Lost in Gator Swamp (#142)

Hi! This week I decided to do something different, mainly because it will give me more time to do other things. I bought an app called LitBot 2999 from ConHugeCo, which promises to analyze texts in a real, nearly human-like manner, using electronic sources. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I enjoy the time I’m doing something else!

Sometimes it only takes a few pages to realize how awful a book is. In the case of Lost in Gator Swamp, it takes less than two.

Lost in Gator Swamp begins with Frank, Joe, and Chet riding in a hydroplane piloted by Dusty Cole to the Swampland Rodeo in Florida. That sentence has a lot to unpack, and it should be unpacked like one would a suitcase full of spiders and slightly rotten tomatoes.

“Rodeo” is an inauspicious start. Why would the Hardys wander a thousand miles from home to watch a rodeo, even if it takes place over several days? They have been lured to this rodeo to sate Chet’s burgeoning cattle-roping hobby, but the Hardys themselves have no real interest in the sport. Yes, spending time with a best friend is one thing, but the Hardys don’t have to enable every damn hobby Chet comes up with.

The next bit of trouble is “Florida.” The Hardys have been to Florida before — Panic on Gull Island (#107) was their most recent visit, but they went to the Sunshine State frequently in the ‘80s— and “Florida” goes with rodeo like “pizza” goes with “motor oil.” Florida is more of an agricultural state than those outside of the state usually think, but it’s not a cowboy state, and the area where this rodeo is held — the swamps around Miami — is a thematically poor place to hold a rodeo. It’s also a poor area to be a cattle rancher, and cattle ranching is the occupation associated with rodeo.

Swamps are also an unthematic place for a guy named “Dusty” to be living, as swamps are not dusty locales. Oh, people named Dusty can live in the swamps; that’s no crime. But this particular pilot / rodeo competitor / fishing camp operator, Dusty Cole — the pun is marginally preferable to “Dusty Rhodes” — seems too perfect a fit for the swamps to have gained the nickname Dusty.

It’s true that life isn’t thematically consistent. It isn’t consistent at all, really. But a Hardy Boys book is literature, of a sort. It has needs beyond what is possible. It needs to come together into a coherent whole, and it needs not to make readers ask questions about rodeos in a swamp before they can get into the story.

And then — then! — Franklin W. Dixon uses confusing terminology. “Hydroplane” is usually used to describe a boat, one that has a lifting surface that elevates it out of the water, similar to the ferry Frank and Joe protected in the revised Mystery of the Flying Express (#21). (That ship was a hydrofoil, though.) The term is sometimes misused to describe an airboat, those swamp boats with a big fan in the back. According to Wikipedia [UPGRADE TO LITBOT'S SCHOLARLY SOURCES TOOL FOR ONLY $20 / MONTH!], though, a hydroplane is sort of a speedboat. The author, on the other hand, thinks a hydroplane is a seaplane, specifically a floatplane — like the plane the Hardys flew in The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42) and were passengers on in the revised Hidden Harbor Mystery (#14). That definition shows up on the Wikipedia disambiguation page for hydroplane, but “floatplane” and “seaplane” are much better terms for what this Dixon is referring to.

That’s just page 1. On page 2, readers are treated to this ham-handed characterization:

“Egrets!” Frank shouted. He glanced at the travel book he had brought with him from the Bayport Library.
“Anybody else hungry?” Chet asked, stuffing a handful of potato chips into his mouth.

The author makes his point in the most obvious way possible: Frank is studious and boring yet prone to random ejaculations, while Chet eats to get attention; paradoxically, Chet’s constant use of food as a proxy for a personality has caused people to grow tired of Chet’s eating displays. It’s just so disconnected and stupid and lazy and stupid and stupid and stupid and stupid —

(Sorry. LitBot got hung up there, and I can’t get it to restart. I think it may have committed suicide. I’ll have to write the rest myself.)

Once the Hardys get to the colorfully and unbelievably named Frog’s Peninsula, they learn a mystery is afoot. A bank has been robbed in Miami, but the airboat the thieves stole for their getaway is found at the bottom of Florida Bay. Everyone thinks the thieves are dead, claimed by the storm that sank their pilfered boat, but not the Hardys! No, no. The Hardys figure the thieves are still around. Clever boys! Unfortunately, they can’t see the thieves, even when they look them in the eyes, and it takes them a while to figure out the bank robbers have stuck around Frog’s Peninsula.

The reader will not be fooled. With weird lights, strange animal behavior in the swamp, and suspiciously acting newcomers, the villains and their motivations couldn’t be more obvious if they wore trucker caps with “Bank Robbers Do It in the Swamp (‘It’ Refers to Searching for Lost Loot)” written on them. In fact, headgear does play an important part in this book: Frank, Joe, and Chet suspect one of the rodeo riders of being a thief because he wears a distinctive cowboy hat that one of the thieves wore. But, as it turns out, hats can be worn by people other than their owners. An astonishing twist!

Frank, Joe, and Chet also spend an inordinate amount of time suspicious of a local Native American, Reuben Tallwalker. Reuben is obsessed with the spiritual and ecological status of the land, yet for some reason the kids think Reuben might be a bank robber. It is not their finest moment. I can only imagine their thinking has been swayed after Reuben makes a slashing gesture across his throat toward the Hardys. (He thinks the Hardys are behind the strange happenings in the swamp.)

So Frank, Joe, and Chet, with help from Reuben and other locals, solve the case. Along the way, Frank and Joe are asked to square dance by a pair of girls, who are never described, never named, and their reactions to their partners taking off after a suspect go unnoted. They do, however, “dig for the oyster” (35) while dancing, but that is not as interesting as it sounds. After the dance, the boys hit the swamp highlights — they survive a couple of alligator attacks, and Joe almost drowns in quicksand — and steal a pedal boat, which sinks when a disguised robber attacks it. No one gets mad about the theft or lost boat, though; the boat’s owner actually apologizes for getting angry at them.

To his credit, Frank does quickly connect the dots between an alligator stolen from an alligator farm and the big gator that shows up near Dusty’s fishing camp. And when the boys need information about the robbery to continue with their unauthorized, unpaid investigation, Frank comes up with the idea to call Fenton, who can get information from anyone in law enforcement.

No other adults believe their hunches, of course, and Chet and Joe are partially discredited by the thieves’ unexplained bilocation. But they continue with their investigation. Chet and Joe board the thieves’ boat as they are about to recover the lost loot in another storm, and they free a pair of captives from the hold. The underaged Joe gets a job offer from the police officer he frees; unsurprisingly, he ignores the chance to join a backwater police department. Then, with an advantage of two-to-one over the thieves, they completely botch everything, getting only a partial message to allies before being recaptured. Frank manages to steal — er, borrow — Dusty’s hydroplane and makes it in time to rescue the captives after they are thrown overboard by the thieves. And who do you think catches the bad guys?

The Coast Guard, of course. The Coast Guard cutter’s presence is never explained; it’s doubtful they were summoned, as the people Joe contacted lost their radio during the conversation and were still struggling to get it back when Frank stole the plane. Presumably the Coast Guard was performing storm rescue efforts and happened across the chaotic scene with two boats trying to bring down a hydroplane.

All in all, Lost in Gator Swamp is a sad entry in the Hardy Boys series and a rough hour or so of my life when I could have used something uplifting. That’s to say nothing of the effect this book had on LitBot 2099 … Poor LitBot.

Tricks of the Trade (#104)

Warning: Somewhere in this article is an Arrested Development joke unsuitable for general audiences. If you’ve seen the the show’s pilot, you know which one I’m going to use.

In Tricks of the Trade, Frank and Joe have accompanied Chet to New York to watch a magic exhibition. Frank seems mildly interested in magic, but I can’t tell why Joe has tagged along — unless he’s there to crap on Chet’s enthusiasm, which is plausible and supported by the text. Magic is Chet’s new hobby; although Chet gets new hobbies every week, the narration notes his interest in magic has lasted “two weeks” (2). Ha ha, Dixon. There’s no need for you to dump on Chet too, especially when you couldn’t remember Chet had already had magic as his hobby in The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46). That was a total dog of a book, Frankie W., but you don’t get to erase it from history — that’s a bigger trick than you or Tony Wonder could pull off.

Chet is thrilled to attend performances of (and workshops by) Lorenzo the Magnficent, a master magician and a devoted de Medici cosplayer. Chet is entranced by Lorenzo’s act and his beautiful assistant, the Mysterious Larissa. Frank finds Lorenzo’s act impressive, but I’m more impressed that Frank could stand magicians at all. Were I Frank, I would still be traumatized by The Billion-Dollar Ransom (#73), in which a rogue magician (Zandro the Great) kidnapped both Frank and the president of the United States. Frank and Joe did receive a medal inscribed “To the two greatest magicians in the world” from the villain’s main rival at the end of Ransom, but given that Frank’s keen detective mind can’t figure out Larissa is using a “farewell kiss” to pass Lorenzo a key just before Lorenzo’s big escapology trick, I don’t think we can put much stock in that accolade.

I’m sure Joe isn’t watching Lorenzo or Larissa or thinking about that time he saved the president from Zandro the Great; he’s more interested in denigrating Chet’s interest in magic. Joe causes the trio to be late for the train to New York, talks during several performances (prompting a teenager to tell Frank to tell Joe to shut up), gives Frank “a knowing glance” because “they would have to put up with Chet’s excitement for the weekend” (2), and complains about testing out trick handcuffs (“the things you do for your friends,” he says [21]). Frank and Chet think it’s the funniest thing in the world when the trick handcuffs don’t release, which makes Joe even surlier. He can dish it out, but he sure as hell can’t take it, as my father might have crowed / complained.

To be add to the humiliation, Frank can’t pick the lock, so the handcuffs rank among the Hardys’ greatest adversaries.

Lorenzo and Larissa emphasize that their act isn’t slight-of-hand tricks: it’s about illusion. Of course it is; a trick is something a whore does for money … or cocaine. One of their illusions is making the lights of Manhattan, shining outside the hotel window, disappear, but they make the audience close their eyes while they perform the illusion. It’s very reminiscent of radio magic, which I assume was a thing, because radio ventriloquism definitely was a thing. Perhaps the better trick was making a teenager and Chet use ‘50s slang to describe the act: both call it “too much” (40, 118).

At Larissa and Lorenzo’s first performance, a diamond bracelet is stolen; because the hotel doesn’t want to cause a fuss, no one is searched, and the magicians steal away before the search is complete. The hotel management is informed, and they tell the police, but Joe is miffed by what he perceives as a lack of zeal. It’s unclear what Joe would have them do, other than let the Bayporters investigate. The hotel says that’s right out, although they offer to pay for the boys’ supper at the hotel diner. Joe, tripling down on surliness, says he’ll pay for his own meal.

The hotel is not the only organization reluctant to investigate. The hotel has Lorenzo performing, in part, to entertain the board of the American Hotel Association, but even though the victimized woman was a board member, the association won’t question its own members. The board pays for that hands-off attitude when another board member’s emerald earrings are swiped during a later performance.

“Someone’s obviously using the magicians for cover,” Joe realizes (46). Of course they are, Joe. Or maybe the thief is a magician? I mean, stealing jewelry off someone’s body sounds like a sleight-of-hand trick — and I don’t mean an illusion.

Whoever the villain is, he or she tries to scare off Chet and the Hardys with a thrown knife and a weak threat: “You may be the Hardy boys, but we’ve got experience on our side. Go home before it’s too late” (64). Tricks start going badly for Larissa and Lorenzo: a misbalanced blade thrown by Lorenzo nearly hits Larissa, Lorenzo almost saws Joe in half when the trick box is tampered with, and Lorenzo gets the wrong key during his signature escapology trick, forcing Frank and Joe to save him. Someone sets a flash-paper-and-trash fire in Frank, Joe, and Chet’s room, which actually works to the boys’ benefit: they easily extinguish the fire, they get a room upgrade, and no one mentions their clothes smell like smoke. For some reason, the smoke alarm in their room is barely audible in the hallway, and it doesn’t alert the hotel management at all. I hope they mention this in their Yelp review of the hotel!

Suspects: Now you see them ...

• Nat Dietrich, assistant manager of the hotel. Lorenzo reacts violently whenever Dietrich approaches Larissa. Joe also doesn’t like him because Joe thinks Dietrich isn’t doing enough to investigate the robberies.
  
• Clyde Spector, who works security at the hotel. The boys see him chatting with Larissa just after the first robbery, and later they catch him with the diamond bracelet near the hotel’s safety deposit boxes. When they pursue him, he slips away — almost as if he knows the hotel better than they do! Although the Hardys seem disinclined to search for him, the police eventually find and arrest him. He maintains his innocence.
  
• The Mysterious Larissa. Well, she is mysterious, and the boys see her chatting with Spector. She has the dexterity needed to swipe the jewels and access to flash paper. Late in the story, after a third item of jewelry is stolen, the boys find it in her dressing room.
  
• Lorenzo the Magnificent. He acts weirdly around Dietrich, and he has the magical skills to pull off the thefts. Still, the Hardys seem reluctant to accuse him, partially because someone is sabotaging his act. He pulls a weird practical joke at his old mentor’s magic shop, swiping the money from the till, but for some reason Frank won’t ask Lorenzo if he was the thief, even when Lorenzo strongly hints that he was.

While Frank calls to ask the police to do background checks on the suspects, Chet and Joe go to accuse Larissa. In Larissa’s dressing room, Chet and Joe are knocked out by “poisonous” dry ice (128) — all dry ice is poisonous: it’s carbon dioxide, which isn’t healthy to breathe in large quantities for an extended period — and tied up. They escape their chains by using a Houdini trick Chet remembered. (The trick is basically “wiggle until something comes loose.”) Joe realizes it must have been Lorenzo who tied them up, since Lorenzo’s handcuffs were part of the bonds, so when they get loose, the chase is on. With Frank, who wanders in about that time, they pursue and capture Lorenzo and his associate, Dietrich. Frank reveals Lorenzo was a safecracker, and Dietrich blackmailed him into helping with rob the hotel safe — which the Hardys prevented.

This isn’t the only magician-gone-wrong the boys have pursued. Besides Zandro the Great in The Billion Dollar Ransom, the boys caught the Incredible Hexton, an agent of UGLI (Undercover Global League of Informants), in The Secret Agent on Flight 101. Poor Lorenzo doesn’t measure up to Hexton, who kidnapped Fenton, was part of an international criminal ring, and had his own Scottish castle; Lorenzo is just an illusionist who was blackmailed into returning to thievery.

Larissa says the jewelry was planted in her dressing room, and she had given Spector the bracelet he was caught with after another attempt to frame her. Spector, in an attempt to divert suspicion from Larissa, hadn’t turned the bracelet over immediately.

The Hardys bask in the thanks of the hotel and self-congratulations. Joe says, “I guess you’d call his robberies sleight-of-hand thefts!” (152). You mean “illusions” — no, wait, I guess you do mean “thefts.” Joe credits his brother with breaking the case open, with his brilliant decision to ask (demand?) the police run background checks on the major players in the case. The hotel gives the boys jack-all for saving its reputation, showing they know a little bit about theft as well. Better get something in writing next time, boys!

Dungeon of Doom (#99)

I started reading Dungeon of Doom worried that it would miss the point when it came to discussing role-playing games. I ended it wondering why Joe was my favorite Hardy.

First, the role-playing game aspect. Chet invites Frank and Joe to watch him and the Greater Bayport Area Wizards and Warriors Club. Why would Frank and Joe want to spend an afternoon off watching a role-playing game? Playing an RPG — sure, I could get that. I do that. But watching? I dunno. If the game is exciting enough that Frank and Joe are interested, they should play; if it isn’t, they’d be bored either way. I suppose watching an RPG makes more sense than going shopping at the Bayport Mall with their girlfriends (also an option), but only a hairsbreadth more.

A role-playing game, for those who are unfamiliar, is a game without a board. Instead, a narrator of sorts tells a story in which the players are also characters. These characters are often heroic personas; at the very least they have abilities that exceed most people’s. The players influence the course of the story by the decisions their characters make. When something happens that involves some degree of chance and / or skill, like diving out of the way of a sudden attack or firing a weapon, players and the narrator (generically called a game master) roll dice. The dice can be the standard six-sided dice everyone is familiar with or dice with more sides: eight, ten, twelve, or twenty are the most common.

The most famous role-playing game is Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy-themed RPG. In Dungeon of Doom, Chet and his new friends are playing Wizards and Warriors, an obvious analogue. (Wizards and Warriors was also the name of a 1987 Nintendo game, a 2000 Windows video game, and a short-lived 1983 TV series.) The game master is called the Wizard Master (in D&D, the role is called a Dungeon Master). The book's description of game play is largely within the realm of what you’d expect a fantasy RPG to be like. Each character has stats — in Dungeon of Doom, stamina, strength, and intelligence — that determine how well the character performs tasks related to that stat. Some characters swing swords; others use magic. Standard stuff, really. There’s even a rules lawyer in the group: someone who knows every rule and is willing to use them to get the most out of the game.

Other aspects are unusual at best. The Wizard Master rolls dice for everyone, which is atypical but not unprecedented. All the players are dressed up as their characters; today, that’s called “cosplaying,” and it isn’t unusual, but few people do it when the only people who see them are a small group of fellow players. Chet’s character uses karate, which is dumb for a European-type setting, but even the original D&D had a class of characters who used martial arts. The only spell used has the stupid name of “Fribjib” and turns people into frogs; most spells in fantasy roleplaying have names that relate to what they do, poetically or literally. One of the teens is described as a “champion” W&W player (5), which is strange — RPGs are cooperative, not individual, and rarely does anyone win.

So the RPG is OK. But Joe — Joe’s the worst.

I have that written down a lot in my notes, although usually it’s expressed in saltier language. (I may have compared Joe to a specific bodily sphincter.) When Chet greets the brothers wearing his costume, Joe says he looks “even dumber than usual” (2). When the GBAWWC starts playing, Joe asks Frank, “Is this weird or what?” (8). After being pressured into playing W&W because of a player absence, Joe’s character dies almost immediately because he didn’t bother getting other players’ input, and he whines about it; he almost resorts to fisticuffs when another player razzes him about it. Later, when one of the players is enjoying the villain's game-turned-real-life too much, Joe says, “Maybe you should get out more … Stop playing so many games. Start living a life” (75). This paints the picture of a person who doesn’t want you to like something because he thinks it’s weird — a classic jock bully.

Later, Joe tells Chet he wouldn’t fit through a hole that is “only wide enough for a small Buick” (18). He accuses one of the other players, Derek, of being the villain before there’s any evidence, just out of personal animosity. He assaults Chet to get him to stop singing because “the echoes in this room make it sound like there are four of you … and one of you sounds bad enough” (49). Whenever Derek trades insults with Joe, Joe responds with violence; when Derek meets Joe’s challenge and defeats him, Derek apologizes for the violence, but Joe says, “That and a handful of quarters will buy me a soda” (74) When Derek offers good, constructive ideas on how to get Frank out of a partially triggered death trap, Joe says, “Get lost … I don’t want your help!” (79).

He’s really the worst! If a secondary character acted like him, we’d suspect that character of being the villain. We’d expect him to be the villain.

In contrast, Derek’s a delight. It’s amusing to see Joe fall apart in front of someone as accomplished, in his own way, as the Hardy boys. Derek is the county swimming champion and a football player. He has scholarship offers from MIT and Harvard, where he will study physics or molecular biology. When he tells the others this, Joe says, “I think I’m going to be sick” (37).

Derek needles Joe repeatedly, but he’s funnier than Joe, and he never tries to escalate the situation into assault, which is Joe’s default setting. When Derek finally snaps and challenges Joe to a duel with (fake) swords, he apologizes for thrashing Joe, who’s a sulky dink after being outclassed. (Why didn’t you remember your fencing lessons from the revised Clue of the Broken Blade [#21], Joe?) Derek’s gibe about Chet’s weight is gentle. When he and Frank boost Chet into a hole, Chet says, “Here goes nothing.” Derek’s reply is, “I’d say you’re a little more than nothing, Morton. How much do you weigh?” (62). (Frank’s rejoinder is funny, if a tad crueler: “That’s a state secret … if the Russians found out, they’d build an army of Chet Mortons and eat the rest of the world into submission.”)

Derek has two bad moments: the first is when he says a girlfriend he broke up with “was hardly [his] intellectual equal” (37), which sounds snooty at best and sexist at worst. But he’s a teenage boy; it’s not like he’s probably going to be that good at expressing his emotions. Besides, she might not have cared for intellectual exploration, for all we know, and he’s bad at expressing his opinions of that.

The second bad moment is when he decides to be friends with Joe, the worst person in the world. He even offers Joe tickets to “the big game” in New York (148). He’s even willing to ditch his current girlfriend to go with Joe. What sport is the big game? Who knows! Whatever it is, Frank’s jealous. Stupid, Derek, stupid. You’re going to regret this.

So that’s about it … oh, wait, that’s right. There’s a mystery here.

The plot gets going just after Joe’s character (Sir Joe) dies and he (the real Joe) tries to assault Derek. Tim Partridge, one of group’s members, says another member, Barry, is probably trapped in the Dungeon of Doom. It turns out the Dungeon is where they play sometimes; it’s located on the outskirts of Bayport, in a mine abandoned because it was partially flooded by the Bayport Reservoir. This reservoir must have been built to replace the Tarnack Reservoir, which was new in 1948 when it appeared in The Secret of Skull Mountain (#28). The Tarnack Reservoir, located 20 miles from Bayport on Skull Mountain, replaced the Upstate Reservoir as Bayport’s water supply.

All I can say is that I’m glad the Dungeon of Doom has nothing to do with steam tunnels under a university.

Anyway, Barry suspected something weird was going on around the Dungeon, and he arranged to meet Tim near it. But when Tim got there, he found a note warning him away. Frank and Joe want to go to the police immediately, but the GBAWWC doesn’t: if the police are called in, they’ll lose their Dungeon, and it would be a shame to do that if it’s a false alarm. Derek says they’ll check out the dungeon, then call the police if anything is wrong. Frank and Joe reluctantly agree to this sensible compromise.

Once they arrive, though, a cave-in traps them in the Dungeon. You have to expect that when you go underground with the Hardy Boys! (See The Flickering Torch Mystery, #22; The Submarine Chase, #68; Cave-In!, #78; The Roaring River Mystery, #80 … that’s not as many as I thought. I must be missing a few.) The dungeon / mine has been set up to serve as a real physical / mental challenge for the kids by a “Secret Wizard Master.” Traps include such classics as the carpet-over-the-pit trap, which Joe falls into immediately, and the shifting-room trap, in which a room is balanced so that when enough people shift to one side, the room tilts and dumps everyone down a shaft. Classic RPG traps, both of them. (The Secret Wizard Master also uses the no-key trick: the kids reach a door they don’t have a key for, so they sit down to figure out the “trick.” The trick is that the door isn’t locked.)

They also have to deal with morons within their ranks. When they find food left by the Secret Wizard Master, Frank makes the unilateral decision to drop it into a mine shaft on the off chance it’s poisoned. Chet lunges at the food and drops the group’s only light. Only by luck does the lantern not fall into the shaft as well.

The Secret Wizard Master, it becomes apparent, is one of the GBAWWC. So now we’ll dive into the suspect pool!

• Pete Simmons: He’s the real Wizard Master, and according to Win Thurber, he had access to the published adventure the Secret Wizard Master based everything on. Pete says the adventure was stolen before he could see it. More damningly, Pete is a psychology student at Gates College; he’s writing a paper titled “The Role-Playing Game as Adolescent Bonding Ritual.” I admit, with a title like that, I thought he was engineering everything to get more material.
  
• Win Thurber: A small kid who attends Bayport High School, although Frank and Joe don’t remember him. (Win says everyone knows the Hardy Boys, though.) He works at Bergmeyer’s, a department store in Bayport Mall, and gets stuff to outfit the Dungeon at a discount. He enjoys games more than anything else, and Frank and Joe accuse him of enjoying their predicament too much. He explodes at Frank and Joe when they condescend to him about his love of games and lack of friends. “Maybe you just haven’t tried,” Frank says. “Try some clubs at school. Make some friends” (76). Joe offers to throw Win a pizza party at Mr. Pizza with their friends: “Maybe you’ll get along with them.” Ugh, popular people have no idea how hard high school is.
  
• Derek Hannon: He’s delightful — witty, an athlete, and a brain. He’s only on this list because Joe hates him. If Joe hates him, though, that must mean he’s awesome.
  
• Tim Partridge: The 14-year-old who warned them something was wrong. Since his mother was expecting him at home, he didn’t go into the Dungeon.
  
• Barry Greenwald: Tim’s classmate. He disappeared before the story began — or maybe he only wanted people to think that.

It turns out the Secret Wizard Master is Win, who is really a high-school dropout who is much older than he appears. He has been stealing consumer goods from Bergmeyer’s and storing them in the mine. He and his two goons capture the GBAWWC when the fun of the Dungeon of Doom runs out. Win’s plan is to make the kids swim in the cold waters of the reservoir until they drown, which will keep their bodies hidden for a long time. Despite Joe’s “nasty personality” (129) — hey, Win might be a murderous crook, but he’s not wrong — he accepts Joe’s offer of a sword duel before the executions. He handily defeats Joe, just as Derek did, but he’s not prepared when Joe kicks him in the knee. He stumbles backwards into a strut keeping water at bay. The strut fails, and it’s a race against time to get out.

Well, the Hardys and the GBAWWC are racing against time. The readers will likely be checking their watches as the ending is drawn out. But everyone manages to swim to safety, and the good guys catch all the bad guys. Win’s goons are put in jail, Win is released to his mother (despite him being a legal adult), and Chet raids the police snack machines.

The story ends with Chet suggesting a new hobby for himself — spelunking — now that role-playing games have proved too much for the couch warrior. But spelunking isn’t a new hobby; Chet spelunked his way into danger in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39). Joe tells him to “keep his ideas to himself,” although I’m not sure whether that’s because he has cave-related trauma, because he’s sick of Chet’s hobbies, or because he remembers Chet was a spelunker before, even if Chet doesn’t. In any event, it’s nice to know Joe remains consistent to the end: a jerk.

Cast of Criminals (#97)

According to my records, I read Cast of Criminals in 2003. I don’t remember the book at all, although I don’t know why. It’s a decent enough mystery, and like many of my favorite Hardy Boys stories, it’s set in Bayport. It also touches on an issue I’ve written about before: namely, that Frank and Joe are awful friends to Chet.

In Cast of Criminals, Chet is acting in Homecoming Nightmare, a play from the ‘50s that the Bayport Players are putting on. The title sounds more like an ‘80s horror movie than a play from the ‘50, and the plot is more of a slasher movie than Broadway drama, but I admit it amuses me to think of Edward Albee or Tennessee Williams writing a play called Homecoming Nightmare.

Anyway, being the male lead in Nightmare seems like just another new hobby for Chet. But Joe undercuts him immediately; when Chet has trouble learning his lines, the director asks Frank and Joe whether he’ll be able learn them. “Eventually,” Joe says. “It just takes him a little longer to learn things. He didn’t walk until he was seven” (5). Everybody laughs. I don’t think making Chet sound developmentally disabled is funny, but eh, people laugh about that if it’s in the right spirit. Later, Joe makes another joke about Chet being the kind of guy who’d show up to pick up a homecoming date shirtless, which gets another round of yuks. But when Iola jokes about Chet — her brother — suddenly it’s not OK. “You’re giving Chet a pretty hard time,” Joe says, and Iola says it’s because Chet doesn’t care about acting. He only wanted to be part of the play because Frank and Joe were. Frank counters that she’s mad at Chet for telling the director he knows what goes “though a killer’s mind because he had a kid sister” (15).

Everybody laughs, again. Maybe it’s something in the delivery I’m not getting. Some people, like me, can’t tell a joke. Some people can make reading the telephone book funny. And some comics are like licorice: either you love them or you hate them. There’s no middle ground. I think that’s where Frank and Joe fall. I don’t think they’re funny, but the writers (and possibly editors) and characters do.

Whether he’s funny or not, Joe is a jerk; I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. When Callie doesn’t want to give up a tiara that a costume store clerk has erroneously sold her, Joe says, “What’s with her?” (8). God forbid she want to keep something she liked and paid for. After he sees the mess Callie has left after searching her bag for a missing tiara, he says, “I’m not surprised you can’t find something in that mess … Have you ever considered calling in a wrecking crew?” (12). He gets into an argument with Jeffrey LeBeque, a kid Frank and Joe find annoying; they trade insults, and Joe gets the worst of it; Joe also makes physical threats, which is a rung below the lowest form of wit. Joe even decides he’s willing to assault his brother on the off-chance a shadowy figure isn’t the hidden intruder they’re looking for. Later, he also knocks Iola down in a similar situation, but to be fair to him, he doesn’t admit to liking that. Of course not: Iola is likely going to give him a hiding for his mistake. Later, after Callie endures a series of attacks, Joe tells Frank, “Going out with a girl like that could be hazardous to your health” (63).

Joe, you dillweed: you got Iola blown up in the Casefiles, and Iola and Callie would have had much saner lives without the pair of you. You saying this — and Frank not calling you on it — makes me extremely happy both boys were taken out by one of the Shaws’ coffee tables.

Cast of Criminals begins with Chet attempting to kill Callie in Homecoming Nightmare. Nobody thinks Chet will be good at acting, but I think the role is right. He has to have a well of suppressed rage he can tap, given how much Frank and Joe — his supposed best friends — torment him. They’re rehearsing at the Grand Theater, which is a new venue for Bayport live theater; well, it’s new to the reader. Other theaters were mentioned in The Billion Dollar Ransom: a live magic competition was staged at the Bayport Palace Theater, although the Community Arts Association was planning to use the old opera house, which was being restored, for future productions.

While they are rehearsing, Harry Hill, of Hill Costume Supply Company, shows up and asks Callie to return a tiara she bought from her store. (Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill? Hill! Never heard of any salesman Hill.) She was sold it erroneously, and if it’s returned, he offers a lavish discount for the Bayport Players’ costumes. I’m not sure why the theater group is wedded to shopping at Hill Costume Supply, as Hill’s shop is the fourth Bayport costume shop mentioned in the books: Schwartz Masquerade and Costume Shop (79 Renshaw Ave.) in the revised Tower Treasure (#1), Mr. French’s costume shop in the revised Missing Chums (#4), and the Bijou Costume Shop in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74).

Anyway, Callie can’t find the tiara, and no amount of searching turns it up. It’s not even at the stupidly named fast food places (Ice-Cream Kid, Burger Bonanza, and Potatoes Iz Us) she stopped at on her way to the theater. After that, she is harassed and attacked: the Shaw home is broken into, as is the theater; she gets phone calls telling her to drop out of the play; the Grand Theater’s fire curtain almost falls on her; she’s stabbed with a rigged prop knife; a smoke machine spews toxic chemicals while she’s on stage; a player piano’s roll is splotched with red, and “CALLIE’S BLOOD” is written on it; Callie’s replacement tiara is stolen. Fortunately, no one threatens to take her back to Potatoes Iz Us, which sounds like it was named by an entrepreneurial hillbilly (“Would you like to supersize your order to get a large moonshine and side order of meth?”) or someone trying to emulate a hillbilly (“Would you like to supersize your order to get a large Mountain Dew and a side order of … ‘meth’?”)

Standard villain menacing, really, although labeling the red blotching “CALLIE’S BLOOD” is awkward. If your threats are any good, they shouldn’t need explanatory notes. Also, the smoke-machine trick was used to better effect in Reel Thrills (#127).

Frank and Joe investigate relatively competently, but they get nowhere. When they look into who dropped the fire curtain, no one saw anything, and Chet is particularly unhelpful: “I saw angels … They were all wearing hip boots and they were singing” (42). Chet claims he was "catching some Zs" and the crash woke him from a dream, but I think we all know "Zs" are likely drug slang, and he was tripping. Admittedly, the brothers’ competence is only relative to other mysteries, since Frank and Joe get locked backstage at the theater twice. The second time, Joe pulls a lever, opening a trapdoor that drops an unconscious Callie on Frank. There’s a joke here about Frank not knowing what to do with a woman, even when she falls into his arms, but Callie’s unconscious, and I feel uncomfortable about making the joke. It’s there, though, if you want to follow it through; I mean, the author just left it on the page. Take it if you want it.

For the second mystery in a row, the criminals throw the Hardys a curveball: the crimes are being committed by two different sets of malefactors, who are acting at cross purposes. The person who keeps threatening Callie to get her to quit the play should be obvious: Lyla Spring, who auditioned for the same part and is serving as Callie’s understudy while also working as the assistant to tyrannical director Paul Ravenswood. “I’m sick of Callie getting all the breaks,” she says after confessing. “I’m an actress too, you know. I’m good, I’ve studied, but I’m just not as pretty as she is. You all just take me for granted” (135). She is a decent actress — Frank and Joe don’t consider her as a suspect — and it has to be frustrating watching those in the Hardys’ orbit getting all the breaks. I feel for her.

Especially since the Hardys couldn’t help her when she needed it. Lyla has a sister who disappeared two years before Criminals. According to Lyla, “You think I forgot how you and Joe jumped into action when Deirdre ran away — even when the cops told you to lay off?” Frank apologizes and says, “We tried.” Deirdre’s disappearance is put early in Frank and Joe’s career: “two years ago,” which would have happened at the same time as the earliest Hardy Boys books. As far as I can tell, this is the only book in which Lyla or her sister is mentioned, so why use them to hang a failure on Frank and Joe? Deirdre Spring’s disappearance is placed in the very select list of Hardy Boys failures, right next to their inability to find Harry Tanwick from the original Disappearing Floor (#19). Hey! Maybe Deirdre ran off with Harry … or was done in by him. Or maybe she did him in and fled — I dunno.

Still, however much I feel for her, Lyla put Callie’s life in danger several times, and she stole the tiara, which put Callie in even more peril. She’s not innocent. She’s just up against the Hardy-Industrial Complex, and no one can defeat that. To dare to overcome it is to risk madness — or prison time. Lyla doesn’t seem to have been arrested, so surely insanity is in her future.

Some of the rest of the cast are briefly suspects, mainly because they’re actors. Joe quotes “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” from Showboat: “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,” but instead of saying he can’t help lovin’ that man (or girl) of his, he ends the quote with “actors can be weirdos” (71). He’s not wrong, but it’s a strange way to end the allusion. The weirdest is Amelia McGillis, who is a kleptomaniac. She says things like “primo straight-arrow guy” (67) and “How did a nice duck like him go swimming in this quicksand?” (149). She also fakes attacking Frank and Joe with a bread knife. Still, Frank and Joe can’t pin anything on her because she didn’t do anything.

The break-ins are also easy to unravel, and it takes Frank and Joe too long to figure that out. Since Harry Hill is abnormally interested in that tiara, making ridiculous offers for its return, he should be an obvious suspect. Frank and Joe eventually investigate, and a trip to a New York jeweler reveals the tiara was full of real diamonds, not paste. Hill is a fence, and his nephew, who briefly replaced Chet in the play, is his accomplice. Frank and Joe trap the nephew after he follows them to New York the day of the play’s opening, all but getting him to confess. He gets revenge on the Hardys by posing as a terrorist Frank Hardy in a call to the police, but even after Frank and Joe are put in handcuffs, one phone call to BPD officer Con Riley springs them, and they make it to the theater in time.

When Hill and his nephew try to steal the tiara during the play, Frank and Joe go on stage dressed as policemen (their actual roles) and use props and stagecraft to knock the villains down. The police show up and arrest the pair. It was a dumb plan, and Frank and Joe knew it; their planning involved phrases like “Hopefully, [Con Riley] will show” (140) and “‘Maybe … [Con]’s on his way.’ It was more a wish than a statement” (143) and “It was a risky move, but then their whole plan was risky!” (145). Still, they avoid getting shot, and the villains are caught. With a final Chet joke, said by the brothers in unison, the mystery is over … until next time.

Tricky Business (#88)

I read Tricky Business quite a while ago. I thought I could just put the book aside, but what I read keeps gnawing at me. I must get this out. I must tell you — tell you about the time …

Chet joined Amway.

Well, not really “Amway” — that’s a protected brand name, and Odin knows the Hardy Boys don’t touch those. And it’s not just a straight-up Amway clone either: it’s Trusty Teens, a company whose “entire sales force is between the ages of sixteen and nineteen … [who sell] household products and personal-care items, like shampoo and cosmetics … for the Trusty Home Products Company” (2-3). The Trusty Teens also get “bonuses” for “recruiting other teens and getting a percentage of their sales” (3) — a clear pyramid scheme. So it’s Amway for teenagers.

It had to be Chet that joined the Trusty Teens; any other character would have been frightened away by it’s secretive, cult-like nature. Chet is the person Bayport High School would have voted “most likely to join a cult / Amway,” anyway. He’s a joiner, someone who has always been willing to follow even the most foolhardy (ha!) orders of charismatic teenagers. You can read his obsession with food as a bit of an addictive personality.

With that set-up, it’s a shame we don’t get many scenes with Chet and Trusty Teens …

Anyway, on a late-night visit to Trusty Teens after a concert (featuring Iron Tiger! and Blaster Boys!), Frank, Joe, and their dates witness attempted arson of a warehouse. Trusty Teen salesman Andy Quayle (called “Jimmy” on the back cover) is blamed immediately, which makes Frank and Joe suspicious: accusations like that should be made only after a few days of half-hearted investigation. The boys run into Quayle on the way home; after their questioning, Frank believes in Quayle’s innocence, while Joe thinks he set the fire. When Joe gets a chance, he rats out Quayle’s location, prompting a genuine moment of conflict between the two boys.

The tension is almost immediately dispersed, but it was there, I swear it was, I saw it, it wasn’t swamp gas or the planet Venus or a commercial jetliner. And I didn't imagine it!

With Fenton on vacation, the boys decide to investigate. Sgt. Prescott of the Pine Beach Police Department gives them a hard time but lets them talk to Quayle. Joe offers the advice that “if you’re really innocent, then you don’t have anything to worry about,” to which the more world-savvy Quayle says, “Yeah, and you probably believe in the tooth fairy, too” (31). But Frank calls a bail-bondsman, and the brothers offer their help for free, so Andy and his mother accept

Because this is the Hardy Boys, Trusty Teens must either be under assault by unscrupulous employees or ripe for a RICO indictment. It’s just the way Bayport — or in this case, the nearby city of Pine Beach — works. If Andy Quayle didn’t set the fire, who did? Allison Rosedale and Vince Boggs were his chief rivals for the role of top seller — at least until Bob Goodrich, the executive manager, canned Quayle for being all distracted and stuff after Quayle’s father died.

The teenagers have to get evidence to support their wild accusations, so the Hardys send Callie and Iola into Trusty Teens undercover. Iola is a little reluctant, but she agrees, saying, “When have I ever refused a little excitement?”

“‘Never,’ said Joe, smiling at her” (42). I think we all know what Joe and Iola mean here, but don’t get too happy, Joe — she did say the excitement was “little.”

Before they head to a Trusty Teens rally, Frank and Joe get a threat in the mail — “DROP THE QUAYLE CASE … OR ELSE!” (47). The brothers ignore what is the emptiest of empty threats and head to a Trusty Teen gathering with their girlfriends. The brothers note the suspiciously quick rebuilding of the warehouse before a fight between Goodrich and Boggs ends the meeting. Chet — Newcomer of the Month! — keeps his supervisor from assaulting a teen, which then gets Chet sacked as well. It’s for the best; given Chet’s enthusiasms, he was most likely two weeks from quitting or being pulled in for life.

Frank and Joe figure some light B&E is the next logical step. They decide to go in early the next morning, using Chet’s extra Trusty Teens IDs and uniforms — and banking on their anonymity, since Iola tells Joe, “There are a lot of … blond, blue-eyed guys like you.” Joe tries to laugh it off, saying, “And I always thought I was one of a kind” (61), but we all know Iola could replace Joe in a heartbeat if she wanted.

Frank and Joe use the aliases “Chris Knight” (aka Peter Brady on The Brady Bunch) and “Randy Potter” (aka Joe’s ideal adult-film name). The Hardys discover nothing, other than Boggs was dating Goodrich’s daughter and Allison thinks she has something to hold over Goodrich’s head. After their criminal trespass, they follow a truck loaded with Trusty Brite detergent, except that the Trusty Brite boxes contain the explosive “Splode-All.” They grab a box, but when they bring it to Prescott, he pooh-poohs the discovery, partially because Splode-All is an incredibly stupid name that no criminal, military, or munitions company would ever use. But mainly it’s because he’s crooked and in Goodrich’s pocket.

The next day, they talk with Boggs, who tells them he has invented the Internet of Things, albeit not in those words (or really with the Internet part). Frank is eager to find the sinister implications of the idea. After they leave, they find a bomb in the van and chuck it into a field just in time. Soon after, someone tries to blow up Andy Quayle’s mom.

Then comes the most disturbing part of the mystery: Iola and Callie order two pizzas for themselves, Chet, and the Hardys. One of those pizzas is double cheese. What kind of teenagers (who aren’t specifically vegetarian) orders a double cheese pizza? Needing to order a double cheese pizza means the pizza place you’re ordering from skimps on cheese, anyway. And then, after eating, they immediately head to a restaurant. Sure, they do it to listen to music, but I’m sure they were going to nosh while listening …

Anyway, Iola and Callie have discovered Allison is dating a crooked foreman at Trusty, and she’d received a baby grand piano from Sgt. Prescott. The piano, Frank and Joe learn, are Allison’s profits for blackmailing Goodrich. Allison’s boyfriend — who, by the way, is much older and rocking the cradle of love with his Trusty Teen — cracks under the Hardys’ light questioning. With his information and the work of Pine Beach’s honest Sgt. Clement, most of Goodrich’s gang is arrested. However, the arrest of Goodrich is botched, and Frank and Joe’s throw themselves into the operation. They are immediately captured, along with Allison and her boyfriend; Goodrich admits to being a smuggler, a middle-manager in an international munitions ring, and to framing Andy. Goodrich almost gets revenge on the blackmailing Allison by locking all four captives in a burning building, but they manage to escape the conflagration.

While escaping in their van, they elude Goodrich but not Prescott, who orders them into the woods so he can execute them. Prescott admits to setting all the bombs and being Allison’s go-between for her blackmail scheme. However, Prescott’s proposed woodland execution goes awry when Goodrich shows up; the standoff distracts both villains long enough for the boys to get the drop on the gunmen and capture them. Andy is cleared, Allison’s boyfriend gets lenient treatment, and Allison gets arrested in Havenhurst. Everybody’s happy!

Well, except for the criminals. And Chet probably shouldn’t be happy, given that he was fired from his summer job. But it could be worse: he could still be working for Amw — Trusty Teens.

The Last Laugh (Casefiles #42)

Plot: Frank, Joe, and Chet investigate kidnappings, bombings, and arson at a comic book convention in San Diego.

“Borrowing” from the past: Casefiles don’t care much about the past, but there are some links to the proud Hardy Boys traditions. Or maybe the Casefiles duplicate earlier books without knowing any better.

In this case, the background details are somewhat similar to The Apeman’s Secret (#62). In that book, Frank, Joe, and Chet are all interested in comics (although Chet more so than the Hardys), and they are called to investigate crimes committed by people dressed up as comic book characters, just as they are in Last Laugh. Chet even gets a story published by publisher Star Comix (Marvel Comics actually started a kids-oriented imprint called Star Comics in 1984). Chet even dresses up as a villain for a comic-book costume party. (The party wasn’t at a convention, though; it was at the Alfresco Disco. Ah, 1980.)

Joe remembers some of Fenton’s advice early in The Last Laugh: no clue is too small for a good detective. Other gems from Fenton include:

• “Listen much and say little.” (Hunting for Hidden Gold, #5)
• “One of the first requirements of a good detective is to keep his ears open and his mouth shut, and to be wary of confiding in strangers.” (What Happened at Midnight, #10)
• “A good detective doesn't let his impulses get the better of him.” (The Disappearing Floor, #19)
• It is an admission of defeat to call the police. (The Flickering Torch Mystery, #22)
• There is “no more dangerous or cruel fighter than a cornered criminal.” (The Secret Panel, #25)
• Note the time of any unusual occurrence. (The Secret Panel)
• “A good detective must be observant of small details.” (The Phantom Freighter, #26)
• “Never discard a single clue.” (The Secret of the Lost Tunnel, #29)
• A little undercover sleuthing in advance is better than barging in head on. (The Crisscross Shadow, #32)
• Do not talk to strangers about cases. (The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, #37)
• Safeguard any valuables you come across during a case. (The Mystery at Devil’s Paw , #38)
• Two of a “detective's best friends are the newspaper and the police.” (Mystery of the Desert Giant, #40)
• “In detective work, sometimes it's the crazy clues that bring results.” (Mystery of the Desert Giant)
• The modus operandi is often the best way to identify who committed a crime. (The Night of the Werewolf , #59)
• Do not take foolish chances. (The Night of the Werewolf , #59)
• A criminal has to have motive and opportunity. (The Swamp Monster, #83)

Frank and Joe silently communicate, with Frank making motions with his head that Joe can instantly translate. Most of the Hardys’ previous silent signals were more specific than various chin jabs and nods, though. The boys squeeze each other’s hands in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21) as a “danger signal,” and they have a specific, secret hand signal in The Crisscross Shadow (#32). The revised version of What Happened at Midnight mentions a system of hand squeezes. A few other times, such as in The Pentagon Spy (#61), The Disappearing Floor (#19), and The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), switching lights on and off are signals. In most other cases, their “secret” signals aren’t silent: they’re bird calls or whistles or horn honks or wildcat screeches (yes, really) or knocks or obvious phrases (“Here we go again!” in The Hooded Hawk Mystery, #34).

What?: Despite the title, the book has absolutely nothing to do with jokes, laughter, or the phrase, “He who laughs last laughs best.” I think someone saw the “comic” in “comic book,” and immediately thought of old Walt Disney or Little Lulu comics.

Investment advice you can trust: In The Baseball Card Conspiracy, baseball cards are touted as a great investment. In the two decades since, that has been shown to be a horrible idea. Last Laugh takes a slightly different approach; I expected comic books themselves to be lauded as moneymakers, especially since the big investment boom in comics was beginning just as this book was published. But no — this Franklin W. Dixon makes the better argument that comic book art (the original art on Bristol boards and the like) would be a good investment. I don’t know how the market for original art has held up, but it has to be better than the books bought around the time Last Laugh was published (early ‘90s). The author generally restricts the art in question to Golden Age (late ‘30s-mid ‘40s) comic art, which seems like a good bet.

Getting the details right: The boys attend a comic convention in San Diego — it’s never called the San Diego Comic Con (or to give it its formal name, Comic-Con International), but that’s what it is. Since this book is set 20 years ago, the convention was actually focused on comics rather than generic science fiction / geek entertainment, as it is now. SDCC was founded in 1970 by fan Shel Dorf, and it bounced around several San Diego locations befreo ending up in its current location, the San Diego Convention Center, in 1991, the year after this book was published. (The convention has already moved in Last Laugh.) The events Chet tries to interest the Hardys in, like the large costume party, actually occur at SDCC.

At the end of the book, Chet wants to attend a concert at the convention by a band called “Seduction of the Innocent.” It’s a real band that played at conventions, one with a better name than musical pedigree. The members are actor Bill Mumy (Lost in Space, Babylon Five), writer Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), actor Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan), and artist Steve Leialoha (many DC and Marvel books). The name has strong comic book roots: the title belonged to a book by anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham, who claimed comic books and their graphic imagery led to violence and juvenile delinquency.

Among the Golden Age covers displayed at the convention, one Joe sees is described as having a “muscular, square-jawed hero in a star-spangled costume slugging Adolf Hitler.” As you can see, that’s a pretty good description of Captain America Comics #1.

The Real McCoy or an Impostinator?: The question that preyed on my mind throughout Last Laugh is whether Barry Johns, his staff, and the comic book companies involved were based on real people, composites, or made up out of whole cloth. Even by the end, I still hadn’t decided.

Barry Johns was a fan who worked his way into the business through persistence and hard work. That could describe any number of comic professionals; most likely, this Dixon had someone like Roy Thomas in mind. Thomas, like Johns, used his experience with fanzines and his enthusiasm to become one of the first fans to become a professional comics writer. Thomas was a bit earlier, but the idea is the same. Thomas was editor in chief at Marvel Comics from 1972 to 1974.

The description could, in a loose way, apply to Jim Shooter … although it’s other parts of Johns’s character that fit Shooter more aptly. Shooter wrote his first story for DC at the age of 14 in 1966, then, after graduating high school, worked his way through the ranks at Marvel in the ‘70s. (There was a lot of turnover at the top at Marvel in the ‘70s — seven different editors had the top job at some point during the decade.) There were many successful runs at Marvel during his tenure, a welcome departure from the creative doldrums the company suffered through in the ‘70s. During Shooter’s reign at Marvel, however, the company alienated some talent through strict deadlines and editorial control, as Johns does through late payments to freelancers and not giving proper credit (and strict editorial control). Many Marvel writers and artists left to go to work for DC. Shooter was forced out after nine years in 1987.

Johns left Terrific Comics (most likely a stand in for Marvel) and founded Zenith Publishing, where he had a bit hit in Metaman. Shooter launched Valiant Comics in 1989, and the company grew spectacularly for a few years — until the comic book industry’s next bust in the mid-‘90s, when the whole thing went pear shaped. Shooter had been forced out before then, however.

Zenith was headquartered in San Diego, most likely for plot convenience. (The largest comic publisher located in San Diego today, IDW, was founded in 1999.) However, when Frank and Joe visit the company’s offices, Joe notices the “bullpen” — an open area for many artists to work at the same time. Marvel was famous for its bullpen; however, there was no actual bullpen area in its offices. It was just a convenient and colorful way for early editor Stan Lee to refer to the writers and artists working for Marvel at the time, and the name has stuck.

Too much TV, not enough comics: At one point, Joe says he will be able to “play [the suspect] like a violin,” which Frank finds overdramatic. Obviously, Joe’s picked this up from some generic crime TV show or movie — probably too many of them. Despite his disdain, Frank’s watched too much TV as well; he thinks he’s lucky the car he’s in didn’t explode when it rolled. Cars rarely explode in real life; in TV and movies, the special effects people put bombs on the cars to make them go boom.

Chet, the comic book fan, seems to have not read enough comics, however. When people dressed up as comic book villains attack them, Chet seems unconvinced as to whether they have superpowers. Anyone who has read comics (or watched TV, or movies) knows that when fictional characters come to life, it’s always a scam.

Good cop, bad Hardys: As usual, the Hardys horn in on an active investigation, but this time, Det. Sgt. Drew Hanlon isn’t having it. He tells the boys that since it’s a kidnapping case, the FBI has jurisdiction, and they should butt the hell out. (I’m paraphrasing.) When they are caught at the scene of a firebombing, Hanlon hauls them in and questions them for a whole hour. Frank and Joe are aghast at this sort of treatment, little imagining what would have happened if a) they were normal people, instead of the most special teenagers in the history of forever, or b) the FBI took an interest in their own investigation instead of fobbing off most of the hard work to a detective for the San Diego PD.

I think the books need characters like this: authority figures who give the boys a hard time and seem at least mildly competent. Since adults rarely seem to believe children and adolescents, it seems more real and a better way to identify with the ostensible target audience to have adults working against the Hardys rather than Frank and Joe invoking St. Fenton to become the police’s masters. Any adolescent (or child) who has that sort of power is going to be the sort of person the intended audience would automatically hate — the undeclared lords of the playground set who get what they want because their parents are rich, powerful, or both. Screw those kids.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to sympathize with Frank and Joe’s meddling when they have a better understanding of San Diego, armed with a street map and a day’s experience, than the San Diego police or the local FBI.

Opinions: Since I have a familiarity with comics and the comics industry — see my new book Comic Book Collections for Libraries for an example — I was distracted throughout the book, trying to figure out who this or that character was supposed to be. Someone specific? An amalgam? Something new? Only Barry Johns seemed to have enough details to identify with any sort of depth or confidence. The others … they were generic figures. Which was a problem when I was trying to figure out if they had any wider significance and a problem in relation to the plot. And I’m still trying to figure out if Chet’s fan friend Tom Gatlin was a reference to Tom Galloway, a comics fan and Usenet dinosaur also known as “tyg.”

It seems to me a better story could have been made by making Last Laugh echo the real battle for Golden and Silver Age creators’ rights, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s battle for Superman money or Jack Kirby’s battle for recognition at Marvel. Given that Golden Age cover art was at the center of the mystery, a fictionalized version of the legal struggle would have fit quite well into the story. But no — it’s a generic money / rights issue at the heart of Last Laugh.

Grade: B-. Although this isn’t a bad mystery, I found I wasn’t engaged with it either.