s the question of who’s paying for Rupert’s time? If it’s Fenton, he’s running up a hell of a bill; if Rupert is donating his time, then Fenton must be one hell of a friend.

Anyway, the boys and Rupert take a pontoon plane to Williston Lake, a short-but-rugged hike from Hudson’s Hope. This flight disturbs the boys even though they were certified to fly seaplanes in Viking Symbol. Honestly, it’s like this book doesn’t care about the 75+ years of stupid continuity! Frank, Joe, and Detective Kitimat hike into town over rugged hills, encountering a bear, despite perfectly good roads linking Williston Lake and the town. Anyway, when they get to Hudson’s Hope — surprisingly, it too is real, although it has only about a thousand people — Darren and his family are gone, and a couple of men break into their cabin, shooting at Frank and Joe as the boys flee.

When the men catch up with Frank and Joe, we learn the meat of this stupid, stupid plot:

1) The Wilkersons are part of the Witness Protection Program,
2) But their cover was blown in Bayport — the fourth time this has happened — so the family is hiking across the wilderness to the ultra-secret Witness Protection fortress, Hidden Mountain;
3) Hidden Mountain is in Canada, despite being a haven for people in the US Witness Protection Program, which I admit is probably an effective place to hide them — I certainly didn’t expect the US to keep vulnerable, valuable witnesses in a foreign country, because it’s a stupid thing to do;
4) The two men who shot at Frank and Joe claim to be FBI agents, sent to help the Wilkersons to Hidden Mountain, even though
5) They are so obviously not FBI agents, and the Witness Protection Program is run by the U.S. Marshals Service, which is an entirely different agency that predates the FBI by almost a century and a half;
6) Frank and Joe (especially the former) are able to track the Wilkersons through skills gained through a lifetime of summer wilderness programs, including a summer spent in Oklahoma with another of Fenton’s “good friends” (92), a Kiowa lawyer named George Long Bow;
7) When the Hardys finally shed the two fakes, they run into real FBI agents — again, WITSEC is run by the Marshals Service — and Kitimat, but the fake agents blunder into the Wilkersons;
8) Before the Hardys and the FBI agents can put a plan together, one of the FBI agents is “badly mauled” (101) by a bear and the other injured, evidently suffering a head injury so bad he’s amazed by a travois;
9) But don’t worry about the bear — the FBI agents are allowed to run around a foreign country unsupervised, but they aren’t allowed to kill wildlife, so one of the agents shoots the bear with a “special tranquilizer” (101) that puts the bear into “a twenty-four hour hibernation” (101);
10) So while the FBI agent is pulling his mauled partner toward safety, Frank and Joe insinuate themselves back into the Wilkersons’ / fake agents’ group, even though
11) They have no plan about how they’re going to take care of the fake agents, so the boys are inert as they get closer to Hidden Mountain, not attempting to overpower the fake agents or escape them, although I suppose
12) Escaping would be useless, since the villains have the map to the ultra-secret location that was given to the Wilkersons by some moron, and the villains want to kill all witnesses, so
13) Frank and Joe open a sealed envelope the non-mauled agent gave them, which gives them orders that are kept from the readers;
14) But I suppose the subtlety is best kept from the readers, as the directions are “rocks fall, kill everyone,” which is relevant because
15) To get into Hidden Mountain, everyone must climb the mountain, which means, SCREW YOU, DISABLED OR INFIRM WITNESSES;
16) After getting themselves and the Wilkersons to an overhang while rocks do kill the fake agents and gaining entrance to Hidden Mountain, the Hardys need special permission from Hidden Mountain’s “Supreme Council” to be allowed to leave (138), but
17) They gain that permission to leave because even thousands of miles away from Bayport, in the lost wilderness of Canada, Fenton Hardy’s name opens doors, which is good
18) Because I have no idea how the Canadian or US government resupplies a hidden facility, hundreds of miles from a city of any real size, that has a fifty-mile no fly-zone around it (forgot to mention that) and can be accessed only via mountain climbing, but
19) The story isn’t over, because once back in Bayport, the Hardys are followed by organized-crime figures, and once the FBI arrests those, they announce Frank and Joe will be under FBI “around-the-clock surveillance” (153) for the foreseeable future. Hope Iola and Callie find government surveillance a turn-on, or dates with the girls will go from occasional to nonexistent!

Hidden Mountain is intensely stupid, but its worst failing is that it can’t commit — like these Hardys, who aren’t in a serious relationship. Detective Kitimat follows the Hardys through the Canadian wilderness, but he does nothing to help them or the Wilkersons. The FBI agents show up, ostensibly to help (or take control — this is their moronic operation, after all), but they ignominiously are forced from the book by a bear attack, having done jack squat. They shoot the bear, but they can’t hurt nature’s killing machine; the agents must use stupid, science fictional tranquilizers that will put bears into hibernation for 24 hours, regardless of the size of the bear. The Hardys aren’t willing to hurt the fake FBI agents as they approach Hidden Mountain, even though they know the plan at Hidden Mountain is to kill them; they could have saved the men’s lives by trying something, but they’re willing to let them die rather than, you know, try.

I’m sure I’m leaving out a dozen moronic details — in Hudson’s Hope, for instance, the Wilkersons were warned they’d have to leave by a traveling salesman, which would be the opposite of an inconspicuous way to communicate anything in 2004 in a town of about 1,000 people — but I trust you get the idea: Hidden Mountain is a product of a line and era that often feels like watered-down Hardys, but this book’s stupidity is full strength.

* Which school vacation? The boys are out of school for only about a week, which suggests Spring Break or Easter Break or some sort of fall teacher’s conference, but in Canada, daylight continues until 11 p.m. That must be some time near summer — June, at least — but what occasion results in a week’s vacation from school in June? Even those poor unfortunates who go to school year-round get longer between the end of one term and the beginning of the next, surely.

Cross-Country Crime (#134)

Plot: Frank and Joe interrupt their ski vacation through the Canadian Rockies to help a man wrongfully accused of robbing a bank.

“Borrowing” from the past: It’s November! Specifically, it’s a week-long Thanksgiving vacation for Frank and Joe. Now, few of the books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate specifically take place around this time of year — The Sinister Sign Post is set in the fall, the revised Short Wave Mystery probably happens in November, and Game Plan for Disaster occurs about the time in November when college football seasons were wrapping up their regular seasons in 1982. But! The boys duck out on their family during the Christmas holidays in The Mystery of Cabin Island, spending the actual holiday and much of the break on Cabin Island …

You know what? I’m going to change the format, because a) it’s my blog, and b) no one’s reading it anyway. Might as well try to pander to a different demographic, like elementary school students trying to cheat on book reports.

So, anyway, the second page tells us Frank and Joe are spending Thanksgiving in the Canadian Rockies, away from their friends and family. That will be the last time Thanksgiving is mentioned in the book. Since Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, that makes sense, but on the other hand, why set the story during Thanksgiving if you’re not going to reference it? Frank and Joe don’t call home to wish their parents a happy Thanksgiving, and they don’t mention the holiday or any of the trappings when they talk to Con Riley, the only other American mentioned in the book.

Anyway, Frank and Joe are cross-country skiing across Alberta, from Banff to Lake Louise, a trip that’s about 35 miles through the Rockies. Frank is looking forward to some downhill skiing at the end of the trip, while Joe wants to do some snowboarding, “hoping to get in some action” (3). While getting breakfast in the real town of Evergreen, the local sheriff paws through their packs. The trust company (Canadian for “bank,” according to the book) has just been robbed, and the sheriff has to clear the boys. Usually, this would be a cue for the brothers to join in the investigation, but Frank insists they have a “date with nature” (8). Don’t worry: it’ll be just as chaste as all their other dates. You don’t have to worry about Joe doing something inappropriate with a maple tree or anything.

Outside of Evergreen, a blizzard hits. Frank’s not worried; according to him, it’s not cold enough for hypothermia. On the other hand, “you never know” (9), which isn’t what you want to hear your nature expert say. Frank and Joe stumble across Mitch Taylor, who has wrapped his snowmobile around a tree. Mitch is unconscious, and when the boys rouse him, they find he’s suffering from memory loss. Amnesia, the boys diagnose, although they’re confident Mitch doesn’t have a concussion. Except loss of consciousness and memory problems are two major symptoms of a concussion. (It turns out Mitch has been lying in the snow for an hour or so before the Hardys reach him. No one is concerned about that — not cold enough for hypothermia, remember.)

In any event, Frank and Joe get Mitch to his cabin and accept his offer of hospitality while the blizzard passes. A radio station, WBNF, broadcasts a description of the bank robber that looks a lot like Mitch. (Note: Canadian radio station call letters begin with “C.”) Frank and Joe are suspicious of Mitch at first but uncertain of the etiquette of accusing one’s host of bank robbery and mollified by his weak excuses, they decide not to worry about it. The next morning, the boys take advantage of Mitch’s hospitality to get in some snow sports before leaving Evergreen behind. No mystery for these boys, nosiree! They’re all about winter sports. “Whoooee,” Joe enthuses as he snowboards down the hill behind Mitch’s cabin — until he’s swallowed up by an avalanche. Frank and Mitch dig him out of the snow, but that makes the book’s second cliché (after “amnesia). If there’s a bear attack, they’ll hit the cliché hat trick.

This rescue guilts the brothers into helping clear Mitch. That they were ready to abandon the man in their pursuit of pleasure doesn’t speak well of them, but there’s still time in the book to find someone more unlikeable. They grill the sheriff when he comes to arrest Mitch, but he refuses to say anything: “I’m might be backwoods, but I’m not stupid” (28). If you’re not stupid, what are you doing in a Hardy Boys book? But then he answers the boys’ questions about the witness who fingered Mitch and about the bank’s security, so maybe he belongs here after all.

Two alternate suspects raise their heads:

• George Dupuy, who owns the local lumber company. Mitch used to work for him, but Dupuy fired him when Mitch ratted him out for unscrupulous logging practices. Now Dupuy is in debt and needs the money; framing Mitch might be an extra bonus.
• Rob Rubel, who’s suddenly flashing money around Evergreen despite being insolvent the week before. He also doesn’t like Frank and Joe, threatening Joe on their first meeting and calling him “Joey boy” before forcing him off the slopes on a subsequent meeting. He claims his grandfather willed him the money, but Frank and Joe don’t take that explanation seriously.

Somehow, neither Frank nor Joe suspects Justin Greeley, the guy who starts a conversation with the non-standard use of “Word up?,” or Bill Forman, the guy who tells Dupuy, his boss, “Go jump in a hole” when Dupuy tells him to actually do some work. Oh, the two guys are always around, and Justin’s the person who put Mitch at the scene of the crime, and they’re two of only three people who know the Hardys are going to do a little constructive B&E at Dupuy’s, an adventure that ends with Frank and Joe being shot at. But surely these two couldn't be responsible! Frank and Joe don’t even rule them out, actually. It never crosses their mind that Justin and Bill could be the thieves.

They are, of course. That’s the way these books work.

They also don’t suspect Tom Gregory, a 12-year-old who calls himself Hot Doggy Dog. (The author evidently has heard of Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose first album had been released two years before Cross-Country Crime was published, but didn’t know that Snoop spelled the last part of his name D-O-double G.) HDD also knew Frank and Joe were going to try to break into Dupuy’s safe, but he gives everyone motorized snowboards, which are surprisingly real things.

While snowboarding with Joe, HDD, Bill, and Justin, Frank scores the cliché hat trick, encountering a brown bear. Although Frank’s convinced standing still is the best course, the boys drive him off grouping together and shouting, appearing to be an even bigger predator. Amusingly, despite the trick’s success, they still argue what the best tactic is against bears.

Frank and Joe solve the mystery, although you have to worry about their tactics. In addition to breaking into Dupuy’s office and safe, the boys rifle Rubel’s apartment and wander into the burgled bank and pick locks there as well. (Why did Frank and Joe bring their lock picks on a ski trip? Especially since thieves’ tools are illegal in many jurisdictions.) B&E is a crime, no matter the reason, and interfering with a crime scene should have gotten them arrested. They also pilfer $100 from Rubel’s apartment to have it checked against the stolen money. When Frank and Joe finally clear Mitch, Joe’s peeved the sheriff is taking credit for what they uncovered. The boy should be happy the sheriff is choosing to overlook the details of their investigation. At the very least, he would have been justified to deport them.

But Frank and Joe aren’t forthcoming either. They don’t share their findings with the sheriff, although that’s SOP for the boys. When they are chased by their attackers at Dupuy’s office toward Evergreen, neither Hardy considers getting help in the town; they are more concerned with blowing through town and losing their pursuer in the woods. Later, they convince the sheriff to let Mitch out so that they can retrace his steps on the morning of the robbery, but Joe thinks the sheriff will let them wander about, unsupervised.

The walkthrough doesn’t really reveal anything new, but it does inspire everyone to look at Justin’s identification of Mitch more closely. They don’t get to expose his lie because he and Bill are already fleeing the jurisdiction. Frank, Joe, and Hot Lion catch up with the thieves, but shockingly, taking a 12-year-old to apprehend bank robbers is not the best plan, and all three are captured. Bill and Justin lift off in a stolen helicopter, but Frank and Joe grab onto the chopper’s skids as it lifts off. Justin can’t shake them off, and Bill can’t shoot them off, so they put the helicopter into a dive and ditch it. Everyone jumps into the snow from about 50 feet, and only Justin is injured.

Let’s stop for a moment. Fifty feet fall, from a helicopter probably going at least 100 miles per hour. Even into snow, that’s going to be a hell of a stop. But for Frank and Joe, it’s only a “bone-jarring thud” (142), and their forward momentum is immediately extinguished. Justin breaks a leg, and he’s the worst off.

With Justin immobilized, Frank and Joe pursue Bill on their motorized snowboards and catch him before he can jump into a chasm, a la Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. After turning the criminals in to the sheriff, Frank, Joe, Hot D-O-single G, and Mitch are ready to unwind — no more snowboarding, no more skiing, no more mysteries. They plan to return to Hot Doggy Dog’s house, watch a movie, eat popcorn, and … wait, what?

“Did I tell you we have a hot tub?” Tom asked the Hardys.
“Now this is my idea of a hard-core vacation,” Joe said.

If Tom were older, I would tell readers to cue the porn soundtrack there and let their imaginations take over. As it is, I have no idea what to tell you.

Grade: C-. A forgettable book, although it reminds me of the slightly better Open Season (Casefiles #59). At least in that one the rural mountain sheriff has the decency to point out the felonies the Hardys commit during their “investigation.”

Speed Times Five (#173)

Plot: After Frank and Joe enter the Speed Times Five, an extreme endurance race, they begin to fear the “accidents” in the extreme race are actually sabotage.

“Borrowing” from the past: Chet’s appearance on the cable show Warp Space (Trouble in Warp Space, #172) is alluded to when Joe calls him a TV star. The network that airs Warp Space, UAN, covers the Speed Times Five race.

Frank and Joe use tons of outdoor experience — mountain biking, hiking, rapelling, “years” of kayaking experience. There’s not much of that in the original stories, really, despite the claim they have tandem kayaking experience (whatever that is). They’ve always had camping and tracking skills out the wazoo, though it wasn’t until recently that it had to be extreme. Frank and Joe mention having hiked to the top of Lion Mountain “a few years ago” in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34). They climbed a cliff with pitons and hatchets in the revised Mark on the Door (#13). Slightly before the beginning of The Mystery of Smuggler’s Cove (#64) — quite possibly the most quintessential Hardy Boys title — Frank and Joe hiked the Appalachian Trail in Maine, and they also start End of the Trail on the AT. The most directly analogous to this story — remarkably close, really — is The Roaring River Mystery (#80), in which Frank and Joe say they’ve done a lot of backpacking in Maine and “quite a bit” of whitewater rafting. They even get involved in a whitewater rafting race in Roaring River.

Frank and Joe head to Canada — Quebec, specifically. They previously headed to the Great White North in The Twisted Claw (#18), The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), The Mystery at Devil’s Paw (#38), The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), and The Demon’s Den (#81). Demon’s Den is the only time they specifically made it to Quebec. Frank and Joe don’t seem to understand the French radio broadcasts; they can’t follow a French movie in The Mysterious Caravan (#54) either, even though they’re in a French class.

I’m going to stop mentioning martial arts unless there’s something interesting about it. Yes, they use it here as well; no, I don’t care. The same goes for first-aid training, which isn’t mentioned as often but is time consuming when it is.

Jamal Hawkins is …: Back, baby. He gets no love, though: he’s mentioned as “Jamal Watkins” on the back cover. Pretty silly, really. Despite being as much of an athlete as Frank and Joe in Slam Dunk Sabotage, he’s relegated to the support crew, just like Chet Morton. The black man always has to serve — because of his pilot skills in Danger in the Extreme (#152), and because he’s the only one who can translate French here. But at least in Danger in the Extreme he got to compete as well.

Everybody had to pay and pay: Rather than using real brand names for certain products related to the competition, the author uses, well, echoes. Tuffy is a brand of bikes, SeaZoom provides personal watercraft, and Quick Aid is a sports drink. However, the X Games are mentioned by name.

What you see is precisely what you get: A few minutes after meeting Frank and Joe, one of their competitors calls them “boring and straitlaced.” I have no comment.

Frank Hardy is Sylvester Stallone as Rambo: To bring down a helicopter that’s threatening to help a crook escape, Frank tosses a competitor’s helmet into its rear rotor. That bounces the helmet into the main rotor, which causes the craft enough damage it has to fly away. The word ridiculous is thrown around so much lately, so I’ll just let that image stand by itself.

Will you be laughing when Jamal’s in Guantanamo?: Chet makes a crack about Jamal’s driving getting them in trouble with the Border Patrol, and everyone laughs. In this post-9/11 world, however, you can’t be sure that the combination of Jamal’s name and skin color wouldn’t get him into trouble all by itself.

Smuggling for Dummies, Idiocy to the Rest of Us: If you can come up with a better way to smuggle stolen pharmaceuticals across the U.S. / Canadian border than to dupe competitors in a cross-border extreme endurance race into carrying them for the entire race, then stealing the pharmaceuticals back, give yourself ten points and the right to slap this Franklin W. Dixon across the typewriter, should you ever meet him (or her).

There are thousands of ways to get small stolen items across the border, even in the unlikely event your vehicle is searched. You could put them in prescription pill bottles, since customs officials are unlikely to know exactly what the pills are by sight; if you are able to give a good alternate explanation, you are home free. Put them in recapped Coke bottles. Build a smuggler’s hold in your Chevy van. Put them in your spare tire. There are thousands of ways to do it, and unless you act suspicious at the border, 99.999999 percent of them are likely to work.

Opinions: Honestly, had the author ever been over the U.S. / Canadian border? If what you are smuggling is smaller than a breadbox, then you are likely to be able to get it across, no problem. Even if you are searched, there are ways to fool the border guards. Unless you are in a crappy comedy, you are unlikely to get into trouble.

There’s enough competence in the writing to keep Speed Times Five from a failing grade, but … well, the plot’s pretty stupid. Extremely stupid, actually. But at least the Hardys are fighting smugglers, unlike what they’re seeing in Undercover Brothers.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of stereotyping; the “coed” is the member of the collegiate team who has an accident in the kayaking portion of the race (not her two male companions), the Native American is stoic, they’re confronted by a bull moose in Canada, they just happen to mention Expo ’67 in Montreal, and the Canadian thugs are named Pierre and Jacque. (Actually, that last is par for the course when it comes to the Hardy Boys; they once faced a Canadian villain named Pierre Pierre. I wish to God I were making that up.) They also can’t get any English-language radio broadcasts, even close to the American border. That kind of stereotyping is par for the course, though.

And that’s not even mentioning that a) Frank and Joe think every incident that happens, over hundreds of miles of rugged, wilderness terrain among dozens of competitors, is sabotage (who can blame them? It always has been before), and b) Frank and Joe have no real endurance problems when hiking (jogging with a backpack, really), mountain biking, rapelling, kayaking, and speed bicycling hundreds of miles through mountains, forests, and river rapids despite devoting most of their time to amateur detecting. It strains credulity past the breaking point, then repairs credulity just so it can break it again. And they don’t really do any investigating — there’s a nice chase scene in Montreal, but that’s about it. And the one time the author could show Chet and Jamal doing “support,” Frank and Joe handle it instead, transparently giving them a chance to fight the saboteur by themselves.

Grade: D-. If you thought the villains’ plot in The Melted Coins made no sense, well, have I got a book for you!