The Mystery of the Silver Star (#86)

So this is how the Simon & Schuster digests begin: with the theft of a bicycle.

After reading the final digest, The Mystery of the Silver Star feels like part of a different series for two reasons. The most obvious is Silver Star is the product of a different era, both chronologically — it was written almost two decades before Motocross Madness — and in the conception of how a “typical” Hardy Boys book should be constructed. In Silver Star, the link to the previous paperbacks hasn’t been severed yet; Desert Phantom (#84) is mentioned early on, and all the previous paperbacks are listed on a front flyleaf. More importantly, Silver Star feels invested in the lives of the Hardys and their friends in a way later books don’t.

The Hardy adults are part of the story. Frank and Joe have to ask permission for long trips. (They sometimes are said to ask later in the series, but in this case, it feels like a hurdle rather than a perfunctory line of narration.) The family has a Gertrude-cooked supper together, and the family banters during the meal. Laura Hardy worries about her sons, coming up with chores to keep them at home when a psychic predicts disaster for them — I mean, she’s listening to a psychic, so the book isn’t perfect, but the concern is real, as is her belief in her sons.

The Hardys’ friends aren’t ignored. Callie has a birthday party at El Caballo Blanco, and she warns Frank not to miss it, like he did last year. The description of the party takes several pages, and one of the gifts involves an inside joke that goes on for far too long. Chet serves as an inspiration for a role Joe has to slip into so the Hardys can catch the villain off guard. The boys borrow Laura’s station wagon — geez, I can’t remember the last time that was mentioned — to go on a double date with Callie and Iola, and when they have to divert to New York, they make sure Laura knows she can use their van. By itself, this investment in the Hardys’ lives doesn’t make Silver Star a good book, but the effort makes it a better book.

But the second reason is one I haven’t touched on often while writing about the series. A few months before Silver Star was published, Simon & Schuster released the first few Hardy Boys Casefiles, a parallel series with a different continuity. In the first volume, Dead on Target, Iola Morton died in a car bombing meant for the boys, and Frank and Joe took on a group of assassins called, well, “the Assassins,” and work with / against “The Gray Man,” an agent of “The Network.” Joe vowed to kill Iola’s murderer; the boys use firearms — not in the casual way, like in the early books of the canon, but in the serious, gritty ‘80s way.

It’s kinda silly, but I get it: The Hardys must’ve seemed pretty hokey to the adults creating the series at the time. The Casefiles stories are a product of their era, and despite the series running twenty books longer than the S&S digests, the Casefiles were canceled almost a decade earlier, in 1997. (That’s what happens when you put a new book out every month, I suppose.)

Anyway, Silver Star attempts to differentiate the digests from the Casefiles. Instead of a bombing, the instigating crime is the theft of a bicycle — an experimental, top-of-the-line racing bicycle, yes, but still a bicycle. It’s hard to think of a larger disparity in crimes than the one between bicycle theft and assassination. When the stakes escalate, Frank tries to downplay their experience: “Kidnapping is a little out of our league,” he says (97). This has literally never been true; the Hardys rescued the kidnapped Fenton in The House on the Cliff (#2) and Chet and Biff in The Missing Chums (#4), and as recently as The Demon’s Den (#81), they’d battled kidnappers. Later, Silver Star’s plot veers toward Dead on Target, as it includes espionage and the cooperation of a spy, but even that is used to illustrate the difference between the two series: The spy is a CIA agent, not from the fictional, ultra-super-dooper-secret Network, and no one dies. The spy the boys capture has the decency to be embarrassed that he was outwitted by teenagers rather than committing suicide, like the Assassin did in Dead on Target.

***

Silver Star has its good points, but as I mentioned above, they mostly revolve around the depth of the supporting characters and Frank and Joe treating them like real people. Chet steals his early scene, using his double-dip ice-cream cone to impersonate a reporter and make fun of the set-up: “Bayport’s pride and joy, that duo of dynamite detective work, Frank and Joe Hardy! … Eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy, the brown-haired, brown-eyed older of the two — … give me your honest opinion. Don’t you think all of this hoopla is a bit much for just a silver-colored bicycle?” (2-3). Chet knows his friends are working because when they are on a case, Joe wears sunglasses — which hasn’t been true before — and because “Frank always comes off like a walking encyclopedia on topics he didn’t used to know anything about” (4), which is absolutely true.

As it turns out later, some of Frank’s arcane knowledge is that competitive cyclists sweat, and they drink water to replace the fluid. I mean, the narration specifically says Frank mentions this “to demonstrate his knowledge of cycling” (13). I don’t remember the ’80s that well, but I do know that we were told all the time when competing, even in more sedate sports, that we needed to drink water.

Is it any wonder Frank and Joe ditch Chet the first time he turns his back (for more ice cream)? He thoroughly broasted them. (Isn’t that what the kids say today?) And Frank and Joe can’t even come up with a decent parry when Chet says, out of nowhere, “I’m built for endurance, not for speed” (3). I mean, the possible put-downs for that out-of-nowhere line practically write themselves.

So racing cyclist Keith Holland asks Frank and Joe (through Con Riley) for their help. The setup has been done a bazillion times before in the Hardy Boys: Pranks / accidents have been following Keith during his long-distance charity race against Gregg Angelotti, and Keith, worried, wants Frank and Joe to get to the bottom of things. After chatting with Keith in his motor home, which is decorated like a kid’s bedroom with trophies and ribbons, Frank and Joe accept. As always when Frank and Joe investigate, things have to get worse before they get better. In this case, someone shoots Keith’s experimental super-bike, the Silver Star, during a race and steals the bike. Later, Keith disappears, leaving a note behind saying he’ll be back, but no one connected to him believes he left of his own free will. To find him, Frank and Joe solve the mystery of Keith’s neighbor, who has been arrested for espionage, and discover a rogue secret agent. Of course they find Keith and his bike, and they capture the spy. The end!

I mean, it’s not really that simple. Silver Star has a few complicating factors, of course. There’s a local psychic, Molly Frankel, whom everyone takes seriously — Frank says, “She’s always been legit” (37) — and who makes several doom-laden predictions about Frank and Joe and Keith. Someone plants a bug in the Hardys’ van, but they don’t notice the perpetrator until he jumps out — while the van is in motion — and they don’t find the bug for days; the spy escapes, even though Frank makes the van go so fast the tires squeal on dirt. (When they do find the bug, they crush it, rather than use it to spread misinformation, and the villain mocks the brothers’ jejune conversations during their final confrontation.) When a suspect resists their questioning, Frank “wished [they] had something that looked like a private investigator license” (30), never thinking, well, Frank might be able to get a license; the suspect calls Bayport “crime-ridden” (30), not even knowing teenagers are the city’s main crime investigators. At one point, Frank gets an address wrong, and he and Joe end up in the middle of ‘80s New York, where they are accosted by a gang of knife-wielding auto thieves who are scared away by their car alarm.

Once Keith vanishes, the documentarian filming the race admits he pulled the pranks, trying to build some drama for the narrative. Realizing their investigation has uncovered nothing of value, the Hardys head to Keith’s hometown, Boulder, Colo., to look into Keith’s next-door neighbor, Mariana Bornquist, whom the CIA has accused of espionage. The CIA initially arrests Frank and Joe for breaking into Mariana’s home, but one phone conversation with Fenton gets Frank and Joe out of custody and into the thick of the investigation. I like to think it wasn’t Fenton’s name or reputation that bailed out his sons but rather Fenton’s knowledge that the CIA isn’t allowed to conduct domestic operations in the United States, and the FBI should be in charge.

(Side note: The narration contends doughnut holes are a local delicacy in Boulder. They’re everywhere now, of course, but Silver Star was written in 1987. Does anyone know if this was true? I mean, Dunkin’ Donuts created the first Munchkins in 1972, and Tim Hortons introduced Timbits in 1976, but I don’t know how great their market penetration would have been other than the northeast / northern Midwest.)

Frank and Joe’s plan to capture Derek Willoughby, the spy who blackmailed Mariana into stealing weapons secrets, is complicated by the boys’ lack of operational intelligence, and Frank and Joe run headlong into the villains’ trap. Derek’s thugs kidnap the boys but find the tracker the CIA had planted on the boys without their knowing only halfway through the abduction. (It’s good to know the CIA suspects the boys are morons.) The thugs take the Hardys to Keith, Derek, and the bike. Derek is looking for the microfilm Mariana claimed to have hidden in Keith’s silver bike, now disassembled; Frank cooks up a cock-and-bull story to convince them to reassemble it, then rides out the door with Frank and Keith running behind. The CIA, in the area anyway because of the tracker, sorts things out, and Derek is humiliated. As he should be — not only was he foiled by teenagers, but the microfilm was in a bike in Keith’s Boulder garage, not in the super experimental Silver Star.

And that’s the end of the beginning for Simon & Schuster’s digests, and that’s the end of the end for me. Thanks for reading! I may be back with other posts, but don’t expect anything on a regular schedule. (Like you should expect that anyway, given this site’s posting history.)

One False Step (#189)

I approached the penultimate Hardy Boys digest, One False Step, with some trepidation. George Edward Stanley, who wrote One False Step, had also written two of the worst books in the digest series (The Case of the Psychic’s Vision, #177, and Hidden Mountain, #186). What if One False Step lived up — or down, if you want to think of it that way — to that standard? Or would it be worse if it didn’t?

Well, One False Step is not in the same class as Psychic’s Vision or Hidden Mountain, for ill or for good. It’s obviously a Stanley story; it has the weird level of unimportant details that Stanley must feel gives depth to the story but just ends up being strange. Do we care Aunt Gertrude is reading a romance novel, The Bride from Butte, that has been written by the granddaughter of one of Gertrude’s college friends? No. Why would we? Neither the book nor its author pops up again. Do we care Callie has an identical (but distant) cousin, Mary Beth Edwards, in New York? Well, kinda, but Mary Beth doesn’t show up at all; she’s just a passing mention, a robbery victim whom Frank and Joe hear about but never talk to. I understand naming the Bayport High School cafeteria lady, Mrs. Conroy, but her banter with the Hardys and their chums is a waste of page space.

And then you’ve got Frank and Joe’s new next-door-neighbor and friend, Matt Jenkins. (No mention of whether his family replaced the Forsythes, mentioned in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk [#39], or if they moved in on the other side.) He never turns into a Larry Stu the way Colin Randles does in Psychic’s Vision, but we learn all sorts of irrelevant detail about him: He lived in Botswana, his father was a well-known mystery writer who died of cancer, his mother is a diplomat, and he wants a “normal American high-school experience” (8) like seeing Aerocircus, a weird circus that sells tickets at more than $200 a pop. None of that is relevant, except for the last one, as Matt drags Frank, Joe, Chet, and Tony to Philadelphia at the last moment to see Aerocirque, without first securing tickets.

Well, Matt also uses his Africa sense when Joe doesn’t read the chapter in his history book on apartheid; Matt gives him a lecture on the subject, which he knows about because he lived in Botswana and “apartheid affected all the surrounding countries” (3). That’s like a Canadian telling a Russian about Jim Crow legislation because, hey, Canadians are like Americans and right next door. Still, Joe says, “I should get an A on that test!” (3), and Frank says, “I learned a lot of things about that time too” (3).

That Frank ended that statement with “fellow kids” should be understood, even though it’s not on the page.

Stanley’s handling of the supporting cast is a mixed bag. Chet in included only so everyone can make food jokes, which is standard for a Hardy Boys story, and even though that should be condemned (to an extent), I also don’t want to talk about it. Tony Prito is added to the boys’ trip to Philadelphia because … because … I don’t know why, honestly. I don’t know why the expedition needs a fifth boy, and Tony adds nothing to the story; they don’t need his muscle or knowledge or even his mass as ballast. He doesn’t even use his Italian heritage and food-service experience to complain about / laud Philly cheese-steak sandwiches or hoagies or Italian roast-pork sandwiches or water ice (aka “Italian ice”) or strombolis. I had to double check to make sure the fifth boy wasn’t Phil Cohen or Biff Hooper or Jamal Hawkins. I’m still not entirely sure Stanley was consistent throughout — not because I doubt Stanley’s ability to get the name right but because it didn’t matter.

Girls, on the other hand, fare better. Iola gets in cutting remarks about Callie’s overachieving nature and her brother’s comic-book collection. Callie appears only momentarily, delivering the news of her cousin’s robbery. Gertrude is teased about whether wedding bells are in the future for her and her friend, Mr. Phillips. (The last time Gertrude had a possible romantic entanglement, it was with Clayton Silvers in Past and Present Danger, #166.) The girls in Philadelphia like the boys, or maybe boys in general; when local girls party with the Hardys and their chums, the boys are never lacking in dance partners, and Tony picks up digits from many of them. The girls ask the boys to tell them about Bayport, which … well, where do you start? (After that, Elisabeth, the hostess of the party the boys go to, points out how rich her female friends are, which confuses Frank and Joe, but I think she confused the word “sleuth” for “gigolo.”) Later, Frank and Joe get a couple of girls to show them some Philadelphia “hospitality,” if you know what I mean.

(What I mean is “historical sites” and “lunch at an exclusive restaurant.”)

In Philadelphia, Frank, Joe, and their friends are allowed to stay with one of Fenton’s contacts, Det. Mario Zettarella, and his wife, Gina. Five teenage boys are a lot to have dumped into your house at the last moment, but the Zettarellas don’t mind; they have five grown boys, and Gina enjoys nothing more the feeding and care of teenagers. She was a stock trader for a brokerage before she married Mario, but raising a family — and cooking! — is more fulfilling for her. Why, even with her children out of the house, she doesn’t consider returning to a brokerage! (This is important, but Stanley doesn’t mention it again.)

Frank and Joe say this is their first time in Philadelphia, but that’ s not true. In Shield of Fear (#91), Frank and Joe helped their father expose organized crime and corrupt officers in the Philadelphia police. (This will become important later — or would have, if anyone had remembered it.) They passed through Philadelphia in the revised Secret Warning (#17), Twisted Claw (#18), and Short-Wave Mystery (#24) and the original Secret of the Lost Tunnel (#29), but Frank and Joe don’t do anything there. Interestingly, the Hardys will return to Philadelphia two books later, albeit in a different continuity, in Extreme Danger, the first Undercover Brothers book.

The only mystery in One False Step is whether everyone in the book is brain damaged, or if we’re supposed to pretend they aren’t. The Mary Beth’s family’s high-rise apartment is robbed, an impossible crime with only a few strange marks left on their balcony. The Edwardses weren’t at home because they were at a performance of Aerocirque, the Cirque du Soleil ripoff that uses helicopters to support the tightropes and trapezes.

(I admit, that level of precision flying and acrobatics is impressive; I don’t believe helicopters could remain reliably steady long enough to support the equipment, and tying two helicopters together sounds horribly dangerous. I also imagine multiple helicopters inside a stadium would produce hearing-destroying levels of decibels. Still, I’d probably go see it.)

Anyway, an impossible robbery of a high-rise apartment should suggest daring, high-altitude acrobatics acts faster than you can say “Wallenda,” but no one makes the connection in New York. No one in Philadelphia makes the connection to Aerocirque when another high-rise apartment is robbed in an identical matter, even though Mario is working security at Aerocirque and is called to the robbery as soon as the show is over. (His position is the only way the boys were able to get into Aerocirque, which is mighty convenient!) The police instead waste their time interviewing fired chauffeurs. Frank and Joe make the connection eventually — not after any epiphany or discovering new evidence but after seeing Elisabeth, the daughter of Aerocirque’s founder, point at apartment buildings while talking to an acrobat.

The brothers tell Mario, and he inserts them into the high-wire troupe that is going to pull the robbery. (These acrobats are all masked mutes, so the impersonations are not as difficult as one might think.) Frank and Joe are supposed to be anchors for the tightrope walkers who will cross over a street to a penthouse from an office building across the street, but one of the two tightrope walkers twists his ankle getting out of their helicopter. After the cable is fired across the street and anchored on their end, Frank and Joe are given the codes for the penthouse’s security and signaled that they must make the crossing. Walking the wire to the penthouse is no problem for the boys, since they do high-school gymnastics and have spent the day training with the troupe, but when they get to the penthouse, the security details they have are for the wrong manufacturer.

Mario and his men are inside the penthouse, so Mario tells Frank and Joe to walk back over and mime to the other two tightrope walkers what the problem is. The police need time to get over to the other building to arrest the thieves before they board their helicopter and escape. Why the police wouldn’t already be in position, given that they had the time to do so while Frank and Joe were walking over in the first place, is beyond me, but …

Well, there’s no “but,” really.

So Frank and Joe walk back over the tightrope. It’s a little more difficult this time, but Stanley makes sure to bleed the scene of most of the tension. When the Hardys complete their second tightrope walk, they find the two acrobatic thieves not only knew who Frank and Joe really were, but they’re not even mutes. The thieves subdue the boys and load them into the helicopter, planning to dump them into the Atlantic, but Elisabeth, the daughter of their legitimate and criminal boss, calls them back; she’s OK with robbery because they need money, but murder is too far. Frank and Joe are locked in a penthouse, where Mario tells them he figured out Aerocirque was behind the robberies before the Hardys did, and he told the gang / Aerocirque leader he had to cut Mario in, or he was going to jail. Mario then leaves.

After she’s left alone with the captive Hardys, Elisabeth tells them everything else. Because Frank and Joe are held in the room where the gang stores its equipment — the storage area is hidden, but keeping Frank and Joe in the same room is still a bad idea — Elisabeth is able to fire one of the cable bazookas, and Frank and Joe make one last high-wire walk. Belatedly, we learn a member of the United States Olympic Committee has told Joe “if [Joe] kept at it, he could make the [gymnastics] team in 2008” (143). Seems like we should have heard about that sort of astounding c.v. earlier!

The gang cuts the wire just before Frank makes it across, but he catches the wire, and a friendly woman lets him and Joe into her apartment. It wouldn’t be a Stanley story if we didn’t learn completely irrelevant and boring information about the woman, Louise Schuster. “She tries to help wayward teenagers,” Frank says (147), and I weep for whatever editor worked on this book.

From there, Frank calls the FBI. Mario is arrested — he did it “for the money” (130-1), which suggests that if his wife had gone back to work, he might have remained honest — as are two of his officers, the Aerocirque acrobats, and Elisabeth. Her father escapes to the Caribbean, presumably with all the money. Crime does pay! The book ends with Matt suggesting Frank and Joe walk a tightrope as a school fundraiser; despite having decided never to walk the wire again, Frank and Joe give in to teasing and peer pressure.

This moment of lightheartedness allows us to forget Gina, whose life has been ruined by the Hardys intrusion. Frank and Joe do not see her after their abduction, and Tony, Chet, and Matt slink away. Callow teenagers!

One False Step is a poor story; an ungenerous yet still accurate assessment would be that it’s a very poor story. The digest series is littered with stories that plumb the depths of narrative ineptitude, and I’m disappointed Stanley would not crash beyond this low-water mark to give readers something sublimely ridiculous or ridiculously sublime. This was Stanley’s last chance to challenge Dr. John Button for the title of worst Hardy Boys writer, and he failed at it. That he didn’t fail by succeeding is an altogether appropriate capstone for his Hardy Boys career.

Farming Fear (#188)

Farming Fear is one of the few digests with a reasonable setup that is able to deliver on that setup.

In Farming Fear, written by Stephen D. Sullivan — and yes, Officer Gus Sullivan makes his appearance, as disinterested in doing his job as ever — Chet and Iola are concerned about their grandparents. Dave and Marge Morton live on a farm outside of Bayport, the old Morton family farm, but things aren’t all relaxing and bucolic there: “shadowy figures” (2) are lurking around the property, the animals are spooked, and small tools are missing from the barn. Chet and Iola’s parents are on a Caribbean cruise, so of course Frank and Joe are willing to help! (Callie — who is definitely Frank’s girlfriend, according to Farming Fear no matter what Hidden Mountain, #186, says — is skiing with her family.)

Despite the book having a huge retcon — the Morton farm is owned by Chet and Iola’s grandparents, not their parents, and the latest generation of Mortons has never lived on the farm — Sullivan wants to link the book to the series’s past. The farm was founded in 1927, the year of the first three Hardy Boy books, and Dave and Marge have lived there since Bayport was a “tiny seaside village” (3). This ignores that Bayport has always had a population of 50,000; I imagine when the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts they heard of a large but boring city down the coast. Since it’s winter, it’s vague what the Mortons farm, which is consistent with past depictions; I was never sure what Mr. Morton raised either. In Farming Fear, Dave and Marge have a lot of fields, which suggests they grow row crops, but the fields have a lot of ponds, which suggests they raise livestock. Yet Iola says they have only a couple of cows, and Chet says they keep the cows and some horses “for tradition” (9). The Mortons had horses and cows in the original canon, and the land contained a bog, but in Farming Fear there are no orchards and no vineyards, no mention of pigs or poultry; the only heavy equipment seems to be one tractor. What are Dave and Marge growing?

(Also retconned, inasmuch as anyone cares: Chet and Iola’s grandfather is Ezekiel Morton, not Dave, in both versions of The Crisscross Shadow [#32]. Old Mr. Smith has land abutting the Morton farm in both versions of the next book, The Hooded Hawk Mystery, and the Abby Sayers estate is next door in The Four-Headed Dragon [#69], but neither is mentioned in Farming Fear; I admit both are prime candidates to be bought out. An apple orchard is mentioned several times in the canon but isn’t mentioned at all in Farming Fear; according to The Melted Coins [#23], Chet and Iola’s father bought the farm, but Farming Fear says it’s been in the family for five generations. In The Pentagon Spy, #61, Mr. Osborn is the Morton farmhand, although Farming Fear does mention the Mortons cut back to one farmhand during the fallow months, so Osborn could be laid off for the winter. Or throwing pumpkin bombs in New York.)

Soon after Frank and Joe go with Chet and Iola to the Morton farm, a tractor charges them from the barn. The Mortons’ farmhand, Bill Backstrom, claims someone rewired the tractor to start up unexpectedly and jammed both the gas and brake, but … well. Later, when the kids go on a horse ride, someone shoots at them. Well, maybe someone shoots at them; they hear the crack of a rifle several times, but it’s not like they hear bullets whistling by or the smack of a bullet into a tree or rock, and the only person they see with a firearm is the Mortons’ crotchety neighbor, Vic Costello, and he has a shotgun, not a rifle. Could’ve been a hunter, for all they know.

The next day, the Mortons’ sheepdog, Bernie, is stolen. The Bayport PD sends a pair of officers out, but they aren’t very interested. Why should they be? The crime didn’t happen in Bayport. Shouldn’t the Mortons have called the sheriff of whatever county they are in? Besides, it’s winter, which means Bayport is never more than six hours from a possible blizzard, and the cops have better things to do than look for a missing dog. It’s probably a prank, according to Officer Sullivan: “Farm kids have strange sense of humor, sometimes” (49), which — as a former farm kid myself, with absolutely no ability to self-reflect — I have to say I resent.

Because officers Gus Sullivan and Julie Scott shrugged their way through the interview, the kids decide to investigate. They track snowmobile tracks in the Mortons’ motorized buggy, which is an old, stripped-down VW Beetle with no body panels on it. After Chet makes a Batman reference, they follow the snowmobiles to a ridge which marks the border between the Morton property and a neighbor, and the Hardys trigger an avalanche. Chet and the owner of the neighboring property, Leo Myint, dig the Hardys out.

After that … well, mysteries like Farming Fear makes me wonder about Frank and Joe’s efficacy. No, even though the initial problems are always ignorable — although maybe only barely — before they investigate, you can’t blame them for the increased violence and destruction. And yes, they solve the mystery … more or less. On the other hand, when Frank and Joe get involved in one of these vague cases, things escalate quickly. I mean, they get out of hand, fast.

Nobody gets stabbed in the heart with a trident, of course, but the two snowmobilers Frank and Joe catch in the barn that night attempt the American equivalent: trying to run them through with pitchforks. (Frank and Joe pursue them, but Frank drives the buggy into one of those pesky ponds.) A blizzard hits the area, knocking out electricity and telephone service. A realtor, Patsy Stein, keeps pressuring Dave and Marge to sell their farm so they can build yet another mall in Bayport. (Given commercial trends over the last fifteen years, I think Dave and Marge are doing her a favor.) Frank and Joe get treed by Vic Costello’s dogs, which he claims someone set loose. Someone tries to burn down the barn, and only with the help of Backstrom and neighbor J.J. Zuis do they get it under control. (For some reason, while putting out the fire, they don’t think to use the abundant piles of solid water, a.k.a. snow, to put it out.) The farm’s water tower is sabotaged, collapsing as the teenagers try to draw water for the night.

All this is dispiriting to Dave and Marge, who tentatively decide to sell out. I mean, they blame “foreign trade” and “market fluctuations” (130), but they admit all the problems are making the modern farming world less attractive to deal with. Iola and Chet are stunned, but Frank and Joe don’t give up. While the teenagers are pulling the buggy from the pond, they spot the snowmobilers, Chet and Iola go for help; Joe drives Frank after the snowmobilers. They discover the two snowmobilers are opposed to each other; one, driven by Costello’s son, crashes, and while Frank and Joe load the teenager onto their buggy, the other returns, firing a rifle. The boys flee, and in a story as old as time, the villain shoots a power line, causing it to snap and crackle, and accidentally electrocutes himself. Oops!

The boys unmask — unhelmet? — the rifleman and reveal he’s Leo Myint, who didn’t want the Mortons or Costello holding up the development because his industrial park is hemorrhaging money. (The other guy who tried to pitchfork Frank and Joe was one of Myint’s employees.) But it doesn’t matter, really; it could have been Backstrom or Stein or J.J. Zuis or J.J. Yeley or J. Jonah Jameson. As long as the Hardys caught someone, the mystery can end, they can recover Bernie the sheepdog, and the Mortons can back out of selling their land. (Although at one point I thought Joe might be behind the sabotage — the only time he gets to touch Iola is either when he pulls her out of the way of danger or when he’s comforting Iola with a “sturdy arm” [25].)

In any event: it’s a back-to-basics book, with plenty of emphasis on chores and winter sports and little concern with “investigating” or “thinking.” It could be better, possibly; it most definitely could be worse. As it is, Farming Fear is pleasant, and with only a few books to go, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

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.

Warehouse Rumble (#183)

With only nine more books to go — the last eight, #183 to #190, then first book, #86 — we’re in the home stretch. I’ve read four of those books before, so the end feels even closer than it actually is …

Warehouse Rumble is one of those books I’ve read already. I wrote about it a little in my post on the Top 10 Cool Things the Hardy Boys have done, and it occurs to me I was a bit unfair in my dismissal of the book — or maybe my reevaluation is a symptom of my Stockholm Syndrome with the series.

In Rumble, Chet entices Joe and Frank with the promise of “fame … fortune … all the usual stuff” (2) if they audition for Warehouse Rumble, a new TV show in which contestants compete in physical and mental challenges against a post-apocalyptic background. Since Bayport High is closed for a teacher conference, Frank and Joe agree. (Callie and Iola would rather work at a food pantry during the school vacation, which is on-brand for early-canon Callie.) Chet also convinces Daphne Soesbee, a friend who has appeared in a couple of previous stories and who also just happens to be nearby, to be his teammate in the competition. The rest of the book focuses on the on-set goings-on, which is more behind-the-scenes skullduggery than a reality TV competition.

Rumble is another of Stephen D. Sullivan’s contributions to the series, and now that I know what to look for, the signs are clear. He inserts his own name into the narrative via returning BPD Officer Gus Sullivan from Trick-or-Trouble (#175). Daphne mentions her mother and her mother’s bookstore, also from Trick-or-Trouble, and Spy that Never Lies (#163) / Trick-or-Trouble villains / red herrings Jay Stone and Missy Gates make their third appearances. Daphne also mentions her Creature Cards prowess from Trouble in the Cards (#165), which spurred a rivalry with a new villain / red herring, Bo Reid.

Another tipoff? The name of robbery victim Ms. Forbeck is a reference to fellow author Matt Forbeck; a brief perusal of his Wikipedia page turns up the name of Ree Soesbee, and suddenly Daphne’s unusual surname is explained. What’s the connection between Sullivan, Forbeck, and Soesbee? Well, all three have written licensed novels (novels based on IP owned by others); more specifically, all three have written young-adult Dragonlance novels in the years just before Warehouse Rumble came out.

I’m not sure why Warehouse Rumble made me cast my mind toward the cool things Frank and Joe have done over the years, given that a similar conceit — Maximum Challenge (#132), in which the Hardys and their chums compete in a TV show with physical challenges — felt like a run-of-the-mill happening in Frank and Joe's life. Perhaps it’s because I prefer Warehouse Rumble’s post-apocalyptic aesthetic to the generic athletic competition in Maximum Challenge. Perhaps it’s because Rumble still feels au courant, and Challenge is an American Gladiators pastiche that was published just before Gladiators went off the air in 1996. I don’t know.

It certainly isn’t the promise of intellectual challenges. Rumble is scant on the details of the puzzles the contestants have to solve, but it doesn’t skint on describing the physical challenges. In fact, the book is overwhelmingly physical, removing intellectual traces — other than the narrator’s occasional impressive vocabulary word, such as “sardonically” (59) and “decrepitation” (105). The trash talk between the Hardys and their rivals is embarrassing. For instance, Jay Stone call the Hardys, Daphne, and Chet “the Boy Scout Brothers and their twin sidekicks” (7), which is more descriptive than damning. Bo Reid tells Joe, “I got a message for your brother and Morton. … The word is … pain! Too bad it’s your turn to play delivery boy.” Joe responds, “I think I’ll mark this one ‘Return to sender’” (42). This is too wordy and too weak for even a young reader to care about. The little time it would have taken to improve this banter might have improved this book by an order of magnitude, managing to put a little more juice into rivalries with interchangeable / forgettable villains.

More noticeably, though, Frank and Joe show little interest in unraveling the mystery around them, even when the mystery seems likely to crush them under and metal bricks or electrocute them or give them a megadose of sedatives or unleash an army of rats upon them. Huh, Frank and Joe say, maybe filming in a warehouse abandoned for twenty years isn’t a good idea, and TV / high school rivalries sure can get dangerous! They are right, but their lack of curiosity is disturbing.

The book concentrates on the physicalities. Their athletic challenges on the show get a great deal of attention, as you would expect. Chet brags he’s “strong like bull, swift like eagle” (47), like a latter-day Uncle Tonoose. The Hardys and Chet get into fights on set as well; Frank uses his “martial arts training” to land a “karate chop” (34) and a spin kick, and Joe uses a full nelson to subdue a villain. Even the first clue is uncovered by Chet smacking his head into a brick chimney during a fight with Bo Reid.

That clue is a skeleton, later revealed to be Joss Orlando, a Bayport man who went out for groceries fifteen years before but never came home. The man might as well have been named “Harry Tanwick,” given how little Frank and Joe care about learning more about him. They show only a scintilla of curiosity about a gold ring with emeralds that Daphne finds in the warehouse basement, even though it’s obviously valuable. I suppose I get it: When you’re competing on a game show on which you nearly die and no one seems to care, you must concentrate on staying alive rather than protecting the property rights of the bourgeoisie. Besides, as Frank says, “Danger is bread and butter to some people” (33), which doesn’t qualify as a bon mot, but works well enough to explain Frank and Joe — even if Frank was talking about someone else when he says that.

We don’t get to see who wins Warehouse Rumble. We do know it won’t be Frank and Joe; they are eliminated in the semifinals by Bo Reid and Lily Sabatine. Daphne and Chet do make it to the finals, where they will face Reid and a new partner, as Lily is arrested after her victory but before the finals. As a consolation prize, Frank and Joe do receive coupons to local businesses, like the Town Spa (a restaurant) and a $1,000-dollar “scholarship bond” (134), which as far as I can tell isn’t a real thing. Still, it’s nice to see Frank and Joe getting rewarded for what they’ve done, even if they aren’t getting rewarded for solving a mystery. (Fenton says they will get a reward for recovering the stolen goods, which will go straight into their college funds, but we don’t see anyone with money forking over the cash or even making that promise.)

Circling around this disaster of a mystery is a pair of outsiders. Clark Hessmann is a local preservationist who wants to prevent the building Warehouse Rumble is filming in from being demolished after filming is over; the building’s owner, Herman Jackson, has a restraining order against him. More annoying is TV reporter Stacia Allen of WSDS, who is always barging into the Warehouse Rumble set and (even though it doesn’t apply) bleating about freedom of press, allowing her to publicize many of the set disasters. (In actuality, WSDS is a Spanish-language AM radio station in Michigan.) If the show’s producer had invested in better security, closed the set, and demanded at least minimal support from a network publicist, the book’s most annoying character and a quarter of the book’s plot points would have been wiped out. (As in The Test Case [#171], Warehouse Rumble takes a dim view of the press.)

Also: Warehouse Rumble should have done a better job taking care of the contestants. The show acquires an on-set paramedic only only after a few serious accidents: a collapsed light tower that has sparking electric wires over water, a collapsed catwalk, a collapsed floor, rat attacks, water that changes color from blue to green to yellow-green for no reason. (I don’t know what the latter portends, but it can’t be good.) These are people in an athletic competition inside a dilapidated structure! You need medical staff on set regardless of whether someone is trying to kill contestants.

Everyone should also take a dim view of the police, as Con Riley and Officer Sullivan seem more interested in avoiding work than solving a crime. The pair find enforcing restraining orders, court writs, and trespassing laws a headache and wish the people involved would just shut up. They are slack on investigating the stolen ring and notifying Joss Orlando’s next of kin. Only when Ms. Forbeck shows up and claims the ring do the police act, and then they overreact, hauling Daphne down to the police station for a robbery that occurred when she was in diapers. Then the narration says the police “decided to let” Daphne’s mother sit in on Daphne’s interrogation (122). They have to! You can’t interview a minor without an adult present! Worse, Mrs. Soesbee wouldn’t even know her daughter was in custody if Frank and Joe hadn’t snuck away to call her.

The rest of Ms. Forbeck’s stolen property is still on set — farther down the chimney Orlando was found in, in fact — but the police can’t find it because it wasn’t in the exact same place Daphne discovered the ring. The people behind the catastrophes on set are siblings Lily and Todd Sabatine, Orlando’s children. (Lily and Todd’s brilliance is described as their ability to give alibis for each other, which shouldn’t have helped; of course they’d lie for each other! The only way this works is if no one cares enough to investigate.) If the police had tracked them down to notify them of their father’s passing or searched the warehouse more assiduously, the case would have been solved and all sorts of menace prevented. Instead — once again — the Bayport PD let a bunch of teenagers do their jobs for them, which in this case involved only showing up to the scene of the crime (the warehouse) at night and beating up a girl and her brother.

Which Frank and Joe eventually did. I mean, everyone had to wait until the Hardys found the time. No need to hurry, after all.

The Case of the Psychic's Vision (#177)

The Case of the Psychic’s Vision is a weird one, and that’s not meant as a compliment.

First, it presupposes that psychic powers are real, and not in a nebulous or deniable manner; psychic powers can reveal that which is hidden or forgotten. Real psychics are the rule, although the existence of fraudulent ones is acknowledged. Second, Fenton not only believes in these psychics but thinks they have probative value in investigations, both public and private. (They do not, of course.) Third, the Dixon writing Psychic’s Vision posits that everyone’s latent psychic abilities can be developed.

Wikipedia says Psychic’s Vision was the first of four Hardy Boys digests written by George Edward Stanley, although [CITATION NEEDED]. (The University of Southern Mississippi has Stanley’s papers, and the collection lists manuscripts and accompanying correspondence for Psychic’s Vision, The Mystery of the Black Rhino [#178], and The Secret of the Soldier’s Gold [#182], which would seem to settle the matter for those books; no mention is made of a manuscript of One False Step [#189]. ETA on 8 June 2019: The Southern Mississippi archive page also lists Hidden Mountain, #186, as one of his works.) Stanley wrote dozens of juvenile stories, including five Nancy Drew books, the Third Grade Detectives series, and the Spinetinglers series, the latter under the pseudonym of M.T. Coffin. Weld those last two together, and you can see how Psychic’s Vision might have come together.

In an interview, Stanley mentioned reading Nancy Drew, the Dana Girls, and the Hardy Boys as a child, and that inspired him to be a mystery writer. Stanley was born in 1942, so the Hardy Boys books he read would have been the original texts of the canon. That influence is visible in Psychic’s Vision. Chet is back to being a prankster, like in the early days; the author remembers the Hardys live at the corner of High and Elm (which shouldn’t be hard to remember, but, well …). The Hardy name gets a new pal excused for being late to class and causes a Vermont police officer to tell a bunch of kids everything about an ongoing hostage situation. A plot point in which a wealthy man pressures an employer to fire certain employees or risk financial ruin seems straight out of the first decade of the series. The book references early mysteries as well: “We got this airplane-shaped trophy when we solved a mystery at the airport … and we got this car-shaped trophy when we found out who was stealing all of the cars out on Shore Road” (44-45). These are clear references to The Shore Road Mystery (#6) and The Great Airport Mystery (#9), although they received trophies in neither book. Still, it’s a better way to shoehorn references to old mysteries into the book than most.

The psychic angle is an element that could have existed in the early books; certainly the original Disappearing Floor (#19) has events far less believable than psychic phenomena, but on the other hand, a fake psychic seems to be the kind of nonsense the Hardys would fight against — like they fought against a quack eye doctor in the original A Figure in Hiding (#16). But Colin Randles and his family are all good psychics trying to hide their abilities in Bayport.

Well, except for Colin’s sister, Nellie, who wants to hold a séance to cement her friendship with Iola and Callie. Chet sees this as an opportunity for a prank, and he and the Hardys hide near the Shaws’ gazebo. When Iola suggests they try to contact Roberta Sanders, a former P.E. teacher at BHS who went to South America and “just disappeared” (24), Chet responds. Now, it seems like a former teacher vanishing in South America is right up the Hardys’ alley, something they would have been hired to investigate, but I suppose “South America” is too large an area to search, even for the Hardys.

While Nellie and Colin’s parents break into the Shaws’ back yard to protest their daughter’s stupidity and people taking advantage of it, something grapples with Frank, drawing him into the bushes as it tries to strangle him. He doesn’t see who it is; he blames Colin, but it plainly wasn’t. But the culprit is never revealed. The only possible explanation, based on in-story logic, is that something supernatural tried to kill Frank. The only possible explanation, based on real-world logic, is that an old rival tried to kill Frank and was scared off by the kerfuffle caused by the Randleses.

Despite this otherworldly visitation, the main takeaway is that Chet went too far and the Randleses are good people — such good people, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Shaw wants to hire the unemployed Mr. and Mrs. Randles to run a new hardware store he just picked up. How fortunate! It’s always nice when capitalism works out for the little people. Everything’s going to be fine!

Except it isn’t. After demonstrating his psychic abilities by probably saving Joe and Phil Cohen from a fatal car accident and teaching the Hardys how to develop their own psychic abilities (!), Colin upsets the pretty, popular little world of pretty, popular girl Melanie Johnson by telling her she had been kidnapped as a two-year-old. This is the plot’s inciting event, but it occurs 55 pages into the book. No wonder this book runs 166 pages! (This is probably the longest book since Simon & Schuster took over the series at #86.)

Anyway, you make pretty, popular girls unhappy, and you’ll reap the consequences. In this case, Melanie’s boyfriend (and family chauffeur) pummels Colin in a Bayport back alley, necessitating that the Hardys track down Colin’s dumped body before taking him to Bayport General Hospital, the Hardys’ favorite emergency healthcare provider. (Another reason the book is 166 pages: It takes nine pages to find Colin and take him to the hospital.) The assistant principal yells at Colin with unwarranted venom, saying, “I despise people like you” (60). (Frank shrugs off Mr. Brooks’s abuse, which is horrible.) Melanie’s popular friends shoplift from Mr. Shaw’s hardware store, with the police shrugging when the Randleses report it. Pretty standard stuff, really.

But Melanie is pretty, popular, and rich, and when you make pretty, popular, rich girls unhappy, you also reap the economic consequences: Mr. Johnson threatens to call in Mr. Shaw’s loans unless he cans the Randleses. Mr. Shaw caves. It’s always crushing when capitalism doesn’t work out for the little people, which seems like it happens far more often than capitalism working out, although I suppose there’s a bit of confirmation bias there.

The Randleses head back to New York, but on the spur of the moment, Frank and Joe offer to let Colin stay at their home. They don’t consult with Fenton or Laura; when Mrs. Randles asks if the elder Hardys will be OK with an unforeseen lodger, neither brother opts to telephone a parent to ask. Sure! say the boys, and sure enough, they’re right.

With Colin back at BHS, things begin happening. Melanie wants to talk to Colin at her house when her parents are out, and shockingly, it’s not a trap. Melanie kinda remembers the abduction and wants Colin’s psychic help. (She also tells the boys her father told her to date the chauffeur, which is creeeeepy.) Before Colin can deliver any definitive info, the Johnsons come home and find the boys; after Mr. Johnson pulls a gun on them, Colin and the Hardys and escape through the back.

To up the creepy ante, Mr. Johnson commits Melanie to a psychiatric hospital. The boys track her down, but before Melanie can tell them anything, Mr. Johnson shows up, tries to strangle Colin, then collapses in tears after nurses separate them. The next day, at his law firm — the exquisitely named Stanley, Stanley, and Stanley — Mr. Johnson comes clean: His ex-con first wife gave birth to Melanie after their divorce, and when she started dating a thug, Mr. Johnson abducted Melanie to protect her from a criminal environment. He and his next wife, the current Mrs. Johnson, decided not to tell Melanie the truth. This should be a major scandal — non-custodial abductions are crimes, after all — but a combination of Mrs. Johnson’s indifference (she never filed a missing-person report for Melanie) and Mr. Johnson’s riches means he’ll probably escape all punishment. And all adverse publicity, as the story doesn’t show up in the Bayport Times.

That puts the book at about 150 pages, but Stanley has more to his story, so on we go. Melanie wants to track down her biological mother, so she asks Colin for help — the psychic, not the private detectives. Colin uses psychometry on Melanie’s toy lamb to learn bio-mom is in Vermont; three days of real detective work tracks Mary Davis Sullivan to West Middlefield, Vt. When Frank, Joe, their girlfriends, Colin, and Melanie arrive in West Middlefield, they learn Mrs. Sullivan is being held hostage by her ex-husband. Rather than let qualified police officers handle the deadly situation, the boys decide to butt in. They circle around the block, approach the house from the rear, and use Joe’s plan to pretend to be dopey teenagers who cut Mrs. Sullivan’s lawn, hoping Sullivan will be confused long enough for them to get the drop on him. It’s an intensely dumb plan, and it should end with several shooting deaths, but the power of the plot compels Sullivan to be dumb long enough for Joe and Colin to throw the contents of Mrs. Sullivan’s refrigerator at the criminal.

Evildoer subdued, they manage to announce to the police what has happened without being shot or arrested or both, and Melanie gets a moment with her biological mother. Just a moment — then the kids take off, leaving Melanie’s lamb with Mrs. Sullivan, and the story ends.

Thank Dixon for that. Psychic’s Vision is overlong and nonsensical (and not in a good way). But it’s done now, and we never see that psychic Larry Stu again. That’s something to be grateful for, at least.

Hide-and-Sneak (#174)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crime in the Cards (#165)

Crime in the Cards has everything I like about a Hardy Boys story: a new hobby for Chet, a Bayport setting, hints of actual intimacy between the Hardys and their girlfriends, the introduction of a new character who makes more appearances, and a mystery with a blindingly obvious solution. Cards isn’t a perfect book, and it won’t appeal to everyone as strongly as it does to me, but I would put Cards among the best of the digests.

The setup for Cards is that Magic the Gathering is sweeping Bayport High, and Chet is one of the best players. Magic the Gathering is a fantasy-themed collectible card game; that means players buy packs of random cards of various rarities, and by that rarity, the cards may achieve value beyond their utility in the game. Of course, this Dixon isn’t allowed to use the name “Magic the Gathering”; instead, the knockoff product is called “Creature Commander,” which is a good enough name. This Dixon shows enough familiarity with the game to make the allusion clear and show he or she has either played Magic or done enough research to make it seem like he or she has.

As any adult might expect, playing Creature Commander doesn’t make Chet cool. Callie and Iola are baffled by the game, and even though Frank says, “The game’s fairly simple” (2), neither he nor Joe has any inclination to play. Joe says, “It’s not my kind of game, but …” and then shrugs. Why should they risk their aura of cool on one of Chet’s hobbies? (Although Chet snipes that they have no qualms about claiming to know all about Creature Commander to impress the girls.) More to the point, ex-BHS football player Sam Kestenberg bullies Chet and his competitors while also getting Joe’s goat.

The mystery begins in earnest when Daphne Soesbee’s Creature Commander deck is stolen from her locker. This is Daphne’s first appearance, and she makes two more appearances before the end of the digest series, in Trick or Trouble (#175) and Warehouse Rumble (#183); in those books she fills a role similar to the one she occupies here: a female acquaintance / friend for Chet. Not a girlfriend, but someone who shares Chet’s enthusiasms. I wish she had appeared more often in the books; the Hardys need more people who are in their orbit but not in their core group of chums, like Jamal Hawkins, and the gender balance of the cast could use some adjustment.

Anyway, Bayport High School responds to the theft and the popularity of Creature Commander in the manner of self-important bureaucracies everywhere: with ham-handed stupidity. (Given how poorly the school handles a cheating scandal in The Test Case [#171], that's unsurprising.) The cards are banned from school grounds, because what BHS wants more than anything is for the problem to go away with as little effort on the part of faculty and staff as possible. But Chet pulls an awesome new rare card, the Coyote, from a pack he bought, and he can’t resist showing it off in front of his Creature Commander playing friends at school. With the Coyote and Bargeist, another powerful rare, Chet believes he has a chance to win next week’s big Creature Commander tournament. (The Bargeist, if you care, is probably a reference to the barghest, which is either a monstrous black dog or ghost or elf in northern English folklore or a daemon that can look like a goblin or wolf in Dungeons & Dragons.)

Chet is caught with the cards in English class. He is supposed to be caring about Moby Dick, a 19th-century decorative doorstop masquerading as something relevant to 21st-century teenagers. When Chet returns at the end of the day to reclaim his cards, he finds they’ve been stolen from the teacher’s desk. Rather than putting his faith in the police, whom Chet doesn’t believe will take the case seriously, Chet turns to the Hardys. Honestly, it’s hard to blame Chet on this one: I can’t believe a Bayport PD officer would consider little pieces of cardboard could be worth hundreds of dollars. I almost imagine Con Riley blinking and asking Chet how much he could get for the ace of diamonds in his desk.

To solve the case, Frank and Joe navigate the world of Bayport collectible hobbies, from a mostly reputable hobby shop (the Dungeon Guild) to a slightly dodgy individual dealer (Gerry) to the extremely sketchy Black Knight, who uses the Internet not to sell cards directly but to meet with potential buyers in out-of-the-way places. Gerry also runs a cloak-and-dagger Creature Commander tournament where everyone wears a mask and winners take possession of one of the cards from the loser’s deck. (This used to be a real Magic the Gathering format, although the card the winner acquires a random card from the loser’s deck, and set aside before the game, rather than a card of the winner’s choice.) The Hardys (and Dixon) wander through the geeky subculture and keep from talking down about the game and its players. Heck, even Callie and Iola pick up the game by the end!

The girls learn the game even though Frank and Joe have considerable physical contact with them than usual. Their relationships start off on rocky ground; when Frank says he and Joe “have something more worthwhile” than vast amounts of money, Iola “hopefully” asks if it’s her and Callie (3). C’mon, Iola; have more pride than that. Fortunately, their relationships improve: In addition to two hugs and three hand squeezes, there are a total of three — three! — kisses. That might be a record for a Hardy Boys book! Usually, I would delve into the implications of all this intimacy, but this time I was struck by the veneer of normal heterosexual teenage behavior given to these acts. The squeezing is of hands; the kisses are on cheeks. This is, by any real measure, a pair of tepid relationships. So why stop somewhere between no touching and normalcy? Did the author feel pressure to include such performative signifiers for some reason? Or was Simon and Schuster convinced its target audience would react badly to mouth-on-mouth kisses, and this Dixon was able to push the envelope only so far?

If I were in charge of the Hardys, I wouldn’t be satisfied with this sort of restraint. I understand not even hinting at sexuality, sure, but a taste of honey is worse than none at all. And I don’t think snogging hurt Harry Potter at all, even among those in the Hardys’ target age range (8 to 12, according to the back cover).

However, if Frank and Joe are unable to meet Callie and Iola’s physical teenage needs, the brothers do treat them like trusted peers in the investigation — not equals, exactly, because the Hardys have considerably more experience at being detectives, and even Chet has helped them more. But Iola and Callie get to participate; sometimes they have to stand up for themselves to get that right, but Frank and Joe acknowledge they have something to contribute rather than insisting on increasing the mystery’s level of difficulty by refusing help. I mean, being the wheelwoman and cutting off avenues of escape with a vehicle aren’t the most exciting ways to help, but they are valuable; they can be crucial. This is a vast improvement; Iola also mentions having to hide in the trunk previously — she refuses to do so again — but the context is left unsaid. Was it for a mystery, or was it to sneak into a drive-in? Maybe to keep Aunt Gertrude from knowing the boys’ had invited strange women into the car?)

Unfortunately, even with the help, the Hardys fail, or at least they fail to meet their deadline, the Creature Commander tournament. Chet shells out a lot of cash — where does he get it all? We never see him work — to buy the cards to compete in the tournament, even though they aren’t as good as the ones he’s lost. Unfortunately, he’s disqualified in the tournament’s second round for accusing another player of using one of Chet’s stolen cards, then punching him. Yes, at the end of the book, Chet gets a special reward from the game’s creator for helping to expose the counterfeiting — wait, is counterfeiting as a crime restricted to currency? Anyway, for helping to preserve player confidence in Creature Commander cards, gets an even cooler card, so as always, being Frank and Joe’s friend is stressful but lucrative for Chet.

The Hardys and their friends also tour Bayport while solving the mystery, which I always enjoy. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at S&S ever thought to compile a bible or at least a map for Bayport, and then I realize how silly the idea is. In the Hardy Boys stories, continuity is a bug, not a feature; anything that might confuse the audience, might make readers think they are missing something, is to be avoided. So we won’t be see Old Bluff Road again; that’s no real loss, as the road’s only real purpose is to be a deserted backroad near cliffs, which is the role the Shore Road used to fill. Bayport’s northwest side, where industrial parks have replaced the scrub thickets Frank and Joe knew as children, will be rewritten into something else. The Kiff and Kendall restaurant chain will disappear into the ether, as will the abandoned Benson Mini-Mall be mentioned in further books — and, unfortunately, the new, nearby development of Magus Hills will also cease to exist after Cards.

This is a shame because Magus Hills makes Bayport about 241 percent cooler. I don’t care whether Magus Hills was named by a fantasy nut, or maybe a fanatical devotee of John Fowles; whether the development has streets named after Gandalf and Raistlin or Nicholas Urfe and Phraxos — or hey, it could be named after either Marvel Comics character with that name. I’d even settle for the Zoroastrian sense of the word.

(One place name that continues to be used is Jewel Ridge, Conn. The city is mentioned as the home of the one of the competitors in the Bayport Creature Commander tournament; the state isn’t mentioned, but Jewel Ridge’s location has been established in other books.)

The solution is blindingly obvious. Although Gerry, a high-school Creature Commander card dealer who doesn’t play the game, is an obvious suspect, the key clue is the presence of Mr. McCool, a belligerent part-time teacher who teaches kids how to use a print shop. Of course Mr. McCool is connected to the thefts, which he uses to acquire cards to copy in his printing plant. (Kestenberg the bully is pulling the actual thefts, funneling the cards to McCool, and then selling the fakes and real cards as the Black Knight, which was a bit harder to predict.) I find it hard to believe McCool could duplicate the cardstock and finish of the cards, but what trips him up is that he duplicates the ketchup stain Chet soiled his Coyote and White Knight cards with. Seeing the stain on a Coyote card caused Chet to start a fight at the big tournament, but only when the police revealed the stain was printed onto the card does the penny drop for Frank — only 100 pages after it did for me, but hey, we can’t all be geniuses.

(If you think it’s petty and foolish to claim genius status at being an adult smart enough to solve a mystery in a book aimed at pre-teens, well, I don’t care, Judgy McJudgerson.)

The Hunt for the Four Brothers (#155)

Three (mostly) made-up dialogues about The Hunt for the Four Brothers:

The pitch meeting:

So what great idea do you have for me for Hardy Boys #155?

I want to send Frank and Joe to a summer resort —

We just did that four books ago — The Rocky Road to Revenge.

Oh … OK. Wait — they’ll be working at a summer resort in the mountains.

The resort was in the mountains in Rocky Road —

Which state?
Colorado.

Aha! This time they’ll be in North Carolina.

Mountains in North Carolina are better than a small town in Oklahoma, I suppose, or a train station in Indianapolis. So what’s the mystery?

It starts out with someone stealing soap from the resort bathrooms, and the victims see a wolf-like animal nearby at the time. This leads to whispers of a werewolf —

Ah, that’s better! You had me worried about this soap stealing. We’ve done the werewolf thing in Night of the Werewolf, but that was almost a hundred books and twenty years ago. How are you going to resolve the werewolf legend?

Oh, I’m going to drop it immediately. This is the Hardy Boys, not Scooby-Doo.

Then why bring it up — you know what? Let’s let that go. What are Frank and Joe going to be doing while a not-werewolf is stealing soap?

Lots of things! Lawn mowing! Picking up — and burning — trash! Dishwashing! Carrying luggage!

Those are things they do for their jobs, right? Not part of the investigation?

Well, their jobs become cover for their investigation, like always. The actual investigation will include more exciting things like airport codes and parking fines and stolen soap and a civil war.

A civil war could be interesting. Haven't done one of those in a while. Where?

Kormia.

OK. I’ll ask again, where?

Kormia!

*sigh* Where is Kormia? Is it in Africa? Eastern Europe? Asia?

Almost certainly!

Well, as long as that’s the only major non-American place mentioned in the book, that should be OK.

*silence*

Let’s move on. What are the villains trying to get away with? Maybe with a high-stakes crime, we can still polish this coprolite.

Gem theft, looting a country’s cultural heritage, and smuggling.

Now you’re talking!

But the Hardys won’t know the gems exist until about pg. 110 out of 151, and the other crimes are incidental to the main gem theft.

*deep sigh* So what about their chums? Will anyone from Bayport be working at this resort with them?

Oh, sure — Chet.

Why Chet? Not that I’m complaining — Chet’s always a great addition to the story — but why him instead of, say, Biff?

The Hardys will need someone to do investigative work for them when their elsewhere. They’ll need someone to cover their shifts when they’re investigating and someone to pressure into following them into danger so we can see how courageous the Hardys are. And in this case, they’ll need someone to steal soap for them.

So basically you’re saying the Hardys need someone to push around, and no one else would take their crap?

Exactly! I mean, at one point, the Hardys essentially work Chet so hard he gets only two hours sleep in 48 hours!

So Chet will be there. What about their girlfriends?

No. Why would they want to spend the summer with Frank and Joe? Besides, it would cramp Joe’s style. There’s a girl, Katie Haskell, at the resort who has a major crush on Joe.

That has potential. What happens between them?

Absolutely nothing! Joe mostly ignores her, but she’s there to loan him her car when he needs it to run errands and save his life when he’s stung 65 times by white-faced hornets.

Sixty-five times? That sounds like it would require a long hospital stay. Is that part of the climax?

No, they can take care of 65 hornet stings on an outpatient basis. I don’t think you have to stay overnight until, like, 90 or 105 hornet stings.

Huh. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

Yes! And they use cutting edge stuff in this book — like the Internet and fax machines!

Fax machines?

Yes! You can send a whole page to a single person over phone lines! Grainy, black-and-white pages on horrible paper! It’s wonderful!

I know what a fax machine is. I was questioning whether … you know what, let’s skip that. What are you thinking about calling this soap-stealing extravaganza?

The Hunt for the Four Brothers!

The four brothers? What are the four brothers?

The gems!

You mean the ones Frank and Joe don’t know exist until almost ¾ of the way through the book?

Of course!

Are you sure you don’t want to go with something like The Great Mountain Gem Caper or The Mystery of Mountain Resort or even The Soap Smugglers?

Nope!

You know what? Fine. I’m going to start my whisky break now.

*****

Continuing a discussion on investigation management:

“What in the world is going on down there?” Fenton asked. …
“Everything’s under control now, Dad,” Joe assured him. “I survived the hornets, and they got the shrapnel out of Frank’s leg.”
Fenton paused. “You call that being ‘under control’?” (p. 109)

“Yes, Dad. This time we had actual medical professionals treat our relatively minor wounds. In the past, I’ve been knocked out more times than I can count (literally — I think those concussions have done something to my brain), been kidnapped, electrocuted, tied up, gassed, almost drowned, attacked by more vicious predators than I could shake a stick at, starved, shaken sticks at vicious predators, been shot at, was shot with a freeze ray and frozen for 36 hours, wandered into the middle of violent revolutions, been hunted as the most dangerous game, struck by lightning, buried alive, and poisoned, all while wandering around with no supervision and only the occasional medical attention. Later I plan to careen down a mountainside and fight a giant Russian in river rapids. But yeah, I think we have matters under control for the moment.”

“You have a point, son. Carry on, then — just let me know if I need to plan a funeral.”

*****

How a discussion on geography should have ended:

“I have a hunch about was in those pet carriers you saw … Siberian huskies, and I mean Siberian.”
“What?” Joe asked.
Frank held up a printout he had pulled off the Internet. “The airport code IEV is for Kiev … in Russia!” (p. 70)

“But Frank, Kiev is nowhere near Siberia — not really.”

“What?”

“It’s hundreds of miles from Kiev to the Ural Mountains, which are the western border of Siberia. It would be like saying Omaha or St. Louis is in the Rocky Mountains.”

“But —”

“Eurasia is a large landmass, Frank. You’re the smart one. You should know this.”

“But it’s — I mean, it’s the Russian connection. I know Russia is a big country, but I just got confused.”

“Well, you say that, but that’s working under the assumption that Kiev is in Russia. I know for almost the first half of your life Kiev was part of the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union doesn’t exist any more. Kiev is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, which is an entirely different country.”

“Not part of Russia?”

“No. Ukraine borders Russia, and it used to be part of the USSR, but it’s been independent for almost a decade now.”

“Gee, thanks, Joe! If you hadn’t corrected me, I would have spent the rest of the adventure saying Kiev was in Russia, making the Russian who’s lurking around the obvious suspect. That would have been humiliating!”

“Yes, and just think if the adults around us didn’t correct us — think of how embarrassed they would be!” *wiiiiiiink*