Alternate Visions of the End

So Motocross Madness is an unsatisfying ending to the Hardy Boys digests. That gives me the opportunity to ask myself: How would I have ended the series?

First of all, I would have waited until #200 to end the series. (That’s comic-book thinking; comic-book publishers love to make a big deal out of round numbers.) Continuing the six-book per year schedule, that would have meant #200 would have been released near the end of 2006 … or we could stall for time and release it in 2007, the Hardy Boys 80th anniversary. Making it a Christmas event, playing on the nostalgia market to make it a gift idea (more comic-book thinking) probably would have been more profitable; it would also leave the 80th anniversary year clear for the relaunch. I would have also made the final book an event: double the length, released in a hardcover edition. (More comic-book thinking; round numbers, extra-long issues, and special cover formats go together. I’m not suggesting the book should have a chrome or lenticular or a die-cut cover … well, if it’s a paperback, maybe a die-cut cover wouldn’t have been so bad.)

As for the story itself, I would have the Hardys and their friends graduate from high school again. That would be more of a background element, though, like it was in the original Great Airport Mystery (#10). The real mystery would come from Hurd Applegate — or his estate, at least. Hurd appeared in The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys story, and he more recently appeared in The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100), so it makes sense that he’d have a role in #200.^* In my ending, I’d have Hurd’s will leave a mystery for the Hardys; whether that mystery is a puzzle he constructed to challenge them or an ambiguity they need to clear up or something Hurd wanted resolved doesn’t matter much to me.

The Hardys would be helped by all the chums who’d had a role in the past: Chet, Tony, Biff, Phil, Jamal Hawkins, even Perry Robinson and Jerry Gilroy. Iola and Callie would get a chance to be real girlfriends and to stand by themselves as more than girlfriends; after all, Callie was class valedictorian in The Great Airport Mystery, and with an expanded page count, there’s no reason they can’t participate more fully in the mystery. Fenton, Laura, and Gertrude should make more than token appearances, and if the book throws in some connection to the Hardys’ forebears, well, so much the better.

Ideally, different eras and prominent locales would be represented; a trip to Cabin Island is a must, and they could take a trip in a Chinese junk, a reference to The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39). Perhaps they can visit mad scientist Eben Adar from the original Disappearing Floor (#19), or failing that, they can poke around the Perth estate from the revised edition. Their science teacher / track coach, Cap Bailey, who appeared in a couple of ‘50s mysteries, can advise them, or maybe something sinister is happening at Woodson Academy, Fenton’s alma mater, which showed up in The Yellow Feather Mystery (#33). Jack Wayne and Sam Radley could make cameos. Even one of the dumb mysteries could be referenced; an UGLI or SKOOL agent from The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46) could pop up, for instance. The Blackwing Mansion from The Blackwing Puzzle (#82) might be another return locale. Heck, the Hardys could explore all the historical mansions in Bayport, perhaps using a previously unknown tunnel system.

Say, I like that idea. Linking these tunnels to Bayport’s history, like the slave trading done by the original owner of the Blackwing Mansion, or to the city’s Chinatown might give the book an extra hook. No — link it to the Prohibition era, during which the series began.

That’s what I would want, but Simon & Schuster would probably want links to the books they published after they bought out the Stratemeyer Syndicate. It would be hard to fault them for that, and I’m not against that. Unfortunately, those digests — the ones I’ve gone over here — are not as engaging as the original canon, and to be honest, they aren’t going to be as enduring. (And most likely, the paperback part of the canon, #59-85, won’t outlast the S&S digests.)

So what might we add to this final story from these digests? WBPT has shown up a few times, and I think Jamal Hawkins is a worthy addition to the supporting cast. I’d even add Daphne Soesbee to the mix, even though she’s shown up only three times. Author Stephen D. Sullivan has made Officer Gus Sullivan a viable choice, although he’s less vital than Con Riley or Chief Collig. Granite Cay, the island in The Secret of the Island Treasure, might make another worthwhile setting. Happy Burger from The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping (#120) could pop up. They solve mysteries based around Bayport sports entertainment complexes, temporary or otherwise, more than a dozen times, so I suppose they could visit an empty stadium or two; they have a proclivity for amateur dramatics, so skulking around the Grand Theater from Cast of Criminals (#97) or the Orpheum from The Giant Rat of Sumatra (#143) might work, especially if the tunnel system had an exit there.

But I’m shoehorning; I don’t have any real enthusiasm for any of these, save Jamal. Vette Smash from Wreck and Roll (#185) could play a concert in one of those theatres for a post-graduation bash; that would work. Day of the Dinosaur (#128) introduced the Bayport museum, which is located at the former Sackville Mansion; the mansion would make a good stop on the underground tunnel tour, and the museum’s dinosaur park, stocked with “Dino-bots,” is worth revisiting. Psychic Colin Randles and his family from The Case of the Psychic’s Vision (#177) would be fun to mock, if nothing else.

The story would need the usual trappings: the brothers getting knocked out, people getting kidnapped, car trouble, strange forms of transportation (I don’t think they’ve ever used Segways), smugglers. (That would go with the tunnels.) The food should be plentiful; the storms should be severe. Every bit of crimefighting kit should be at their fingertips or under a coating of dust in storage, and science-fictional devices should be available. (Could combine that with transportation and put the brothers in the new Bayport Hyperloop.) Parental supervision should be nonexistent, even though the Hardy parents and Gertrude would be present; the boys should order the police force around like their own private security team. The Sleuth and the Skyhappy Sal should return.

The boys should kiss their girlfriends like they mean it, just once.

We obviously didn’t get this, and we never will. But honestly, I don’t think I’m asking for too much — just everything I want.

^* He also appeared in Maximum Challenge (#132), but he's a ninny in that book, so let's just ignore it.

George Edward Stanley

One Final Step is George Edward Stanley’s last published book set in anything resembling the original Hardy Boys continuity. He published a few Hardy Boys Secret Files books after Final Step, and he wrote a pair of Hardy Boys books that weren’t published and don’t have a date in the University of Southern Mississippi’s George Edward Stanley Papers guide. One of the unpublished books was written originally for the later Undercover Brothers series with the original title Living with Blue People; the title morphed to Desert Danger and finally to Sahara Oil!, but Living with Blue People is as nearly as perfect an encapsulation of Stanley’s Hardy Boys work as can be imagined. Like his Hardy Boys books, the title is inexplicable on its own and completely clashes with the Hardy Boys style and tone, and I can’t read it without thinking about how bad it is.

I’ve been hard on Stanley, but that’s only because his Hardy Boys books are awful. But that’s just his Hardy Boys books! He wrote literally dozens of other children’s books, as evidenced by the archived version of his faculty web page; some of his works written under pseudonyms, like the digest Hidden Mountain (#186) and his Secret Files work, aren’t even included. He was a professor of African and Middle-Eastern languages and linguistics at Cameron University, a state college in southwest Oklahoma. Another biography has more astonishing information: He earned a doctorate in literature! He was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame in 1994! He was a member of the National Council of Less-Commonly Taught Languages, which isn’t that prestigious, but it’s fun to know! He taught creative writing to others! He was a working writer that publishers turned to, time and again!

George Edward Stanley, who passed away in 2011, had an amazing career. His family and friends should be proud of him, regardless of what I say about him. I mean, his Hardy Boys stories are poor, which is disappointing, given that reading the Hardys and other juvenile series inspired his writing career, but that’s just one aspect of his impressive life. The rest of his career extended far beyond most people’s achievements.

Post-hiatus schedule update

Now that I’ve gone back and written about the books I picked up over the hiatus — Breakdown in Axeblade (#94) and The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping (#120) — you’d think the next book on my agenda would be #142, Lost in Gator Swamp.

Well, you are wrong, chum breath. I will write about #142 — it will be the first post in November — but I’m going to be more seasonal with the next two. The next post will be Kickoff to Danger (#170), which focuses on Bayport High football, and the one after that, the one just before Halloween, will be Trick-or-Trouble (#175).

The plan from there will be to read the books more or less in order, filling in the books I haven’t yet covered after #141. Unfortunately, I don’t have a few of the books at the moment, so there will still be gaps beyond Demolition Mission (#112), Sabotage at Sports City (#115), and Carnival of Crime (#122). (That last one sounds awful. I’m not looking forward to it.) Additionally, I reserve the right to pick a book that goes with the season when I want to.

And in case you’re wondering, the last two digests I plan to cover are the first and last ones: The Mystery of the Silver Star (#86) and Motocross Madness (#190).

On Hiatus until October 7

Before this year, I’d written about Hardy Boys digests without an overall plan, choosing to mock whatever came into my possession. Because of that, the only string of consecutive books that were on the site were #130-141, and that was an accident. It just happened that I’d picked up some books in the 130s, and I’d started with #140 eight years ago.

But at the beginning of this year, I decided to go through the books I owned (or could borrow from the library) in numerical order. The #130-141 block neatly divided the digests into two halves, and now that I’ve finished The Treasure at Dolphin Bay (#129), I’m (mostly) done with the first half. To reward myself for a job well done (or a job done), I’m going to take a two-month hiatus.

On October 7, I’ll be back, and I’m planning to start plowing through the last 49 digests then. Well, I’ve already posted many of those books — only 27 books remain. I’ll be using the hiatus to find the books I don’t already have and to enjoy not thinking about whether Frank and Joe’s technique of angrily accusing persons of interest of wrongdoing is the best way to solve crime.

I still haven’t covered six of the first 56 books, but I hope to return to those books eventually. As a matter of fact, I just picked up The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping (#120), and that will be the first book I’ll write about when I return from the hiatus.

Hope to see you in October!

Schedule / Notes on Fear on Wheels

The next digest I’ll be writing about is #113, Radical Moves. I don’t have #112, Demolition Mission, and neither does my local library. If I ever get my hands on a copy, I’ll fill in this blank later.

After Radical Moves will be The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals, #114. Unfortunately, I’ll have to skip #115, Sabotage at Sports City, when its turn comes up because, again, I can’t easily lay my hands on a copy, and I’m not going to spend $4 or more to buy a book on eBay or Amazon every time this happens.

If you want to send me a copy, though, let me know in the comments.

***

Some stuff I’ve been meaning to post but just keep forgetting:

The back cover of Fear on Wheels has some odd copy. The description ends like this:

“The only way the Hardys can put [the blackmailer] out of business is to ride straight into the mud pits of his raging diesel-powered bulls!”

I understand “diesel-powered”; I assume some of the trucks and hot rods involved in the show use diesel fuel. But I’ve never heard monster trucks, classic cars, or dragsters referred to as “bulls.” And none of the vehicles drive through mud pits in the book, although I have seen that in truck / tractor pulling contests.

Using “diesel” and “bulls” so close together concerns me. The only connection I can see between those words is that they are both used, with another slur, to rudely describe certain masculine lesbians. (From what I saw on the Internet before writing this, those terms are sometimes used within the LGBT community but are still seen as insults when used by those outside the community.) But the book only has one female character, Jessica, whose sexual identity is unexplored in the book … although it does describe her as having a “tough, boyish look” because of her black jeans, t-shirt, and boots (17). That’s her on the cover, although she doesn’t look boyish to me. The “tough, boyish look” description kinda fits with those slurs, and her career spent on motorcycles would emphasize that masculinity to some people. But you have to squint to make those terms fit well — especially when the next sentence says she has a “childish” face when viewed up close, and her makeup “made her dark eyes look huge.”

I dunno. Maybe I'm reaching, worried about offense where the word salad barely deserves someone thinking about sense.

And anyway, Jessica isn’t the blackmailer, which means puts us back at the beginning: I have no idea why whoever wrote the copy used the word “bulls.”

***

If Fear on Wheels has a major weakness, it lies in the idea that people are interested in what Grant Tucker is selling. Well, let me rephrase that: obviously people are interested in attending auto shows and auto stunt exhibitions; there’s a reason I know a monster truck named Bigfoot exists, after all. But the ghostwriter (or editor) seems to think the auto stunts can find a place on TV in the early ‘90s, and I’m not sure that’s true. Tucker sold the rights for a live television broadcast of his show, but it’s never stated what kind of television station it is. Is it a local channel airing the show? Maybe, but setting up for an entire TV show — you have to figure it’s going to be an hour broadcast at least, maybe two or more — is beyond a lot of local affiliates’ capabilities. It’s definitely not one of the major networks; they would have much better things to air than a regional stunt show. It could be a cable network, but it’s doubtful any of those (like ESPN) would air it live; the show would benefit greatly from editing.

And then Jessica is rumored to be trying to make a stunt-show pilot for TV. It’s easy to envision a reality show featuring stunt motorcycle riding being successful (or at least being plausible enough to make it to pilot) today, but in 1991? That’s difficult to believe.

Also: Tucker thinks the threats of violence will cause the TV people to back out of the broadcast. Yeah, because TV people hate spontaneity and the prospect of being live at the scene of a tragedy / news event.

Panic / chronology / Hack Attack

The next book in the sequence is Panic on Gull Island (#107), in which Iola goes missing on Spring Break, and no one in the media or law enforcement can muster any interest in a vanished pretty white girl. The Hardy Boys books have some pretty unbelievable plot twists, but that might be the most unbelievable.

***

The Smoke Screen Mystery (#105) is set during Winter Break, while Panic on Gull Island takes place during Spring Break. This gives us a definite and plausible time frame for the intervening book, Attack of the Video Villains: somewhere in the first quarter of the year. Attack of the Video Villains even mentions The Smoke Screen Mystery, strengthening the chronological ties.

This demonstrates a slow tightening of chronological continuity in the digests. The Secret of the Island Treasure (#100) is set during the summer, and The Money Hunt (#101) falls during Bayport High’s fall break. Terminal Shock (#102) is set during Spring Break, and The Million-Dollar Nightmare (#103) takes place during a San Francisco summer. Tricks of the Trade obviously occurs between The Million-Dollar Nightmare and The Smoke Screen Mystery, but that’s not much help, as The Smoke Screen Mystery takes place at the end of the year. There’s a lot of months between those two points, and we don’t even know what part of the summer The Million-Dollar Nightmare is set during.

So for the characters, those eight books (#100 to #107) take place over about 21 months. Logically, Frank and Joe would have gone up a grade during that time, and they might even have graduated. Although if they did, they would have to be in college: you don’t get Spring Break when you’re out of school. Frank and Joe are never in classes, so it’s impossible to tell. For readers, those books were released over about 14 months -- #100 was the first digest released in 1990, while Panic on Gull Island was the second for 1991. As I’ve said in other posts, I really appreciate this sort of chronological care, even if it makes no sense in the long run.

***

As I wrote in my post on Attack of the Video Villains (#106), the video game Hack Attack comes up again in Mystery with a Dangerous Beat (#124). I have to imagine the probability that both books were written by the same ghostwriter is high; why else would the same fictional video game appear in both books? I suppose an observant editor could have realized Mystery with a Dangerous Beat’s arcade scene would be a great place to insert a reference to a previous book, and editorial tinkering would explain why Joe is playing the game despite claiming he never wanted to play it again in Attack of the Video Villains.

On the other hand, maybe Joe is just a teenager and prone to hyperbole.

Doom / Hunt / Treasure / Panic / Demolition

So after Dungeon of Doom is digest #100, The Secret of the Island Treasure, a fitting book for such a momentous number. It features the return of Hurd Applegate, a hidden treasure (obviously), and numerous allusions to one of the most famous real-world treasure hunts, Oak Island. If you want to know more, click the link.

So The Money Hunt (#101) will be the next entry. I don’t own a copy of this book, but I will be able to check out a copy from my local public library. Most of the rest of my spring posts will feature the books in order, skipping Panic on Gull Island (#107), which I’ve already covered. The next book I’ll have to skip entirely is Demolition Mission (#112), which won’t be a concern until summertime.

A Few More Notes

Wipeout (#96) has a character named Emil Molitor, who turns out to be the book’s villain. The name made me think of Paul Molitor, a baseball player who spent most of his Hall of Fame career with the Milwaukee Brewers in the ‘80s. I have a feeling another Hardy Boys book mentioned a few members of those ‘80s Brewers teams, but I can’t remember which, and I can’t find it in my notes. Can anybody help me out here?

***
You may have noticed I included the price tag on the image of Wipeout’s cover. That’s my copy, and I like those little reminders of the book’s past. I had no idea what “Hills” was, but I like knowing the book was sold by Hills at a discount. (Hills was a discount department store chain founded in Ohio in 1957; it was regionally successful, but it was bought out by Ames in 1999. Ames went out of business in 2002.) I also appreciate that Hardy Boys books were, at that time — a time I remember! — sold at full price for $3.50. I also like previous owners’ names printed or carefully signed inside the front cover or on the front flyleaf; it gives the book a bit of history. But former library copies are right out; those things are used and abused.

***
Early in Spark of Suspicion (#98), the previous book, Cast of Criminals (#97), is mentioned. I bring this up for two reasons: 1) most of the digests don’t mention the books preceding or succeeding them, and ii) because it’s taken only a dozen books for the old practice of linking the books to become strange. Is Cast of Criminals mentioned in Spark of Suspicion because the two books share an author, or was it because of an editorial mandate to tighten references between the books? Spark of Suspicion doesn’t go so far as to mention the next book (Dungeon of Doom) at the end like the books in the Stratemeyer Syndicate days did.

***
Whoever wrote Danger on the Air (#95) may have also written Spark of Suspicion (#98). Besides WBPT being in both books, Mr. Pizza appears as well. More superficially, both books take place in Bayport. It’s possible the editor tied two books close together in sequence together, but I think it’s more likely that a single author is the link.

But perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions. The narration also mentions the Liberty Bell Diner. The boys and Fenton stayed in the Liberty Bell Inn in Shield of Fear. I linked that book’s authorship to Vincent Buranelli because the author named motels after obvious points of reference for tourists. The use of “Liberty Bell” for a place for travelers to stay makes Buranelli a suspect for the authorship of Spark of Suspicion. But Spark of Suspicion calls Phil Cohen “lanky”; Buranelli knew he was “slight” in Danger on Vampire Trail (#50). On the other hand, he called Phil “wiry” in The Witchmaster’s Key (#55), and “slight” could be considered a synonym for “thin” rather than “thin and small.” Also, almost twenty years separate Spark of Suspicion and Danger on Vampire Trail … Hmm. This isn’t as far-fetched as I thought.

On the other hand, none of the evidence I mentioned rules out a decent editor’s involvement.

***
I didn’t want to mention this in my post on Spark of Suspicion because it seemed to demand more seriousness than that post could carry off, but the book’s ending reads much differently after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. The parallels are undeniable: a bomber with a badly thought-out grudge decides to explode a bomb that will hurt random people at a public celebration of a local patriotic holiday. The differences are that the Boston Marathon attack was real and that Hardys, being fictional, were able to wrap up things cleanly without anyone being harmed.

A Couple of Notes after Shield of Fear

Last week, I ventured a guess at who wrote Danger on the Diamond. I don’t have much of a guess for Shield of Fear. The only clue I can find is the awful motel name: Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell Inn. Such lazy names were featured in a couple of Vincent Buranelli books: the William Tell Hotel in Switzerland and the Montezuma in Mexico City in The Jungle Pyramid (#56) and the Australian Arms Hotel in The Firebird Rocket (#57).

Buranelli was a relatively prolific Hardy Boys author. He revised two books, The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20, a book that badly needed revising) and The Flickering Torch Mystery (#22). He also wrote fourteen original Syndicate books, including three in a row (The Bombay Boomerang (#49), Danger on Vampire Trail (#50), and The Masked Monkey (#51)). The last book we know he wrote was The Crimson Flame (#77), which was published a mere five years before Shield of Fear. It’s not inconceivable that he would have kept writing books after the Stratemeyer Syndicate sold the series to Simon & Shuster.

Then again, bad motel names are a thin thread to hang this conclusion on, especially given that he only used those names in two of the books we knew he wrote.

***

As you may have noticed, I’ve been going through the digests in order — in February, I covered #88 (Tricky Business) through #91 (Shield of Fear). I’m going to continue this pattern, but I don’t have some of the books that are coming up, and some of them I’ve already gone over.

The next books in order are The Shadow Killers (#92) and The Serpent’s Tooth Mystery (#93); you can click on those links to read my recaps. The next book I haven’t recapped is Breakdown in Axeblade (#94), but neither my local library nor I have that book. I’ll skip it and come back to it at a later date.

After that gap comes Danger on the Air (#95), which I’ve obviously covered. For the first Friday in March, then, the plan is for me to cover Wipeout (#96), a title that really needs an exclamation mark at the end.

(And as always, you can find all my summaries so far at this page.)

A Couple of Notes, Inspired by Danger on the Diamond

Two things about Danger on the Diamond that I didn’t mention in my previous post …

First: Danger has some overlap with two Hardy Boys books written by James Lawrence: the revised Figure in Hiding (#16) and Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). Like Danger, both books include baseball scenes that exclude Chet. Danger also has a scene at the Bayview Motel, which has run down quite a bit since it appeared in Figure. Danger also visits Bayport General Hospital, which was in both versions of Figure and Tic-Tac-Terror. (And The Sign of the Crooked Arrow, #28, which admittedly has nothing to do with Lawrence.)

Could Lawrence have written Danger on the Diamond? He wrote eight other books that we know of, with Tic-Tac-Terror being the last one that is definitively linked to him. Tic-Tac-Terror came out six years before Danger, which isn’t much of a gap, considering Lawrence wrote his first Hardy Boys book in 1957. I think it’s likely, given Lawrence’s considerable experience in the industry (he also wrote in the Tom Swift Jr. series). Lawrence died in 1994, six years after Danger was published.

Second: The cover artist for Danger on the Air (#95), Paul Bachem, must have been really liked the cover he created Danger on the Diamond. I suppose it’s not too surprising, given the similarity of titles; if the books have only one word different, perhaps their covers should be as similar. But the composition of the two is a bit too similar for me. Take a look at Danger on the Diamond’s cover:



Now compare it to Danger on the Air’s cover:



You have Joe jumping toward the right side of the cover in each, trespassing into the cover art’s blue border to suggest his escape from the attack. His right leg is bent and in the air; his left is planted. Both arms are up, with the right arm higher, above the head. He’s even dressed similarly: belted pants, with a shirt tucked into the trousers. (That’s especially silly for Diamond.) Frank is shrinking off to the left. Behind (and mostly between) the boys is a fiery blast. Admittedly, he's not showing the fear hand in Air, but that's a small difference.

Bachem was the digests’ go-to artist at this point (he drew all the covers between #89 and #112). You can’t infringe upon yourself — see Fantasy Records v. John Fogerty — but given the quality of work Bachem has on his web site, I think he could have worked a bit more to distinguish these two. Or to distinguish Joe, at least; Joe has changed his hair style (and maybe color), but nothing else, not even his position.

Of Time and the Hardy Boys

In the early books of the Hardy Boys canon, from The Tower Treasure (#1) to The Great Airport Mystery (#9), ghost writer Leslie McFarlane and / or the Stratemeyer Syndicate made an effort to create a coherent chronology. Those first nine books follow the brothers and their chums over three years — essentially from late in their sophomore years in high school to graduation. The books cover three springs (#1, #6, and #9, all of them late spring), two winters (#5 and #8) and a lot of summer (#2, 3, 4, and 7).

After that, the Hardys stopped aging, went back to high school, and never worried about time making sense again. Seriously: time was more linear in a season of Doctor Who than in any five consecutive hardcover Hardy Boys books after that. But that was OK, really; the books were released once per year, and it didn’t matter that readers couldn’t fit together consecutive stories in a coherent timeline. After waiting all year for another book, who cared if they didn’t match up exactly? And as for the back catalog of books — well, who had access to all 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 of them? Those who could read all of them were overjoyed to experience the wealth of Hardy Boys stories.

When the Hardy Boys books came out in paperback, though, Simon & Schuster started releasing several books per year. The only way that would work, as a publishing strategy, is if they expected readers to actually buy more than one book per year — consecutive books, most likely. And in that case, skipping around the calendar becomes more distracting. It’s harder to believe in a fictional world when Frank and Joe Hardy have come unstuck in time.

After finishing Crusade of the Flaming Sword, I’ve read #130 through #141, which coincidentally covers all of the digests released in 1995 (#130-5) and 1996 (#136-41), so I decided to see if the Hardys obeyed the calendar.

Surprisingly, the 1995 books did! Sidetracked to Danger (#130) is set in February, probably about the time the book was released. Although Crusade (#131) has no specific chronological setting, Frank and Joe spend several days without going to school — so it’s set during spring break or summer. They’re back in school in Maximum Challenge (#132), which means it could be set between spring break and the end of the school year; they’re out of school again in Crime in the Kennel (#133), presumably during the summer. Cross-Country Crime (#134) occurs during Thanksgiving vacation, and The Hypersonic Secret (#135) is set only a couple of weeks later, in the run-up to Christmas. So not only can these books fit in a single calendar year, they were mostly published at the same time they were set.

I admit, I was impressed.

The next year’s releases aren’t so well coordinated. The action in The Cold Cash Caper (#136) falls during the February Winter Festival — again, the book take place roughly the same time of year it was released. Unfortunately, it’s not clear when the next book, High-Speed Showdown (#137), occurs, but it’s warm enough for boat racing on Barmet Bay, so it can’t be fit between Caper and The Alaskan Adventure (#138), which ends just before the beginning of the Iditarod in early March. Chet begins a summer job at the zoo in The Search for the Snow Leopard (#139), but Slam Dunk Sabotage (#140) jumps ahead to February (or perhaps early March) for the end of the high school basketball season. The Desert Thieves (#141) is set in early January — probably close to the book’s publication, although on the wrong side of the New Year.

That’s a freakishly small number of summer books — somewhere between two and four out of the twelve books. More than two-thirds of the first 85 books are set during the summer, so that’s quite a change.

1995’s releases show the books could create a sense of time; why couldn’t Simon & Schuster have spread their 1996 releases throughout the year? Of the six, four books were set in the first 80 or so days of the year, with none of them occurring in August or later. Would it kill someone to have a fall mystery? (Maybe it would; there must be a reason why Hardy Boys books are so rarely set in the fall.) I’m sure such things were not a major concern of Simon & Schuster, which had many more pressing concerns — writing outlines, wrangling freelancers, editing manuscripts, marketing, selling — but I suppose I’m saying I would have appreciated it.

Of course, I wasn’t buying the books back then and was well out of the series’ target age range. I also didn’t read the books until more than a decade after they were written. But why wouldn’t Simon & Schuster decide to cater to me?

Archive: All the Books Covered

For ease of navigation, here are all the books I have covered on this blog:

Digests:
#086: The Mystery of the Silver Star
#087: Program for Destruction
#088: Tricky Business
#089: The Sky Blue Frame
#090: Danger on the Diamond
#091: Shield of Fear
#092: The Shadow Killers
#093: The Serpent’s Tooth Mystery
#094: Breakdown in Axeblade
#095: Danger on the Air
#096: Wipeout
#097: Cast of Criminals
#098: Spark of Suspicion
#099: Dungeon of Doom
#100: The Secret of the Island Treasure
#101: The Money Hunt
#102: Terminal Shock
#103: The Million-Dollar Nightmare
#104: Tricks of the Trade
#105: The Smoke Screen Mystery
#106: Attack of the Video Villains
#107: Panic on Gull Island
#108: Fear on Wheels
#109: The Prime-Time Crime
#110: The Secret of Sigma Seven
#111: Three-Ring Terror
#112: Demolition Mission
#113: Radical Moves
#114: The Case of the Counterfeit Criminals
#115: Sabotage at Sports City
#116: Rock 'n' Roll Renegades
#117: The Baseball Card Conspiracy
#118: Danger in the Fourth Dimension
#119: Trouble at Coyote Canyon
#120: The Case of the Cosmic Kidnapping
#121: The Mystery in the Old Mine
#122: Carnival of Crime
#123: The Robot's Revenge
#124: Mystery with a Dangerous Beat
#125: Mystery on Makatunk Island
#126: Racing to Disaster
#127: Reel Thrills
#128: Day of the Dinosaur
#129: The Treasure at Dolphin Bay
#130: Sidetracked to Danger
#131: Crusade of the Flaming Sword
#132: Maximum Challenge
#133: Crime in the Kennel
#134: Cross-Country Crime
#135: The Hypersonic Secret
#136: The Cold Cash Caper
#137: High-Speed Showdown
#138: The Alaskan Adventure
#139: The Search for the Snow Leopard
#140: Slam Dunk Sabotage
#141: The Desert Thieves
#142: Lost in Gator Swamp
#143: The Giant Rat of Sumatra
#144: The Secret of Skeleton Reef
#145: Terror at High Tide
#146: The Mark of the Blue Tattoo
#147: Trial and Terror
#148: The Ice-Cold Case
#149: The Chase for the Mystery Twister
#150: Crisscross Crime
#151: The Rocky Road to Revenge
#152: Danger in the Extreme
#153: Eye on Crime
#154: The Caribbean Cruise Caper
#155: The Hunt for the Four Brothers
#156: A Will to Survive
#157: Lure of the Italian Treasure
#158: London Deception
#159: Daredevils
#160: A Game Called Chaos
#161: Training for Trouble
#162: The End of the Trail
#163: The Spy that Never Lies
#164: Skin & Bones
#165: Crime in the Cards
#166: Past and Present Danger
#167: Trouble Times Two
#168: The Castle Conundrum
#169: Ghost of a Chance
#170: Kickoff to Danger
#171: The Test Case
#172: Trouble in Warp Space
#173: Speed Times Five
#174: Hide-and-Sneak
#175: Trick-or-Trouble
#176: In Plane Sight
#177: The Case of the Psychic's Vision
#178: The Mystery of the Black Rhino
#179: Passport to Danger
#180: Typhoon Island
#181: Double Jeopardy
#182: The Secret of the Soldier’s Gold
#183: Warehouse Rumble
#184: Dangerous Transmission
#185: Wreck and Roll
#186: Hidden Mountain
#187: No Way Out
#188: Farming Fear
#189: One False Step
#190: Motocross Madness

Casefiles:

#18: A Killing in the Market
#42: The Last Laugh
#50: Power Play
#55: Beyond the Law
#59: Open Season
#76: Tagged for Terror
#78: The Pacific Conspiracy
#90: Deadly Engagement
#93: Mission: Mayhem
#119: The Emperor’s Shield

Undercover Brothers:

#1: Extreme Danger
#2: Running on Fumes
#3: Boardwalk Bust
#9: Martial Law
#19: Foul Play
#25: Double Trouble

Other:
Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys, v. 1: The Big Lie

Slam Dunk Sabotage (redux) / Fat jokes and friendship

Since my most recent posts have been tackling the digests in sequence, I’d like to point out the next book, Slam Dunk Sabotage, was the first book I wrote about on this site. Enjoy!

***

There’s one other thing I’d like to discuss relating to the previous book, The Search for the Snow Leopard. I mention Frank and Joe making a fat joke at the beginning that entry as part of my evidence that Frank and Joe are bad friends. Although I don’t necessarily think making jokes at your friends’ expense makes you a bad friend or that fat jokes should necessarily be taboo, Frank and Joe making fat jokes has always seemed to be cruel to me.

In any relationship between friends, there’s likely to be some friendly chaffing going on — shortcomings will be pointed out, and in a healthy relationship, there’s likely to be some give and take involved, each side scoring some points on the other. But Chet’s in a bad situation; his best friends are perfect human beings. He has no way of returning the gibes Frank and Joe regularly dole out to him.

Also, the relationship between the Hardy boys and Chet is unequal, and it always will be. First of all, Frank and Joe are brothers and likely to unite against others. Secondly — and far more importantly — think of the perks Chet gets from being Frank and Joe’s friend. He gets status in Bayport and in the larger world, he gets to travel to exotic destinations, and he even gets real financial rewards sometimes. Being friends with Frank and Joe opens up a world to Chet that he would never have had access to without them. He’s just an average, overweight kid with a lot of enthusiasm. That’s not a bad set of attributes to have, but it’s not likely to allow anyone to travel to five different continents before graduating high school.

So what’s Chet to do? Those rewards are fabulous. Can he really risk angering his benefactors? Or should he just shut up and take their insults? Chet mostly shuts up, and that makes Frank and Joe’s jokes seem more like bullying than the usual kidding friends give each other.

It would be different if Frank and Joe spent time on their insults and managed to pick on something more than his surface shortcomings. Mocking Chet’s stupid hobbies is a better choice; many of them are kinda goofy, and enthusiasm is something that tends to heal over time. (It can be fatally wounded, though, if you attack it enough.) But the series needs each book to pack in the “jokes” with a minimum of explanation, so newcomers to the series won’t be confused, and “fat is funny” needs little explanation.

It’s a series for kids, so I shouldn’t expect too much. But jokes like that teach kids something about the nature of relationships I wouldn’t want them to learn.

No post this week

Sorry there was no post this week — gardening and taxes got in the way.

Next week, the book will be Deadly Engagement, #90 in the Casefiles. The next two books after that will be Mission: Mayhem, #93 in the Casefiles series, and Program for Destruction #87 in the digest series. I haven’t decided on the order yet, though.

The Future of the Blog

I’ve come to the end of the digests I’ve bought at the Green Valley Book Fair a few years ago. How it took me so long to read a couple of dozen books, I don’t know, but it did. I’ve had fun reading them, though.

For the next few weeks, regular updates will continue; I have a few of the Undercover Brother series, and they’ll be posted on Thursday until they too run out. Then I’ll be taking a month off. I’m planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November, and the free time this will give me will be a boon.

I can’t say for sure whether I’ll be back in December. It’s possible; I have a couple of Casefiles I haven’t read yet, and there are a few digests I own and have read that I could re-read and add. Even if I don’t post regularly, I’m sure there will be at least irregular updates.

So thanks for visiting, and be sure to come back for at least the next few weeks!

Switcheroo!

Running behind a little this week, so I'm switching to an already written recap of the first Undercover Brothers book, Extreme Danger. Enjoy!