Racing to Disaster (#126)

Plot: Joe is in California to compete in a mountain biking competition, but sabotage plagues the participants.

“Borrowing” from the past: Mountain biking is a sport the Hardys did not engage in during the original canon. They used normal bicycles as transportation in The Flickering Torch Mystery (#22), although that was during World War II, and they were used to save gasoline. When they competed in the eponymous Speed Times Five race (#173), one of the components of the competition was mountain biking (along with kayaking, cross-country hiking and climbing, city biking, and a personal watercraft race). Although the race in Racing to Disaster isn’t an X Games competition, it is similar to the type of events Frank and Joe have competed in during Danger in the Extreme (the Max Games in #152) and Extreme Danger (the Big Air Games in Undercover Brothers #1).

In addition to mountain biking, the narration says Joe is a “natural athlete” — no joke — and that he’s “an accomplished wrestler.” (He even uses an unspecified “wrestling” move that involves grabbing an opponent’s upper arm and yanking downward.) That’s a sport the boys aren’t often associated with; Joe’s participation with the BHS wrestling team was mentioned in The Four-Headed Dragon (#68). However, they’re the Hardy Boys; it’s not a martial art unless they can throw some half thought-out version of it at some villain. So Frank and Joe outwrestle thugs in The Hooded Hawk Mystery (#34) and The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), with Frank using a half-nelson in the latter. Frank also uses some generic wrestling hold in The Clue of the Screeching Owl (#41), and Joe throws a hammerlock on an adversary in The Roaring River Mystery (#80).

The narration claims Frank and Joe are “avid water-skiers.” This is the first I’ve heard of it.

When confronted by a mountain lion, Frank asks, “Has anyone here done any lion taming? … I sure haven’t.” I would have sworn one of the boys had worked with lions during their circus employment, but they hadn't — both brothers performed on the trapeze for “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus in The Clue of the Broken Blade (#21), Joe was a clown for the Big Top Circus in Track of the Zombie (#71), and Frank fed the elephants while Joe worked the snake tent in The Clue of the Broken Blade. They did run into a lion in Track of the Zombie, however.

Mountain lions — also known as pumas, cougars, and catamounts — are a bit more common in Hardy Boys stories, though. Their experiences with Puma concolor is covered in Open Season (Casefiles #59), and they also confronted a cougar in while tracking down an ersatz D.B. Cooper in Ghost of a Chance (#169).

You don’t need a degree in biology to open a resort, I guess: The boys were warned about the local wildlife, although in a confusing manner. More than once, Dixon points out signs around the resort that warn competitors about “mountain lions, cougars, and wolves.” Unfortunately, mountain lions and cougars are, as pointed out above, two names for the same animal. Perhaps the double naming was an intensifier, rather than a mistake?

No, wait, it’s definitely a mistake.

Get to know your sport: Joe (and the Wolf Mountain Annihilator competition) breaks mountain biking into three divisions: downhill, hot-rodding, and cross country. Cross country and downhill do exist in modern mountain biking competitions; the former is a distance race that generally encompasses different kinds of terrain, and the latter is, as you might imagine, riding bikes downhill. There is no such thing as “hot-rodding,” a race that incorporates bike tricks, and the name is so distracting it seems obviously false. However, the idea is similar to freeriding, which can include jumps, obstacles, quarter pipes, and different lines through a course that allows for riders to demonstrate their style.

I’m still puzzled by some decisions made by the event organizers. In a mini-cross country heat, Frank and all the racers behind him are diverted by an incorrect sign — the old Merry Melodies / Boris Badenov trick. Bad luck for them, but the race organizers give them a second chance. However, they make everyone — even those who correctly completed the course — race in a rematch. Why not just allow those who were disadvantaged to re-run the event? Their times could be compared to the times of others, and the winner of the heat would be determined from that.

The organizers also disqualified a racer who had sabotaged his own bike, also banning him from events for a year. Why? He’s only harming himself! No other racers were affected!

In Racing to Disaster, Wolf Mountain is a ski resort three hours northeast of Los Angeles, with its slopes given over to the Wolf Mountain Annihilator in the fallow summer. Wolf Mountain does not seem to exist; the sites with the closest resemblance to it are White Wolf Mountain, a ski resort near Lake Tahoe, and Wolf Mountain Resort in Utah. Neither offers mountain biking during the summer, and White Wolf seems more notable for its location between two large resorts and its litigation with one of them.

Color blinding the enemy: Joe wears a neon green and yellow helmet. I’m sure those colors aren’t uncommon in competitive racing, but you’ll notice the cover artist chose not to use them.

Middle-aged boy: Frank calls Joe “kiddo,” picks up a salad in the chow line, and keeps his press pass in his wallet. These are things an uncle does, not an 18-year-old boy; actually keeping the press pass in the wallet isn’t really an age thing, but I’ve never seen a press pass small enough to keep in a wallet, in my admittedly limited experience. Usually they get clipped to a pocket or hung on a lanyard, right?

Is this your first case?: Frank and Joe don’t make a great impression with their detection. Frank asks the worst questions in his role as a reporter, a cover story event organizers give him to allow him to investigate. Joe blows that cover ID anyway. The excuse Frank uses to get a look at a piece of evidence — “I just want to see for myself” — is unsubtle at best. Frank does manage to talk his way into a locked area with secret bike technology, but so did a suspect, and the saleswoman clearly didn’t understand the idea of secrecy; her boss told her not to show the bike “to just anyone,” so she shows it to three random kids and a nosy star. The boys also fail to alert anyone in authority after they receive a written threat, and Joe neglects to bring his fingerprinting kit along. (Technically, he thought he didn’t need it at a bike race, but he’s a Hardy — he always needs his detecting gear, and he brought along his lock picks.)

This lack of fingerprinting equipment forces Frank and Joe to send a shell casing (erroneously called a bullet by the narrator) all the way across the country to their police lackey, Con Riley. Evidently they don’t have cops in California — or at least cops who will do the Hardys’ bidding.

Next, on Rescue 911: After a competitor takes a spill, getting thrown from his bike and being knocked unconscious by the impact, the Hardys immediately yank him to his feet. Because they’re always following that first-aid advice, which is … um … never move a … no, wait, almost got it — always move a crash victim as soon as possible. Yes, that’s it.

Part quick thinking, part innovation, but mostly stupid: In the climactic scene, Frank and Joe are in the cross-country race. Frank loses his bike while pursuing the leader, who is also the perp. Rather than leaving Frank and his 155 pounds (for the 6 feet, 1 inch Frank? who has the musculature of a natural athlete?) behind, Frank tells he’ll ride on Joe’s handlebars.

In the middle of a cross country bike race, through the mountains. Sure, why not?

And before you ask, of course they catch up with the leader. Why wouldn’t they?

A bicycle race built for two: I’m even more baffled about why Frank was there. I don’t know why he’s in the race in the first place — they were only going to keep an eye on Moreno, their suspect, and surely only the better cyclist would be needed. Frank is not prepared for a cross country race; Joe has to remind him about how to shift for the downhill race, and Frank himself asks why he wasn’t out training with Joe. (Because he had no idea he’d be entered into a competitive mountain bike race, I’d imagine.) Matching Frank’s pace in the cross-country race would surely slow Joe down.

I’m even more baffled, though, at how such an ill-prepared Frank, on a bike even less suited for the competition than Joe’s, manages to keep up not only with Joe but stay ahead of all the other competitors. Is Dixon saying mountain biking is not that hard? Because it seems plenty hard to me. Of course, the author’s grasp of the sport and equipment may be a bit lacking; one passage refers to Joe’s bike’s back wheels.

That’s a weird relationship: After the culprit has been caught and confessed to his crimes, his sponsor reacts in a way no human would react to working with an attempted murderer: “exasperated” and “amazed.” OK, “amazed” makes some sense, but “exasperated”? Is it because it’s only attempted murder? Or is it because it’s multiple attempted murders, and he’s exasperated by the compulsive behavior?

Quit while you’re ahead: So Joe, who comes to the Annihilator as an amateur, qualifies with a good enough time to compete against the professionals. He does well in the downhill, has some bad luck in the “hot-rodding,” and is extremely impressive in the cross country section of the race, as mentioned above. He does this with a single bike and off-the-shelf equipment, which is not even close to the quality the other competitors have. But at the end, Joe declines to pursue mountain biking competitions any further. Good heavens, he’s outstanding at it, and he gives it up because it’s “too much work”! Which, since he gives up on the sport in favor of detective work, makes me believe he’s putting a minimal amount of effort into detecting, as I always suspected he did.

Opinions: I’m not sure Dixon knows much about the topic of mountain bike racing. Or about the human body, as Frank and Joe, gifted athletes that they are, show no fatigue between races, despite the high level of competition and the grueling nature of some of the races. He also doesn’t know cougars and mountain lions are the same thing or that teenage boys don’t often eat salads without prodding or how to describe a realistic wrestling move or … everything’s a big mess, and that’s after you get past the idea that Joe has somehow become almost professional-level good at mountain bike racing. It’s all preposterous.

The mystery’s not so great either, but the horrible racing action covers up that shortcoming.

Grade: D+

Speed Times Five (#173)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Extreme Danger (Undercover Brothers #1)

Plot: American Teens Against Crime sends Frank and Joe to investigate threats against the athletes at the X Games — no, sorry, Big Air Games — in Philadelphia, where they find a multitude of suspects.

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much, really, other than the boys getting sent to the X Games — sorry, Big Air Games, I don’t know why I keep getting confused — like they were sent to the Winter X Games — wait, Max Games — in Danger in the Extreme. (I suppose they also borrowed the title.)

Other than that, the Hardys have reached a new stage of history. Aunt Gertrude is called “Trudy” instead. Laura has a career as a librarian (fitting she was given a stereotypically boring profession), and Fenton is semi-retired. Frank and Joe’s amateur work is “a couple of years ago”; now, they are operatives of American Teens Against Crime, a really bad idea thought up by Fenton. Callie and Iola are nowhere to be seen — Joe sniffs around the Big Air Games and finds himself an athlete, while Frank is shy and tongue tied with local Belinda Conrad. Chet shows up to help the Hardys, but while he screws up, he manages to handle a motorcycle fairly well, and there’s a minimum of fat jokes. There’s even a guy who mocks the Hardys — which, of course, is insane, given how many law-enforcement personnel might owe them a favor.

21 Jump Street aside, of course: Evidently, Fenton finally decides to fly his crazy flag high, and he doesn’t care who sees it. Exposing two teenagers to dangerous criminals is reckless but understandable; having a whole organization that does nothing that is insane. He must have thought America had a dangerous surplus of teenagers, and it’s his way to eliminate that surplus in a constructive manner.

He’s so hip, he can’t see over his pelvis: This book’s Dixon goes overboard with the hip lingo, trying to make Frank and Joe cool, although I’m not sure if he’s got the right decade. There’s enough “dude,” “outrageous,” and “totally” to provide the soundtrack for an ‘80s teen movie. When the ripcord on his chute doesn’t open, Joe says, “Definitely not cool.” Frank dyes his hair blue and Joe gets a mohawk — here at the other end of the decade, the fauxhawk is more hip, I think — and both boys dress in vintage clothing as a disguise. They also eat cheese steak for breakfast one day — awesome!

Trudy isn’t hip, but she gets to say “poop” a lot.

Inappropriate responses: When the crook in the opening vignette finds Frank and Joe sniffing around his DVD piracy ring, he tries to kill them. Over DVD piracy. In retaliation, Frank and Joe steal his parrot after he’s arrested. ATAC sends them to the Big Air Games after “a few strange postings” on an extreme sports site, which is pretty flimsy. When a covert ATAC agent tries to hint he’s on Frank and Joe’s side by working “Extremely dangerous” (a variant of the mission name), Frank takes it as a threat. Given that he said, “It’s dangerous to ask to many questions” immediately before “Extremely dangerous,” that seems reasonable. And although I can’t say it’s inappropriate when the villain goes after a Big Air Games athlete with a pellet gun — I can’t say whether he was going for the kill or just a wounding — using a pellet gun is no way to get respect down at the county lockup.

No endorsements were harmed while making this book: Frank and Joe own a “game player,” with “game controls.” They only use it for playing their mission briefing, or we might have learned whether they’re into “Coach’s American Football Game” or “Futuristic Soldier Game.” Man, I love Futuristic Soldier Game. Such realistic generic action!

Dating in the 21st century: Normally steady Frank may have trouble talking to a “Belinda,” but Joe has no trouble making a connection with extreme athlete Jenna. When they leave Philly, Joe gets not only her phone number but her e-mail address, while promising to visit her in Atlantic City. Ah, modern love.

Opinions: The beginning of a new series is a jarring transition, especially given the chapters alternating between first-person narration from Frank and Joe. The new status quo will take a while to get used to as well — although why not put them in college? Makes a lot more sense — and the incessant hipsterism will not help at all. There’s even a murder. At the end of the mystery, the Hardys even leave Chet behind, not even bothering to wake him up before they ride from Philly back to Bayport.

But one thing doesn’t change: The brothers’ disregard for due process. Frank says there’s not enough evidence to arrest one of the suspects; Joe responds, “You and your evidence. So what do you suggest, Mr. Law and Order?”

Grade: C-. And I’m being generous here, since I don’t know which direction the series will go in from here.