The Lure of the Italian Treasure (#157)

I hope some enterprising writer or editor commissioned / wrote The Lure of the Italian Treasure as a way of writing off a trip to Italy on their income taxes. I doubt that’s true, although I think someone in the creative process for this book has actually gone to Italy. The details feel right.

This is the first time Frank and Joe have left North America / the Caribbean in the digest series. They traveled to Canada in Cross-Country Crime (#134), and then they went to the Caribbean twice — The Secret of Skeleton Reef (#144) and The Caribbean Cruise Caper (#154) — but the last book that sent them overseas was Revenge of the Desert Phantom (#84), in which they stopped a civil war in Africa after diverting through Paris. Desert Phantom is so unlike the rest of the series it barely counts, though. If you want a “normal” Hardy Boys book, their last trip out of North America was in The Crimson Flame (#77) — Thailand — and their last trip to Europe was to Germany in The Submarine Caper (#68, also known as The Deadly Chase).

But Frank and Joe don’t make a big deal about their trip to Italy, and even a kerfuffle with customs inspectors in Milan over Joe’s bugging equipment is downplayed as barely worth mentioning (except as foreshadowing). So why are Frank and Joe, average American teens, in Italy, and why should we care, if they’re so blasé? Well, they’re working on an archaeological dig outside Florence. Before you can jump to the obvious conclusion that this is related to Frank’s interests or that Fenton as placed them at the dig to uncover antiquities theft or fraud or some damn thing, we learn that working on an Etruscan archaeological site has been Joe’s dream “for more than a year” (2). Yes, lunkheaded Joe is the one who wants to see Etruscan ruins, and he’s interested enough to not only work as an unpaid student (for credit, maybe, but where?) but to also rope in his brother.

How did they become a part of this program? Who knows! It’s never explained. If you’re in charge and the Hardys show up, you thank your lucky stars, integrate them into the program as well as possible, and wait for the crime and astounding luck to wash over you. And let me tell you: Hardy-caliber luck really cleans out your pores. (Crime, not so much.) It’s not like you usually pay them — The Hunt for the Four Brothers (#155) notwithstanding — for their normal labor or their mystery solving.

And the Hardys certainly bring the cheap labor and unbelievable luck in this one. Joe uncovers an Etruscan potsherd, which allows the Dixon to go over archaeological procedure and introduce our supporting cast: Cosimo Gianotti, a fellow student whose “English was almost flawless, though he spoke with an accent” (5); Julia Russell, an Englishwoman getting her doctorate at the University of Florence; and Professor Mosca, who is nominally in charge of the dig but rarely makes an appearance. Count Vincenzo Ruffino, whose estate the dig is on, and his daughter, Francesca, also pop up about this time. Francesca flirts a bit with Frank, which perhaps inspires Frank, who one-ups his brother by unearthing a box full of jewelry. Frank gets a quick congratulatory kiss from Francesca as a reward.

Now, a note about the jewelry: Among the pieces are “fibulae” and “agrafes” (16). The former term is the plural of “fibula,” which is a brooch or clasp; the latter also describes clasps, usually on armor or costumes. Also, one might guess that jewelry would make the boys think of their mother, aunt, or girlfriends, but elder female Hardys go almost unmentioned, and the only time Iola’s name comes up is to remark that she gave Joe a handkerchief so he would “think of her when he made an important discovery” (2). Predictably, he never gives her a second thought; at least Frank thinks Callie would appreciate one of Florence’s lovely views.

The box is left in situ so that the find can be photographed in context, but after Joe has a misleading nightmare to inject a bit of excitement into the story, the Hardys awake to find the jewelry is missing, and the man the count placed on guard — Bruno, a former convict, now employed as a gardener by the count — has been chloroformed. The Hardys get off on the wrong foot with the police when an officer sees Frank too close to the crime scene; Frank tells Cosimo to explain to the officer how great Frank and Joe are, but Cosimo declines, saying, “I think we’d better just be quiet. I know the type.”

And the boys get to know the type as well: Inspector Amelia Barducci suspects the boys of involvement in the theft. (Amanda Knox and author Douglas Preston would both learn about this type in Florence.) The bugging device that customs officials found raises her suspicions, and she also finds the timing — the theft occurred two days after the Hardys arrived — suggestive. The inspector also thinks Frank finding and sniffing the chloroformed rag shows he was checking to see if the cloth still smelled of the chemical, and using his knowledge of the moon’s phases to reason when it would be dark also indicates his possible guilt.

Despite the polizia’s suspicions, the brothers are allowed to continue working at the dig; the next day they find a skeleton and a bronze dagger — outstanding finds! Honestly, Mosca’s benign indifference might have uncovered the greatest innovation in archaeology: Hiring detectives. After all, it’s their job to discover what has been hidden. (Detectives who are students are preferred; you can pay them little or nothing at all! Exploitation of young workers for “experience” and “college credit” is standard practice in academia and industry, after all.)

Bruno shows them a secret passage, which they conclude the thief used to get away. The police, who find them there, reach the same conclusion; the inspector says the government has ordered her to tolerate the Hardys, but the next time she finds them meddling, she will arrest them.

Frank and Joe can’t let things go, of course, so they take time off their unpaid jobs and dive into the Reprobate Roll Call! (Also, I am not recapping the boring investigation part of the book. Literally, the most memorable part was that Francesca has a horse: Her name was Lola; she was a show horse.)

• Francesca Ruffino. Francesca likes to flirt with Frank, even in front of her boyfriend. When she takes the Hardys riding, their horses are spooked by a gunshot and collide. (Both boys are thrown, but Francesca saves the unconscious Frank.) Joe calls her a “mixed-up chick” (72) because she baits her boyfriend by batting her eyes at Frank.
  
  
• Count Vincenzo Ruffino. The count is having trouble finding the money to keep up his old castle, and selling the jewelry would raise considerable cash. His father was a Fascist under Mussolini, and the count keeps his father’s military gear — including a rifle the same caliber as the one that spooks Frank and Joe’s horses — in a secret room. On the other hand, he’s a non-entity, and I don’t care about him.
  
  
• Vito, Francesca’s boyfriend. He’s obviously jealous of Frank, and he might not like Americans, but that has nothing to do with stealing antiquities. He was in the area when Frank and Joe’s horses were spooked. He also insults Frank’s face — to his face — with Frank being too gutless to respond with a toothless insult.
  
  
• Antonio Cafaggio, the count’s friend. Cafaggio runs a shop in Florence, and Francesca is sure he’s taking advantage of her father, who sold Cafaggio a family heirloom too cheaply for Francesca’s liking. But they find nothing incriminating in Cafaggio’s castle warehouse, and Cafaggio does nothing nefarious when he catches the Hardys, Cosimo, and Francesca trespassing in the warehouse, turning them over to the count instead.
  
  
• Bruno. He keeps finding secret passages around the count’s estate, he served time in jail (for embezzlement), and he makes a joke about killing the Hardys to keep them quiet. (Frank and Joe claim to understand that it’s a joke, but they note the “humor has an edge” [74].) Bruno also leads the boys to the count’s father’s rifle, which Bruno may have used and / or planted.
  
  
• Phillip Speck, a fence. According to Bruno, he buys stolen antiquities. When Frank and Joe go undercover as buyers, Cafaggio’s assistant, Pino, enters the store and reveals their identities. Speck tries to lead them at gunpoint to Pino’s van, but the Hardys make a break for it and elude both, shaking Pino during a foot chase through Florentine tourist sites. (Both Speck and Pino know where the Hardys sleep, so I’m not sure what good escaping momentarily does.) Pino is captured by police for trespassing, and Speck claims he wasn’t involved with the jewels — but Speck says the count is deep in hock with a loan shark, so maybe the Hardys should look at him?

After Frank and Joe elude Pina, a car tries to run the Hardys’ Vespas off a cliff. A little later, someone tosses a smoke bomb into their sleeping quarters to scare them off, which makes no sense — if guns and an attempt at vehicular homicide isn’t scary enough, then a smoke bomb would be pretty weak tea. The sprinklers do ruin the boys’ clothes, though, so that’s a victory for the criminals, one as important as any the criminals usually get.

Inspector Barducci is unimpressed by this sequence of events, explaining it all away. But she does extend her warning, giving the boys one more chance. If that’s the way you discipline criminals, inspector, no wonder Italy has a reputation for lax law enforcement. Later, when Frank and Joe try to tell her Vito’s car looks like the one that ran them off the road, Barducci tells them to buzz off, then arrests Bruno.

That night, the dig is robbed again. The Hardys and Cosimo catch Francesca wandering around; they force her to admit Speck and Vito are the masterminds behind the thefts. They also make her wear Joe’s bugging device, which is classic crime drama stuff. There’s a lot of scrambling, Frank says “there’s no time” to call the police (130), and the Hardys rush off, putting a young woman’s life at risk for their pride, I think, more than to find stolen antiquities.

The stakes increase when Speck and his men stuff Francesca and Vito in the trunk of their limo and drive off. When Frank and Joe run to get the cops — the same cops Cosimo stayed behind to call — they are caught by Speck’s men. It was a trap, you see. Francesca ratted them out with a note slipped to the villains, and Speck and Vito — actually a con man named Claudio — played it perfectly. Stupid Hardys! That’s what you get for not actually planning!

However, Speck and Claudio make the classic blunder: Getting involved in a land war in Asia. No, wait, that’s not it. They taunt Francesca, demeaning her intelligence, telling her she’ll never be able to go home again, and laughing at her falling for Claudio so easily, more easily than they had hoped: “You plant seeds, and some turn into beautiful flowers. I never thought this one would be so easy to pick,” Speck says (136).

Speck, Claudio, and their thugs take Frank, Joe, and Francesca into the woods to kill them, but Speck abandons his co-conspirators with the goods. Claudio turns on the thugs, leaving them as well as the Hardys tied up in the wilderness. But Claudio inexplicably spares their lives. Another classic blunder! Remember the classic hiking maxim: Take no chances; leave no witnesses. Or something like that.

Frank and Joe round up the thugs, and despite their near escape, the Hardys are not too harried to lecture a somewhat contrite Francesca. The police quickly sort out who’s who and who deserves prison; Speck is quickly arrested off-page by the police, and the artifacts are recovered, delivered to the Hardys by an officer who thinks the jewelry is too ugly to steal. (Claudio gets away. A loose end!) Bruno is presumably released, although maybe not — maybe he’s the Monster of Florence. And no one pays Frank and Joe anything!

The Rocky Road to Revenge (#151)

My first disappointment with The Rocky Road to Revenge is that it contains no revenge. I admit: The title is a good one, but it doesn’t fit the story. The only attempt “revenge” in the story is a botched extortion scheme that ends up with the blackmailer abducted and nearly murdered.

The second disappointment is that Rocky Road is a clear attempt to cash in on the X-Files craze in the late ‘90s, yet nothing about the title or front cover gives any indication of that. It’s a waste, even if the back cover copy does try to get the UFO angle in the book across … although even the back cover botches the details, as the second paragraph starts, “It begins with a strange green light in the sky.” No, the book clearly says it’s an orange light: “The color reminded Joe of a Halloween pumpkin” (7).

The mystery involves abductions in Colorado, where Frank and Joe are spending part of the summer with a classmate, Terry Taylor, who is working at a resort. (I don’t think many parents who would allow their teenage sons to visit a classmate of the opposite sex more than halfway across the country without adult supervision, but we know Laura and Fenton trust / have abandoned all responsibility for Frank and Joe.) Rocky Road pushes the theory that the victims were taken by aliens, linking the disappearances with the bright orange light seen in the Colorado skies during the first chapter.

Rocky Road hits most of the highlights of UFOs and UFO abduction that any X-Files fan would know: electrical failures, lost time and fuzzy memories of the abduction, abandoned vehicles on deserted roads, bright lights. Frank and Joe debate the alien-abduction theory, with lunkhead Joe pushing the idea, and Frank batting it aside. Disappointingly, the experts they talk to don’t hit some of the points real experts on UFOlogy would; Rocky Road doesn’t mention the “Wow!” signal when discussing evidence of alien life gathered by radio telescopes, no one mentions the words “panspermia” or “Fermi paradox” (although Joe describes both ideas to bolster his claims), and the word “probe” is never once mentioned in relation to alien abductions.

The final disappointment is that Rocky Road plays the alien angle too straight. This is a Hardy Boys book, not a serious novel, and no one should expect a Hardy Boys book to be rooted in strict reality. I wanted a winking acknowledgement that the orange light or the mysterious night hobo who always wore sunglasses had something alien about them; I wanted Alex Trebek as a man in black. Instead, Rocky Road drops both the light and drifter, referencing the light on the final page in the same way the original Disappearing Floor (#19) picked up the mystery of its beginning pages, ending with the boys promising to find Harry Tanwick.

*****

After the orange light in the sky gets the attention of the Hardys, Terry, and everyone else at the Silver Crest resort and the nearby town of Parnassa, Colo., the Silver Crest’s owner, Clay Robinson, disappears, his jeep abandoned on the side of a lonely road. Local UFOlogist (and former SETI scientist) Alistair Sykes takes down eyewitness accounts of the lights, exposits the basics of UFOlogy to the Hardys, and plays up Robinson’s disappearance as a possible alien abduction to the local press (such as it is). Soon after, though, Sykes vanishes as well, and that means it’s time for a Reprobate Roll Call:

1. Myra Hart and Bev Kominski, two former employees of Silver Crest and “drifters” (12). Robinson fired them for stealing from his office, and the two bear a grudge against him (and Terry, who reported seeing them exit Robinson’s office at the time of the theft). After denying the theft through most of the book, Myra and Beverly eventually claim they were only getting compensation for overtime Robinson declined to pay them. They also have no regard for anyone’s personal safety; they puncture a raft so that it will cause problems in the middle of the rapids, and while riding bicycles, they swing wide on a blind curve, causing Frank to either plow into them or drive off the cliff. (He uses his amazing driving ability to put Robinson’s jeep into a controlled sideways skid instead.) Myra also strands Joe and Terry on a ski lift for a while.
   
   
2. Max Jagowitz, general store owner and local crank. Jagowitz is opposed to Robinson’s plan to create a ski resort called the Golden Dream. As a member of the local council, he’s steamed that Robinson managed to get the votes for the approval of the Golden Dream despite his opposition. (He essentially accuses those who voted for Robinson’s development of corruption. Democracy!) Jagowitz lies about his family history, claiming they emigrated to America in 1889 from Yugoslavia, even though Yugoslavia didn’t exist until the Treaty of Versailles, thirty years later, and didn’t exist when the book was written either. He also keeps accusing Joe of stealing a bag of potato chips, although to be fair, Joe should have waited Jagowitz to ring up his purchase rather than just dropping a couple of quarters on the counter.
   
   
3. Clay Robinson. Clay’s a genial fellow, and Stella, his dog, loves him, but he’s ruffled a few feathers getting the Golden Dream project approved. Sykes doesn’t like him either, making cryptic comments about Robinson stealing moonstones. Also, Robinson tells the Hardys, “When Clay Robinson gets it into his head to do something, by golly, he does it. Always remember that, boys. Stick to your guns, no matter what” (6). Frank says it’s good advice, and I know it sounds that way in a “never give up on your dreams” sense, but taken to its extremes, it becomes delusional or psychopathic. Sure, he disappears early in the book, but he could be staging his abduction for nefarious purposes.
   
   
4. Alistair Sykes, a scientist / UFOlogist. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence let him go after their funding was cut — according to him — and now he’s working from his home, with a radio telescope and equipment he paid for himself. He too has an (unspecified) grudge against Robinson, so perhaps he abducted a man he doesn’t like to play up the alien-abduction angle and even used his own abduction to drum up publicity and the funding he needs for his work.
   
   
5. Aliens! No, not really — but what’s up with that weird guy who keeps wandering around at night in sunglasses?

After Robinson disappears, Frank and Joe uncharacteristically agree to call the cops, but Sgt. Bunt and his team inspire no confidence. Terry asks the Hardys to investigate, even though she claims she’s not supposed to know they’re detectives. “Word gets around school,” she says, and the narration claims, “They tried to keep it quiet” (32). This is in contrast to The Ice-Cold Case (#148), just three books before, when even a classmate’s father knows they’re detectives.

(Speaking of uncharacteristic, Frank is the B&E King this book rather than Joe; Frank uses his lockpicks to break into a couple of places, setting off the burglar alarm in one location. Also uncharacteristic: When their raft is sabotaged, Frank gets dumped into the water, which causes Joe to pity him: “It could have happened to anyone” [30], which is the Hardys’ version of “Don’t worry: It happens to all guys.” Perhaps he should pity Frank — he and Joe were outstanding white-water rafters in The Roaring River Mystery (#80], so falling out of a raft is a huge step down for him.)

They visit with Sykes and learn that despite all his fancy equipment and learning, he’s decided that an invented language, known only by him, is the best way to communicate with aliens, and he almost concludes a powerful Mexican radio station playing salsa music is an alien signal. Later, after a possibly alien-caused electrical outage at the Silver Crest, he disappears, with only an open window to suggest where he went.

Not uncharacteristic is Joe’s ability to put himself in danger. Joe and Terry visit Moondance Peak to sightsee and give themselves something to do while Terry exposits to Joe about the area and Robinson. (There’s no romance here, no, no! Joe has no hormones — or at least not the ones that would cause a teenage boy to react when alone with a female classmate in a beautiful setting.) While Joe and Terry are on the way down, Myra, the ski-lift operator, shuts the lift down; Joe tries to climb down a nearby pole but nearly falls to his death instead. The lift starts up again soon after. This almost exactly like what happened in Carnival of Crime (#122), when Joe almost falls to his death getting out of his gondola on a stalled Ferris wheel to help a kid who doesn’t actually need his help.

Because of his belief that the government is concealing proof of aliens, Joe cashes in some of Fenton’s chips with his friend, General Radman. Radman sets up a meeting with General Webster at NORAD, who essentially tells the boys to stop grasping at straws and act like rational adults rather than conspiracy freaks. Joe is more or less satisfied, and we all have to agree as taxpayers that this hour-long conference, soothing the paranoia of a teenage boy, is a great use of a military officer’s time and expertise.

On their way back to Silver Crest, Frank is forced to stop on a lonely road by a bright light. After a “quick jab of pain” (107), Frank loses consciousness; when he awakens, Joe is missing, and he claims something had hit him over the head. (Nothing hit him in the head; he was jabbed with a knockout drug.) Frank and Terry immediately confront Myra and Bev; Frank thinks they are “downright mean and capable of just about anything” (113), and I can’t decide if that’s a damning statement from Frank (he’s seen a lot of crimes) or if Frank’s imagination is so limited he can’t think of anything truly awful. Terry bluffs and gets Myra and Bev to admit they stole a moonstone necklace from Robinson’s safe.

Then Joe shows up on a bicycle after Bev and Myra slip away from the interrogation and, without consulting his brother, puts Bev in a headlock. You know, as one does. It’s not like he has any reason to suspect the ladies. He woke up in a cow pasture with Robinson, then ran into Frank and Terry. He only beat up on a woman because it looked like she and her friend were fleeing, and if that’s not an allegory for modern police practices, I don’t know what is.

Neither Joe nor Robinson remembers anything helpful. Despite the lateness of the hour, Robinson goes to complete the task his kidnapping prevented him from completing days before: talking to his lawyer. That’s a good idea, because Frank — after a visit to Jagowitz — works out that Robinson is behind everything. When Sykes saw Bev wearing a moonstone necklace that had been stolen from his mother decades before, Sykes realized Robinson had been the thief and tried to blackmail him. Robinson decided not to take extortion lying down, staging his own kidnapping before abducting Sykes (and later Joe).

I must admit: I very much admire how Frank figures out the motive, working through an A.B.C. Murders setup. At first, he conjectures Robinson was the true target, and Sykes and Joe were taken to muddy the waters. When Joe and Robinson turn up, he switches gears — Sykes was the real target, and Robinson and Joe were kidnapped to obscure the real motive. Frank shows he’s the intelligent one, for once, rather than Dixon just telling us.

The Hardys track Robinson and his dog, Stella, to a mine — Frank finds the hidden door to the abandoned mine after he “ran his flashlight over the mountain” (134), which … wait, the entire mountain? — and after leaving Stella outside, they find Robinson about to blow up the mine to kill Sykes. Frank tries to convince Robinson he’s not a killer, but Robinson reminds Frank of the advice he gave Frank at the beginning of the book: “I said once you’ve got it into your head to do something, you stick to your guns” (145). Fortunately, Stella wanders into the mine — Joe didn’t actually tie her up or put her in their vehicle or anything — and Robinson can’t bring himself to harm his dog. He’s put in jail for his stupid, stupid crimes.

Trial and Terror (#147)

Trial and Terror is an awful title. First, there’s no real terror in this book. Secondly, Cliché-Bot’s brother, Mystery Cliché-Bot, suggested “Trial and Terror” for every single Simon & Simon and Murder, She Wrote episode in the ‘80s, and it’s still bitter about every rejection. I mean, I can see why Pocket Books gave in on this one — half of all robot uprisings start when Mystery Cliché-Bot gets frustrated and starts trying to kill humans — but that doesn’t make it less of an awful title.

Trial and Terror is set during Christmas break, that most terrible time of the year; for the Hardy Boys, Christmas means crime. (That would have been a better cover tagline — not a good one, but still better than what the book ended up with.) Trial and Terror begins with Frank touring New York’s criminal courts for a civics class, with Joe tagging along because, well, it’s not like he’s got any ideas about what to do with himself. The idea that Frank needs to learn how the justice system works is offensive on many levels: after 147 books, we know the Hardys are justice, Fenton must have drilled the legal system’s basics into his boys, and Frank should have testified in dozens of trials.

(Later in the book, Frank has to explain to Joe what Sing Sing is, which is so wrong — Frank and Joe have probably sent dozens of men there. The brothers should be getting fan mail from Ossining on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gertrude even had a penpal there!)

I mean, I get it: This Dixon portrays the Hardy brothers as beginners to the justice system to make the writer’s exposition less awkward. I understand. But everyone in the Hardys’ orbit, from their closest friends to their high-school principal and part-time employers, should at least have testified in a trial and probably should have been involved enough to want to watch one from beginning to end.

But I shouldn’t criticize the book too harshly. Trial and Terror has some ambitions past showing school-age kids the rough workings of justice in America, and it needs all its subtlety for that. Because what Trial and Terror wants to show readers is what happens when the justice system has something rotten inside it; can justice be found then?

Nick Rodriguez is accused of the attempted murder of his girlfriend, soap ingénue Karen Lee, and Frank and Joe just wander into his trial. (It’s hard to believe there would be any open seats for random lookie-loos, but I suppose we must suspend our disbelief somewhere.) Joe deals with the case entirely on a surface level; seeing the nattily groomed defendant, he says Nick “doesn’t look like a murderer” (2), but after the prosecution’s first witness, he’s sure Nick did it. (Although, as Sideshow Bob reminds us, attempted murder is barely a crime.)

Frank isn’t so sure, and to make sure Nick gets a robust defense, he offers the brothers’ services (for free!) to Nick’s twin sister, Nellie, and Nick’s defense attorney. Nellie says she has “nothing to lose” (16), but that’s not true: If the Hardys destroy or confuse forensic evidence, it could hamper Nick’s defense or appeals, and if the Hardys harass witnesses or commit crimes in their investigations, the judge could censor the defense, putting them in a hole. Myers, the defense attorney, accepts them on the strength of their first day’s work, but he doesn’t bother to ask for references. Perhaps he’s not the sharpest lawyer; his entire defense of Nick includes only character witnesses, which, uh, isn’t the strongest of evidence.

Frank realizes that finding another suspect would be the best way to inspire reasonable doubt in the jury — although Frank, expert in civics, thinks the threshold is “some doubt” (18). So he and Joe rustle up a Reprobate Roll Call!

• Nick himself. Although it would be unexpected if the Hardys’ client were guilty — it blew my juvenile mind when Frank and Joe’s client was the guilty one in The Masked Monkey (#51) — Nick is not above reproach. After Karen breaks off their engagement and relationship, he can’t let it go; he persists in trying to re-establish their relationship for months afterwards. After he confesses his continued love of Karen to the Hardys with a flourish of fist pounding, Joe (again) thinks Nick is guilty, and the prosecutor forces Nellie to admit that a month before the attempted murder, Nick said to Karen, “Sometimes you make me so mad I want to kill you” (76).
  
  
• Alex Steel, the super in Karen Lee’s building and owner of an awesome name. Frank and Joe suspect he might have attacked Lee on behalf of the building’s owner, who is trying to get elderly residents of the building’s rent-controlled apartments to leave so he can renovate and charge more for the apartments. Karen, who used to work in the prosecutor’s office, organized the resistance to the owner’s tactics. Also, Steel is an unpublished writer who writes murder mysteries, and his bloody titles make the stars of Trial and Terror suspicious. Fortunately, Frank and Joe don’t try anything so stupid as to try to find scenes similar to Karen’s attack in Steel’s writings.
  
  
• Fred Garfein, the owner of Karen’s building. If he didn’t get Alex to attack Karen, he could have hired someone else. He’s rich, and he doesn’t believe in rent control. It’s unfair to building owners! He’s obviously not a supporter of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.
  
  
• John Q., an obsessed fan of Karen’s. He sends her fan mail that insists they are “fated to be together” (46), he talks to his TV when Karen is onscreen as if she can hear him, and he attends the trial incognito. At least he doesn’t call himself her number one fan.
  
  
• “Lunatic” Lucy Velloni, a reporter who has an exclusive in with Karen. Her tabloid colleagues denigrate her, which Velloni believes is because she doesn’t restrict herself to traditionally feminine topics. (Given that her “crazy” actions tend to be non-feminine, action-junkie pursuits like running into a burning building and jockeying her car through New York traffic like a taxi driver, I’d say she has a point.) After she attempts to save a girl from that burning building, Frank and Joe mostly drop her as a suspect — even though Frank and Joe have to complete the rescue, and she did attempt to murder Frank by pushing him off the top of a building. (She later protests she didn’t realize the edge of the building was there.)
  
  
• Mystery suspect!

The first helpful item that Frank and Joe discover is that prosecutor Patricia Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence — evidence uncovered by the police or prosecution that might tend to exonerate the defendant — from the defense. In this case, it’s that Karen had a key to Nick’s apartment with Nick’s name on it, which disappeared around the time of the attack. This might have allowed another person to plant evidence in Nick’s apartment. (Although this is the Hardy Boys universe, and a key isn’t necessary; lockpicking isn’t an uncommon skill.) Trial and Terror tries to sell the idea that this kind of misconduct could get a prosecutor imprisoned, but that’s extremely unlikely, even for a prosecutor who, like Daggett, makes a habit of withholding exculpatory evidence.

Just like in the last book I recapped, Frank and Joe get a lot of mileage out the excuse that they’re working on a school assignment; they even use that excuse to see busy developer Fred Garfein. (He doesn’t really listen to them, to be fair.) Other investigative tactics used include Joe picking the lock on a suspect’s apartment to get access while he’s gone (illegal methods that would be a good reason why the defense might not want to hire the brothers) and Frank using Fenton’s name to get some carpet fibers tested by the police. (The evidence room officer admits Fenton got him out of some “jams” (83) — and we know what that means. *Wiiiiiiink*.)

Since this is Christmas time, Frank stops into a New York jewelry store and purchases a cheap enamel ring with a butterfly on it for Callie. Joe doesn’t make a purchase; ostensibly, he has already acquired a present for Iola, as he says, “If you mess up with a girlfriend's present, it’s not a pretty sight” (62).

(Joe, if Iola is violent around you, it’s not your fault — even if she says you’re making her do it. Just … reach out and get help, man. This is not a joke.)

While rifling through Karen’s letters, the brothers come across a letter from an inmate at Sing Sing. The brothers head upstate and learn that Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence in his case, and Karen overheard an argument about that between Daggett and an investigator. (The inmate wanted Karen’s help in his plea to Daggett’s boss — a less confrontational way of attempting to get justice than the traditional lawsuit / appeal, and one that is not likely to succeed. But he might as well try all avenues, I suppose.) From this bit of evidence, Frank and Joe decide Daggett is guilty of the attempted murder of Karen. Daggett sends an arrested criminal to threaten the boys, promising him leniency for thuggery against the brothers, but it backfires, because no one can intimidate the Hardys. In a bit of courtroom drama, Frank tries to produce a Perry Mason moment from the witness box, claiming that an unidentified piece of evidence is part of Daggett’s crappy enamel ring — just like the one that Frank bought Callie! — which broke during Daggett’s attack.

The gallery goes wild. The judge dismisses the case, which would be unusual if this were the real world, and Nick is freed to keep foisting his emotional neediness upon Karen; Karen apologizes for thinking this guy who just couldn’t let their relationship go might have attacked her. Apologizes! And then she’s forced to celebrate with Nick, Nellie, and their lawyer! Poor Karen.

Now, there are a few problems with the justice system that this Dixon glosses over. The prosecutor introduces information that an objection overrules; the jury is supposed to forget the information, but that’s impossible for a human to do. Also, a crime-lab technician identifies the hairs found in a ski mask found Nick’s apartment and testifies they are Nick’s; although he initially prefaces his testimony with “in my opinion,” he later says hair samples “can be matched with almost as much accuracy as fingerprints” (10) and that the odds that the samples aren’t Nick’s are “a million to one” (11). Although DNA can be found in some hair samples, that’s not what the lab technician is saying; he’s saying when he looks at the hair in a microscope, he can visually compare and match them with precision accuracy, and that’s just not true. (To be fair to these fictional lawyers and the fictional lab tech, that sort of forensic overstatement goes on all the time in courtrooms, and it passes unchallenged.)

The important thing, in the end, is that Joe realizes how important it is that everyone gets “the best possible defense” (118). Why is this? Because at different points during their investigation, Joe thought every suspect was guilty, and their investigation proved not everyone wanted to kill Karen Lee.

But remember: In Joe’s eyes, they are all guilty of something. We are all guilty in his eyes. Someday, Joe won’t be satisfied with punishing the guilty in just Bayport. He will convince more and more citizens to outsource the dispensing of justice to him, until the entire country — the entire world — will be forced to grovel and pray for a merciful Joe.

Carnival of Crime (#122)

So, a carnival of crime, you say …

The Hardys have danced all around the entertainment-industrial complex, but I don’t think they’ve investigated a carnival before. Automobile stunt shows in Fear on Wheels (#108), the circus in Three-Ring Terror (#111), a demolition derby in The Demolition Mission (#112), an amusement park in Danger in the Fourth Dimension (#118), and a Renaissance faire in Crusade of the Flaming Sword (#131), but not a carnival. Admittedly, the Hardys had worked for a carnival in the original Clue of the Broken Blade (#21), and Chet worked for Solo’s Super Carnival in The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47), but no Dixon working on the digests remembers those hardback books. Also, there’s a winter festival in The Cold Cash Caper (#136), but that’s later in the series, and a winter festival has a whole different set of crimesolving issues.

You might not be able to guess the plot of Carnival of Crime from the title alone. The name suggests the carnival is propagating the crime, like Marvel’s Circus of Crime. (A Ringmaster with a hypnotic top hat would be completely optional.) Instead, it’s Hardy Boys Digest stock plot 1b, in which a business is in trouble because of “accidents” that look like sabotage but might not be (but totally are, because this is a Hardy Boys story). Once you know that, the story pretty much tells itself: a standard Reprobate Roll Call (I’ll get to that later), a crooked carnival game, and set pieces in the Tunnel of Love, Fun House, and Mirror Maze. You’re smart; you could’ve thought of this, although you might have had the sabotaged ride be the more exciting roller coaster rather than the Ferris wheel, and you might have laughed at your editor when he suggested a dangerous bumper car attack instead of dutifully trying to put menace into the least menacing attraction at a carnival. (I mean, even the “Guess Your Weight” guy can have an element of fat shaming to his attraction.) But that’s you; you’re principled, and you know what works.

I mean, a carny yells, “Hey, Rube,” at one point to set other carnies against the Hardys. It’s that sort of by-the-numbers book. I’m not saying you could’ve done better; I don’t know the quality of your prose and transitions. But with a professional editor, I’m not going to say you’d do worse.

So, as to the story itself: After Frank and Joe “just finished that business of the mine fires over in Pennsylvania” (35), the operator of Fairs to Go, Susan Bowman, calls the younger Hardys to investigate problems at the carnival, having heard of the Hardys through an unnamed friend. This “friend,” of course, is probably someone on the carny circuit who passes around the names of people who work for free. Fairs to Go is hemorrhaging money and Susan is a teenager who just took over the carnival because of her father’s heart attack, so it’s not like she has many options to combat the alleged sabotage. The Hardys do work for free, but they don’t bother to return Susan’s call; instead, without knowing who Susan is or what she does, they randomly run into Susan when they attend the Bayport Fair, which Fairs to Go is working.

Despite their being the same ages, Susan has to ignore Joe’s skepticism that she’s responsible enough for the job; Joe is unacquainted with responsibility, as being a teen detective is a pastime that carries no responsibility, not even the responsibility to not cause harm to your client’s interests or to take normal efforts to preserve your own life. But that seems like a small price for Susan to pay. In Joe’s defense, Susan claims to be “carny born and bred” (29), an unfortunate turn of phrase which calls to mind unsavory and probably unethical breeding practices involving sideshow performers, and she completely botches any chance Frank and Joe have to keep up their cover identities. Not that their cover identities — students writing a term paper about the carnival business, in this case — would ever fool anyone, let alone a group as legendarily suspicious of outsiders as carnies, but there are forms to be observed, you know? Just like we all pretend corporations are responsible citizens and ignore their rapacious need for profit — until we’re absolutely forced to stop ignoring it.

So who is sabotaging Fairs to Go? Here’s the Reprobate Roll Call:

• Ricky Delgado, Susan’s stepbrother. A business school dropout, Ricky thinks he should be running Fairs to Go. He has two goons, Boomer and Kenny. (I had to look up Kenny’s name because I keep wanting to call him “Esiason.”) Ricky and his goons confront Frank and Joe a time or two; during one confrontation, Joe gets offended when Ricky calls them “boy detectives” (45), a totally accurate description of the Hardy boys, and “turkeys” (67). Later, Frank discovers Ricky is shaking down the booth operators, building a “war chest” that will allow him to revitalize the carnival after he ousts his stepsister in a putsch. (He doesn’t say he plans to have Susan assassinated in her Mexico City exile, but honestly, he doesn’t have to: That’s implied. History has shown us that’s the inevitable course of carnival power struggles. Or is it Communist power struggles? I get confused sometimes. The one with more clowns.)
  
  
• Raoul Duchemin, former Fairs to Go strongman. Injuries have reduced Raoul to a general laborer, but Raoul is unhappy because carnival show business is the only business he knows. He’s also a moron, but there’s no evidence that that makes him unhappy. He has a “crush” (33) on Althea, the Ferris wheel operator, and he glowers at any man who looks twice at her. That was probably supposed to be a menacing (to the Hardys) plot point in 1993, when Carnival was published, but a quarter century has made his attempts to control the romantic life of a woman who has no interest in him into something incredibly creepy.
  
  
• Cecil Farkas, who runs the shooting-gallery game. Frank and Joe expose his rigged game almost as soon as they enter the carnival — he feeds chipped BBs into the rifle, making it almost impossible to hit the target, so I learned something about gaffed games — and of course he’s going to hold a grudge after Susan gives him his walking papers.
  
  
• The four Fratelli Brothers, a clown family. They are almost always in character, which means “amusing” disinterested people who just wish they’d go away. I don’t think I need to say more than that, really.
  
  
• Mystery culprit.

Since Ricky is too obvious a villain, you will be unsurprised to learn that “mystery culprit” is the winner of the Hardy Detecting Sweepstakes. (For those of you who were wagering, Mystery Culprit pays $25 to win, $10 to show, $3 to place.) This Dixon does give the mystery a twist by having Ricky’s goons betray him to work with Morris Tuttle, Susan’s father's partner / business manager. Tuttle had been cooking the books for years, and to conceal his crime, he was sabotaging the business and siphoning money from Fairs to Go to pressure Susan into selling her family’s interest. He also put a hose through his office window to destroy the business’s computer and claimed he had no backups. (Of course he had backups; of course the boys find the “diskettes,” which is perhaps the most ‘90s thing about this book.)

Given that the villain is a middle-aged guy who projects an aura of benign concern throughout, how is the menace delivered in Carnival? Joe avoids the deadly threat of the aforementioned bumper car attack. When the Ferris wheel is stopped, Joe momentarily slips out of his gondola to try to prevent a young boy, whose lap bar didn’t lock, from winning a Darwin Award, but he fails at the rescue attempt, never reaching the child, and has to leap back in his own gondola. (The kid didn't really need rescuing, so the three-page “action” sequence was pointless.) One of Ricky’s goons attacks Frank in the Fun House; Frank defends himself, but he doesn’t use his “well-honed martial arts instincts” (143) until they’re needed to capture the culprits at the end of the book. Boomer shoots a Roman candle in the Tunnel of Love at Frank and Althea —

No, it’s not like that. You know it’s not like that. Frank would never canoodle with a girl other than Callie. Althea suggested the Tunnel of Love as a place to privately discuss Ricky’s perfidy. (The attack works, frightening her into silence.) However, Joe would totally take a girl other than Iola into the Tunnel of Love, and Iola’s reaction would have given the book a believably terrifying element.

In the final move by the villains, Joe gets sapped while investigating Kenny and Boomer’s trailer. (Joe’s rationale for the B&E? “Uninvited visits always pay off,” he thinks as he picks their lock [106].) The villains dump him in the Mirror Maze with an unconscious Ricky, then set the maze is set on fire. It’s not a bad plan, as far as it goes; Frank and Joe were suspicious of Ricky, and the bound Joe next to Ricky might have given investigators the idea that Ricky had abducted Joe and both had been the victim of an accident. I don’t think any real investigator would believe that — it’s too convenient — but this is Bayport. I can’t imagine the Bayport Police Department has a great reputation, given how much of its work it outsources to teenage boys.

On the other hand, angering the Great and Powerful Fenton Hardy by harming / killing one of his sons seems less like tempting fate and more like demanding one’s own destruction from an angry and powerful god.

*****

Usually, this is where I’d end this post, but this Dixon makes a major misstep I have to talk about.

When you’re dealing with circuses and carnivals, you have clowns. It’s difficult get rid of them, and no matter how much you spray or put out traps, the best you’re likely to do is drive them into a neighbor’s property until that neighbor drives them back. But given the near-mandated presence of clowns, a writer should use creepy clowns, a reliable threat that readers and protagonists will respond to. Even though this Dixon doesn’t want to lean into the shifty reputation many carnies have — Susan calls them “friendly, honest people,” even though carnivals “attract a few crooks” (30) — you can’t cover clowns’ inherent creepiness, no matter how much clown white you use. Early in the book, Dixon uses that creepiness as a plot point, when Joe sees a clown through the Hardys’ kitchen window: “a ghostly white face with exaggerated, brightly colored features. It’s huge red lips were fixed in a demonic grin. … a clown from a horror film” (35).

That’s a solid hook, and it would be genuinely frightening if that clown kept popping up, leering at the boys and doing something violent or frightening. In this case, the clown lures Joe into an IED: a firework under a metal can, triggered by a tripwire. No one is hurt, and the bomb — powerful enough to toss Joe “into the air like a dead leaf” — is accompanied by a threatening note with a pun. Con Riley and the police show up, but they cede their authority to Frank and Joe. The boys, showing their usual legal acumen, hold on to the evidence (for no real reason) and decline to press charges (because vigilante justice is the best justice — who needs the authorities mucking things up?).

The horror clown plotline is mostly forgotten, though — Frank glimpses the clown later in the book, and Joe finds clown white in Boomer and Kenny’s trailer. Other than that, the brief promise of something genuinely frightening without being too kid-unfriendly is forgotten.