A Killing in the Market (Casefiles #18)

Plot: Aunt Gertrude’s new boyfriend is murdered, leaving Gertrude the prime suspect.

“Borrowing” from the past: This is not the first time this blog has seen Gertrude’s love life, as unpleasant as it might seem. In Past and Present Danger (#166), an old friend — reporter Clayton Silvers — mentions Gertrude was once engaged to a local business owner, who died before the wedding. (The engagement was first mentioned by Fenton in The Phantom Freighter #26.) In A Killing in the Market, Gertrude is romanced by investment banker Cyril Bayard (real name: Henry Simone). I don’t want to say anything about Gertrude, but a couple of men have already died to get out of relationships with her. If it happens again, it’s a pattern.

Killing mentions a few locations in Bayport, such as the Cliffside Heights neighborhood, Archer Street, Bay Road, and the Shore Inn, but none of them have appeared in the original canon. Nearby towns such as Bridgefield and Kirkland (destinations for trains from New York through Bayport) are also new, although Bridgeport and Bridgewater have popped up in the past.

Lives of the American privileged: As I mentioned in the review of Past and Present Danger, books that focus on Gertrude tend to shuffle Laura off the stage at an early spot. In Killing, Fenton takes Laura on a month-long vacation, and when Fenton returns to investigate Simone’s murder, she’s shuffled off to the neighbors’ house.

Good in a crisis: After Gertrude is arrested, Frank and Joe fall back on their all-purpose solution: investigation! A more practical course of action might be to a) call Fenton, who is on vacation with Laura, and b) to get a lawyer for Gertrude. The latter might be a result of the Hardys’ family prejudice toward lawyers, as Fenton doesn’t advise Gertrude to talk to a lawyer, even when she seems about to confess to murder.

But given how quickly Fenton gets results, you can only guess that Frank and Joe just wanted a rest from Gertrude — just a few moments of peace and quiet, and if she has to be incarcerated for them to get it, then by God, Gertrude’s getting prison time. One can see the direct link from this lack of human compassion to a relative in need to the boys’ insistence on investigating “their case,” in the face of nuclear annihilation, in The Pacific Conspiracy (Casefiles #78).

On the other hand, perhaps Joe just doesn’t give a damn. He says Gertrude’s too old for love — not to her face, of course, but to Frank. (Frank rightly calls him a “rotten nephew” a few pages later.) He runs down Cyril / Henry just because he’s an investment banker, since “the papers are full of stories about swindlers — guys who work for these big-and-mighty companies and steal clients’ money left and right!” Joe is right, but that’s hardly helpful, since Gertrude’s money is already gone. When Cyril / Henry’s house is ransacked and Cyril is gone, Joe says “maybe” he’s still alive.

Lying to the police, in this case, is considered a blessing: When asked about her last evening with Cyril / Henry by Officer Con Riley, Gertrude says, “We went for a long walk the night before last. Please, you’re not going to ask what we talked about, are you?” Because she’s not going to think up a lie quickly enough, since there was little talking during the activity “walk” is a euphemism for (Lothar of the Hill People knows the euphemism well, although Lothar was a couple of years after Killing was released).

Sentences that have never been seen in a Hardy Boys book before: “‘You’re awfully quiet, Aunt Gertrude,’ Frank finally said as they stopped for a traffic light.”

Is it weird that I find normal male / female interaction in a Hardy Boys book odd?: In Killing, there is a moment of genuine, indisputable romantic contact between a boy and a girl. It isn’t a playful peck, or some cheeky “reward” for lifesaving. Frank “wrapped his arms around [Callie] and touched his lips to hers.” The description lacks passion or artfulness, and the scene is interrupted by Joe, doing his little brother duty, honking the van’s horn and mocking his brother’s moment of intimacy.

You don’t measure up, Callie: Despite a male member of the Hardy family showing his approval for Callie by touching her, Gertrude pointedly asks Callie to stay in the van while the police question Gertrude about Henry’s murder because “it’s family business.” Well, it’s an investigation; of course that’s family business. I suppose dating Frank for 60 years isn’t enough to qualify Callie for membership in the Hardy clan, though. You’ll just have to wait for that ring, Callie! Of course, Callie’s waited so long even Miss Havisham would say, “Really, I think you’d better move on, dear.”

But still, she’s subject to the will and whims of the Hardy family. When Frank and Joe head to Henry’s funeral, Joe is afraid Callie will follow them; Frank says that won’t happen because he “had a long talk with her.” Of course; she wouldn’t dare disobey you, Frank.

Girls! If they’re not getting blown up, they’re bossing you around: After a day of investigation, Frank finds a message on his answering machine from Callie, who wants to know how their day went. Joe jokes, “So she can tell us how we could have done it better!” It seems an incredibly defensive thing for Joe to say; perhaps he misses having someone to share his adventures with.

Do you pay attention to where you live?: Greenwich Village reminds Frank of a “citified Bayport.” Really — a citified Bayport? The middle and upper-class nature of both make sense, but the Village has a bohemian, liberal, arty reputation, which Bayport does not. Bayport is the crime capital of the East Coast, and even its better-off part of the city is infested with criminals.

Opposite reactions: When Frank and Joe poke their nose into the murder investigation, two suspects have completely different reactions. Dodgy accountant Justin Spears hands over his clients’ confidential information with barely a demur, while swindling stockbroker Norman Fleckman offers them tobacco products, then tries to kill them. Fleckman also tries to go the bribery route before the murder attempt, dangling such well-known enticements as “jazzy clothes” and a “hot new car” in front of the boys. Joe claims he just “panicked,” but those are the sort of reactions one has to extreme intimidation, but it’s not like Frank and Joe are burly thugs waving guns and / or indictments around.

Premature exultation: While the boys are in New York, the boys use a ticker-tape parade for the World Series champs as cover for their getaway. However, no New York team won the 1988 World Series — in fact, neither New York team won the Series between 1986, when the Mets beat the Red Sox in seven, and 1996, when the Yankees took their first championship since 1978 (their longest drought since the team won its first World Series in 1923). In 1988, the Yankees finished fifth in a mediocre American League East, 3 ½ games behind the Red Sox; the Mets won the National League East, but lost in the playoffs to the eventual champions, Los Angeles, in seven games.

Always be prepared: When Gertrude is accused of using one of her knitting needles to kill her boyfriend, she protests, “Why would I bring a knitting needle on a walk?” Con Riley doesn’t answer, logically enough, that she always seems to have her knitting needles, even when she and the boys investigate Cyril’s ransacked house.

No wonder the boys have so little respect for civil rights: Fenton has no ideas what Constitutional protections offer people. When the Bayport police are exploring theories of the murder, Fenton protests that they must enter into the investigation assuming Gertrude was innocent until proven guilty. Well, no, Fenton; the police can formulate theories that lead them to believe a suspect is as guilty as sin. It’s the press, judges, and juries who must make that assumption. Riley is too polite to tell Fenton he’s an idiot.

That makes no sense: When Joe is firing up the van to pursue a suspect, Frank cautions Joe to drive more carefully: “A little less speed will get us there as fast.” I’m not sure what science classes Frank has taken, but evidently physics wasn’t one of them.

I do envy your skills, Joe: To foil the criminal, Joe makes a not-very-convincing attempt to switch briefcases that involves the cooperation of a random woman stopped on in a traffic jam. The trick works, and after the criminal is arrested, the woman slips Joe her business card, then gives him a wink and a smile. This is remarkable, as the woman is probably — given her business paraphernalia — at least five years older than Joe, who had involved her in a situation with a gun-wielding murderer who set fire to his own motorcycle to show how serious he was.

Opinions: A story about crooked investment bankers is even more relevant today than it was in 1988, and if anything, the story makes the cheats seem a little too innocent (except for the murder attempts). Yes, these guys are bilking people out of their money, but no one in this book is Bernie Madoff; additionally, nothing these people are doing is likely to bring around a worldwide financial crisis. It’s just mainstream financial malfeasance, and as a warning to the young that Wall Street is not to be trusted, Killing works well. One has to think the book was partly inspired by the Black Monday crash the year before (October 19, 1987).

This one would be a good mystery except for the people in it. There’s a murder, the cops reach the logical conclusion, and there is a point in the book, about two-thirds of the way through, when it’s obvious who the murderer is. But the characters … Joe is a massive jerk, the suspects are nervous and insane, going from 0 to murder in about ten seconds. The chief suspect burns his own motorcycle to destroy evidence, blames Frank and Joe, then when the police show up, he claims it was childish high spirits and declines to press charges. Insane.

But Gertrude is the biggest disappointment. Faced with the largest challenge she’s ever seen in a Hardy Boys book, she crumbles. That seems alien to those who have read the series from the beginning. Gertrude falling to pieces seems so out of character; she should be sniping at the police, sarcastic, giving them a hard time, and telling the boys to do something useful. Maybe she gets a little weepy once or twice; maybe not. I’m not inflexible. But Gertrude falls apart early and stays useless through the rest of the story; the only non-weepy acts she undertakes are lying to the police and acting guilty. The last time we see any spirit from Gertrude is when she’s angry with Henry for standing her up, and she tells Con Riley that if he’s alive, she’ll kill him. Con says she’s “upset and confused,” which is polite; we all know she’s just Gertrude, but unfortunately, she’s not the real Gertrude for long.

Grade: C-. Dixon probably just panicked.

The Pacific Conspiracy (Casefiles #78)

Plot: Skipping ahead to the third book in the Ring of Evil trilogy, Frank and Joe have infiltrated the Assassins, working within a terror cell to discover their evil plan.

“Borrowing” from the past: Not much here. The Hardys have fought a lot of different scary animals, but I have to admit, I’ve never seen a komodo dragon in one of the books before. Kudos, Franklin W. Dixon! Frank is also rescued by the most convenient snake bite ever, as the snake attacks the Assassin who is about to inform his superiors about Frank’s true identity. The snake isn’t identified — it has black and gray stripes — but it kills quickly. (Sort of like the Vietnamese Two-Step Viper, except quicker.)

Real places: The Assassins try to detonate their world-altering nuclear bomb — a real Bond-villain plot — on Mount Agung. Mt. Agung is a real volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali; it last erupted in the early ‘60s. The Mother Temple of Besakih, a Hindu temple, is located on the slopes of the mountain.

That’s one way to put it: The narration says, on page 2, that the Hardys have infiltrated the Assassin cell through a “remarkable series of events.” Although the narration eventually fills in readers, such as me, who skipped the second book, I think I would have left it at that — actually explaining things doesn’t help at all. I prefer to take it on faith that I would find the explanation preposterous rather than to find out that I’m right.

One of the more idiotic aspects of this infiltration is that Frank and Joe don’t even bother to come up with aliases. Now, Frank and Joe have clashed with the Assassins before; in the first book, Dead on Target, the Assassins were even hired to kill Frank and Joe. Not all Assassin operatives will likely have heard of that utter failure, but you have to imagine that Frank and Joe are fairly well known in certain circles. It’s eventually revealed that the Assassins are playing with Frank and Joe — that they’ve known the entire time that Hardy boys are, in fact, the Hardy Boys — but it doesn’t make Frank and Joe (or the Network) seem any smarter.

Using their superpower of stupidity: Even beyond the idiocy of using their real names, I have, in my notes, many notations of Frank and Joe’s (mostly Joe’s) stupidity. When Joe is pursuing one of the Assassins on Mt. Agung, the Assassin invites him to come, unarmed, to fight him at the top of a ladder. Of course, the assassin waits and stomps on Joe’s hands when he gets to the top. When Joe’s not-girlfriend Gina reappears, miraculously alive, in the middle of an armed standoff in an Assassin camp despite being “killed” in the previous book by Assassins, Joe allows her to disarm him easily before he can get suspicious. Frank knocks a gun away from an Assassin and suddenly thinks he’s evenly matched with the man; the Assassin immediately begins kicking his butt until Frank’s final punch wins the fight.

Perhaps with Joe this is a priority of brainpower. When he’s pulled out of a canal with concrete boots, his first comment (on the escape of the Assassin who put his feet in concrete and tossed him in the canal) is, “Good riddance. The guy was nothing but dead weight anyway.” Not a great pun, but it is impressive when you consider how close to death Joe had just been.

Hail Mary bomb: Young supergenius (and nuclear bomb builder) Dr. Krinski is photographed in a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt with the #12 on it. That’s probably a reference to quarterback Roger Staubach, who retired in 1979. However, since the Cowboys don’t retire numbers, it could refer to other, lesser players who have taken that number since.

The March of Technology: When Krinski says he needs to check some calculations for his project, Frank volunteers to help. When Krinski asks for his qualifications, Frank mentions some computer programs he’s worked with. Just out of curiosity, what programs, commercially available in 1993, would Frank have used and be useful for modeling dropping a nuclear bomb through lava or constructing a nuclear bomb? Perhaps more pressingly, why the hell would Frank have used them? Modeling the trajectories of bullets, perhaps? Or pieces of shrapnel? Other than extreme crime scene recreation, I have no idea.

Your case. Really: When the Network and the Gray Man sensibly try to send the Hardys home, Joe complains it’s their case. Never mind that competent agents don’t need a couple of teenagers mucking up their search for a nuclear bomb; it’s Frank and Joe’s case! And because it’s their book as well, they manage to slip their minders and return to the investigation. When they manage to pick up the trail of an Assassin agent, Frank declines to call the Network so they can investigate on their own. Hey, what’s a little nuclear annihilation compared to the glory of the Hardy Boys?

Do you really want an answer to that question?: When Frank and Joe find a dead body, a Network agent asks them, “You didn’t move the body, did you?” Joe indignantly responds, “What do you think we are? Amateurs?” Depends on the mystery, Joe — you usually do protest that you’re amateur detectives.

One MILLION dollars: When the Assassins threaten the world with their world-altering nuclear bombs, they make their ransom demands to the United Nations General Assembly. Because, yes, when you want quick action and results, the organization you go to is the UN General Assembly. They may have had better results by submitting their demands to the Girl Scout National Board of Directors — that cookie money does add up, I imagine.

There’s no racism like subtle racism: The Balinese lad who helps the Hardys (and saves the world by informing on them to the police) is named Haji. That sounds worse today than it did in 1993, given that “Hadji” is a derogatory term used for Iraqis by American soldiers during the Iraq War.

False dichotomy: When Frank is following Joe and Network agent Endang up Agung, he finds the motorbike they were riding. His immediate thought is either the pair were captured or killed. He fails to consider they may have abandoned the bike for noise or mechanical reasons or a dozen other reasons. And remember, Frank’s the smart one.

My girlfriend’s back: At the end of Pacific Conspiracy, Vanessa Bender wanders up to the Hardy home. I had no idea Joe was dating Vanessa at this point; I thought she was introduced later in the series. Joe’s behavior toward Gina and Endang gave me no indication he was going out with anyone.

Vanessa’s entrance line is, “Glad to see me?” Joe answers, “You bet.” I was almost waiting for him to ask, “You won’t blow up on me or get shot or get shot again, will you?” I like to imagine two different responses from Vanessa:

a) “No, I’ll be fine, but if I hear about you flirting with or kissing another girl again, even to save your life, I swear to God you’ll be dead.”

b) “I promise I won’t die. But some day the Casefiles are going to end, Joe, and then what will happen to me? It won’t be death, but I won’t even have generated the nostalgia that will bring Iola back to life, even in a limited capacity. In a way, that’s even worse — a kind of a half existence, not quite here but not quite gone either. Is that what you want for me, Joe?”

I find the former more realistic, but I’m affected more by the latter. I never completely adjusted to Vanessa, but I always found her role interesting in a sad sort of way — she’ll never be Iola, to Joe or the readers, and she’ll never get a chance to be anyone else. In this sense, Assassin cell leader Nwali has Joe pegged: “I do envy your skills with the ladies, Joseph. One girlfriend dies, and you find another.”

Opinions: The Pacific Conspiracy, I suppose, is like a Casefile forcibly mated with one of those late Grosset & Dunlap books, a world-trotting adventure where the world just could coincidentally end up getting exploded by a nuclear bomb. The too easily beaten Assassins and their Bond-villain antics are tiresome and predictable, and although I appreciate that the Assassins were more sadistically overconfident than incompetent, they should have known Frank and Joe’s success level and just poisoned them. I also believe Nwali should have had a better quirk than a fondness for Indonesian puppet theater, though I give a tip of the hat to Dr. Krinski having a komodo dragon for a pet. Again, kudos, Franklin W. Dixon!

It did amuse me, however, when Frank creates a panic using rubber monkey-fighting snakes to escape from a Monday-to-Friday plane. Samuel L. Jackson would be proud!

Grade: C-. I do envy your skills, Joe.

Tagged for Terror (Casefiles #76)

Plot: Frank and Joe head to Atlanta to find out why luggage is being stolen from Eddings Air flights.

“Borrowing” from the past: Fake jobs! The Hardys have a long and distinguished history of getting jobs for a week or less so they can investigate some sort of skullduggery. This must leave them with the most checkered resumes in the history of Western employment, but it does get results. In Tagged for Terror, the first book in the “Ring of Evil” trilogy, Frank and Joe work as baggage handlers for Eddings Air. To solve cases, Frank and Joe have also worked:

• As sailors on the Black Parrot (The Twisted Claw, #18)
• As a snake tender (Joe) and elephant feeder (Frank) in “Big Top” Hinchman’s circus (The Clue of the Broken Blade, #21)
• In a Hay River restaurant (The Viking Symbol Mystery< #42)
• In construction jobs on a Kentucky road project for Prito Construction (The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge , #45)
• For a builder, learning the signs that a building is unsafe (The Crimson Flame, #77)
• Moving scenery on a movie set (Cave In!, #78)
• As Dandy Duck (Joe) and Piggy Bank (Frank) at Fantasieland (Sky Sabotage, #79)
• As lumberjacks for the Peapack Lumber Company (The Demon’s Den, #82)

In addition, the boys washed dishes in return for a restaurant breakfast (What Happened at Midnight, #10), helped explore an underwater wreck and raised a sunken ship for Crux Salvage (The Secret Warning, #17), washed cars at the Highway Garage in Brockton (A Figure in Hiding, #16), worked as cowboys at the McVay Ranch (The Crimson Flame), were stationed in the Underwater and Grasses and Lillies sections of the State Experimental Farm (The Flickering Torch Mystery, #22), did chores for the Millwood Art School (The Haunted Fort, #44), and unloaded bricks for Prito Construction (The Outlaw’s Silver, #67).

Although he doesn’t step in behind the yoke, Frank mentions that he’s done some flying. His flying experience is chronicled in my post on Power Play (Casefiles #50).

Whee!: That is one boring cover — possibly the most boring of any book I’ve covered on this blog. There’s no danger, nothing interesting going on at all. It’s just Frank and Joe doing their fake job at Eddings Air. Not even Joe can convince himself it’s fun, even though he’s hanging off the side of the cart, getting ready to sidehack.

With Hank Forrester as “Ezra Collig”: The head of security for Eddings Air, Hank Forrester, is described as “a beefy, red-faced man in his fifties, with thinning salt and pepper hair.” He’s constantly denigrating Frank and Joe’s abilities and stealing their thunder. He reminds me of someone in these books, but I can’t remember who …

File under “good question”: Forrester may be a jerk, but he does have an interesting question: when Frank and Joe stand in as Fenton’s surrogates in investigating the missing baggage from the flights, he asks, “Private investigators? Where’s your license?” Usually, when they’re poking around on their own, it’s just a couple of kids being nosy — Encyclopedia Brown with higher stakes and a more literate audience. But on this case, they’re acting as Fenton’s surrogates, and presumably, neither Fenton’s time nor the boys’ is free.

There are all sorts of legal and liability issues to consider here; I mean, this isn’t the ‘60s, when you can send boys all over the country with minimal or no supervision. Life is more litigious and allegedly more dangerous (although I suspect the same number of childhood tragedies happened in each era, and today’s get more publicity). Back in the ‘60s and even the ‘70s, we could pretend that those sort of concerns didn’t matter. And we still can. But when a character points this out, it becomes a problem, and it would have been even when Tagged for Terror came out in 1993.

Ladies’ man: When the first pretty girl comes along, Joe starts flirting with her. That’s presumably why Iola was killed off at the beginning of the Casefiles series: to give Joe a chance to hit on whatever attractive girls the mystery brings along without guilt. He frequently did that anyway, late in the Grosset & Dunlap days, but no one ever thought it was strange he had a girlfriend and would flirt anyway — sometimes even in front of Chet, Iola’s brother. In this case, it’s Gina Abend, a ticket agent for Eddings. What’s strange is, she responds, despite a) having a boyfriend, and b) not being in high school. Looks like someone wants to rock the cradle of love. Frank tries to shut Gina out, but not even memories of Iola can keep Joe from following his heart (or other part of his anatomy).

To you kids all across the land, there’s no need to argue: adults just don’t understand: Forrester is always ragging on Frank and Joe’s investigation, and Eddings and his pilot, Solomon Mapes, treat them like kids. This the way the books should be: adults are, generally speaking, not all that bright or observant. It’s the way life feels when you’re in high school (and when you’re in grade school or junior high, for that matter); it should be reflected in the books, especially when the Hardys are on the road.

God help him, he’s not very bright: While talking to Gina and Solomon (her boyfriend), Joe muses about the case, thinking an earlier airplane accident might have been intended to kill him and Frank rather than Eddings. Frank covers for him, but Joe really needs to learn to have an inner monologue.

Play to your strengths: It’s a running joke in the Casefiles: when Frank has a plan, Joe complains that Frank’s plans involve him doing something stupid. I’m not sure that’s actually the case, but I have to say, Joe is portrayed as being a little dull-witted, so at least those who have been watching the boys will feel the stupidity is in character.

Later in the book, Joe sarcastically suggests Frank’s plan will involve him dressing “up like a girl and [having] me bat my eyelashes at him until he tells me his deepest secrets.” This is the kind of plan Bugs Bunny devises, so I think we have an idea what Joe’s doing when Frank’s studying.

Mr. Architectural Snob: When Frank and Joe head to an area of Atlanta that’s a little run down, Joe notes the size of the houses; Frank immediately wonders how long it will be before the houses are knocked down (or fall down), just because the porch sags a little and the paint is faded and chipping. Not every place can be High and Elm, Frank. Geez.

Atlanta, still reeling from being burned to the ground during the Civil War: After Frank and Joe are ran off the road and one of their tires shot by a drive-by gunman, the boys tell their new acquaintances — “friends” would be too strong a word — about the incident. The big-city residents are blasé about attempted vehicular homicide and random gunplay on city streets during broad daylight, calling it “big city problems.” I don’t think I want to hang around with people who don’t at least say, “Sorry to hear that,” when they hear you’ve been shot at.

The March of Technology: Danny, an impoverished student who works at Eddings Air to put himself through college, uses an old manual typewriter, which shows how poor he is. Today, what would the equivalent be — a broken-down laptop? Going to the computer lab to do homework? An old IBM? I don’t know.

Also, for some reason, Frank and Joe don’t have their cell phone with them in Atlanta. Avoiding roaming charges, perhaps? In any event, when they have to call the police at the end of the book, one of them actually has to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to use his phone.

Sorry, Mr. Hick, sir: Frank wakes Joe up at 4 a.m. before traveling two hours to Danny’s small hometown, his explanation being that people get up early in the country. Well, yes, some do, especially farmers, but those that work in offices (and some factories) won’t be up until later. And even the farmers won’t appreciate being interrupted at 6 a.m. by a pair of smart-assed kids.

And of course, rather than waiting until they’re off work and can visit these poor rural dwellers at a reasonable time, Frank and Joe skip work. That is, they don’t report to the work they need to keep to investigate the luggage thefts. They run the very real risk of getting fired, and no one who knows their mission could interfere without revealing their undercover mission.

Matters of the heart: At one point, Frank remembers his girlfriend, Callie, often helps them investigate crime. He also thinks he “often told Callie things that he would never tell anybody else.” What on earth would that be? What would he tell Callie that he would not tell his father or Joe? Frank and Joe are close, as close as any two human beings can be. Does Frank confess his secret insecurities to Callie? Does he tell her that he can’t maintain the constant investigations, that he will crack sooner or later?

Or does he tell her that he’s creeped out by Chet’s constant eating (suggesting a betting pool for his first heart attack?), or that Aunt Gertrude’s food really tastes like old person and disapproval?

We don’t need no stinkin’ proof: Near the end of the book, Joe doesn’t want to confront a suspect because they have no proof that he’s done something wrong. Constrast this to Joe’s behavior in Open Season (Casefiles #59), when he will accuse anyone of anything at any time.

Opinions: The Network and the Assassins are the Casefiles overlying storyline, and their appearance in Tagged for Terror is what gives the book the impetus to be the start of a trilogy. I admit, I’ve never warmed to Network vs. Assassins or the Hardys’ Network contact, the Grey Man; it seemed like it was stretching the suspension of disbelief much too far. Much of the Hardys’ adventures can’t stand too close examination, and really, the Hardys investigating superspies vs. contract killers can’t even be mentioned before snapping my belief. The later Casefiles moved away from this, and I appreciate it; I preferred the Casefiles to be the mysteries where the Hardys can investigate murders.

I was surprised by the sudden switch to the Casefiles mythology. Tagged for Terror starts as a normal investigation into a theft ring. And because it’s a Casefile, the bodies start to pile up. (I have to admit, it’s strange that getting shot at and forced off the road does not distinguish the grittier Casefiles from the more reserved canon and digests.) And in that light, it’s a pretty standard mystery, perhaps a little above average. But then the Grey Man shows up, and the Assassins are mentioned, and the Network has an interest … but Frank and Joe still do all the work. Is the Network what Reagan was thinking about when he complained about the inefficiency of government?

Grade: B-. I am amused by Joe’s plucky pick-up attempts.

Open Season (Casefiles #59)

Plot: While on a Colorado skiing trip, Frank and Joe stumble into the attempted murder of K.D. Becker, a wildlife researcher.

“Borrowing” from the past: When Joe and Frank are menaced by a mountain lion, Becker saves their lives by shooting the big cat with a tranquilizer dart. Back in the old days, Frank and Joe could have taken care of it themselves — mowing down wolves in Hunting for Hidden Gold (#5), successfully hunting a fox in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8), or just bonking a tiger in the head with a rock in The Disappearing Floor (#19). Frank was hardcore in The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), killing a lynx with a radio antenna.

In any event, Frank and Joe faced off against pumas / cougars / mountain lions in The Clue of the Screeching Owl (#41) and the only time Frank and Joe dealt with a cougar is in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), although the creature is shot before Frank and Joe see it in Express. However, what the various Dixons mean by “wildcat” is sometimes in doubt; occasionally it seems to be larger than the small, wild feline the term usually refers to. The Hardys were confronted by wildcats in The Secret of Wildcat Swamp (#31), of course, and in Mystery of the Desert Giant (#40) and The Voodoo Plot (#72).

This is not the first time the boys have gone cross-country skiing. The previous times include the most famous winter mysteries, The Mystery of Cabin Island and The Yellow Feather Mystery (#33), although they were skiing across the Bayport countryside rather than the Rocky Mountains. Frank and Joe are also described as “able” skiers in Cave-In! (#78). Open Season is set during the Hardys’ two-week Christmas vacation. Previous mysteries that have taken place during the Christmas holidays include The Cabin Island Mystery, The Mysterious Caravan (#54), and Cave-In!.

One of the suspects in the case has a shortwave radio in his cabin. It’s been quite a while since Frank and Joe have come across one of those. Their most famous encounter with the short waves was in both versions of The Short-Wave Mystery, but they also had shortwaves in the original What Happened at Midnight (#10), The Secret of Skull Mountain (#27), Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39), The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (#46), The Mystery of the Whale Tattoo (#47), Tic-Tac-Terror (#74), and The Blackwing Puzzle (#82) and revised versions of The Shore Road Mystery (#6), A Figure in Hiding (#16), The Secret Warning (#17), The Twisted Claw (#18), The Disappearing Floor, The Secret of Wildcat Swamp, and The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). Really, it seems like it was a craze in the 1960s.

Feels like he’s wearing nothing at all: At the beginning of Open Season, Joe describes his “tight-fitting, one-piece, insulated ski suit” as “the cutting edge of ski technology and fashion. It’s lightweight, gives me room to move — and it matches my baby blues.” Which reminded me of this scene from the Simpson, where Homer is distracted by a memory of Flanders in his skin-tight ski suit: “Stupid sexy Flanders.”

Rocky Mountain high: Gunnison National Forest, where the story is set, actually exists in west central Colorado; it’s not incredibly far from Aspen, to throw out a name of a ski town that you’ve heard of, but there are other wilderness areas that are closer. (Such as White River National Forest, which is just to the north.) Gunnison forms a larger unit with Grand Mesa and Uncompahgre forests, which combine for more than 3 million acres in the Rockies in west central and southwestern Colorado. (Uncompahgre is near Telluride, another ski town.) The forests have the unattractive acronym of GMUG.

The Hardys drift into and out of the small town of Elk Springs. There is an Elk Springs in Colorado, but it’s not in or adjacent to Gunnison National Forest. Elk Springs is in northwestern Colorado, closer to White River National Forest and Routt National Forest.

He who breaks the law shall be punished back to the House of Pain: The sheriff points out their “investigation” is actual grand theft, since they swiped a snowmobile to get away from a bunch of cattle hands while the boys were trespassing. Although the owner of the snowmobile owner declines to press charges, the sheriff has another chance to use the law against the boys, when they’re helping a fugitive evade the law. The sheriff threatens to charge them as accessories, while Frank counter-threatens to sue for wrongful injury since he was knocked out by shrapnel while being shot at by a deputy.

Poor, poor pitiful us: While Frank and Joe are challenging one another to push themselves while cross-country skiing, Frank silently complains that others don’t see the boys’ best qualities: “Other people saw only a couple of teenagers. They didn’t see the serious, dedicated detective team.” There’s a reason for that, exemplified by this book: Frank and Joe frequently don’t do much detecting, unless you count random accusations, trespassing, and breaking and entering as “detecting.”

While confronting a cougar poacher, Frank and Joe are momentarily stopped by the hunter’s assertion that he has permission to hunt on the land. A bystander, however, points out the owner is Becker, who is a wildlife researcher unlikely to give permission to someone killing cougars. Joe complements him, saying, “Nice piece of detective work.” Given that Joe’s idea of detective work was to barrel into an armed man on skis, that’s damning with faint praise, although it’s not meant to be.

Frank also criticizes the sheriff, asking him, “Do you solve a lot of cases by eavesdropping?” Given how many cases Frank and Joe have cracked through that technique, I don’t think Frank has anything to complain about.

Ha!: After Joe’s only plan to gather more information on a poacher is to burst into his hospital room and grill “him relentlessly for hours,” Frank accuses him of reading too many cheap detective novels. “They don’t come much cheaper than us,” Joe says, which is true — you can’t find mysteries much cheaper than the Hardy Boys. Later, when Frank needs a distraction to use the library’s computer (it has a modem!), Joe ends up checking out a stack of paperback whodunits.

Who are you, and what have you done with Frank?: While staying at the cabin of one of the suspects — a very accommodating suspect — Frank makes “ a conscious effort not to snoop around the cabin.” This behavior is inimical to the Hardy Boys and everything they stand for. When a suspect is out of his home, and you’re in it, you snoop! Dammit, what is wrong with kids these days?

Rural decay: Frank says the small mountain town of Elk Springs is his kind of place: “Most of these stores look like they’ve always been here and always will be. There are no instant neon fast-food minimalls. No highrise office complexes.” Joe also chimes in, saying the lack of development is charming. The local they’re chatting with has a more realistic point of view: what they’re praising is a general lack of economic development caused by the lack of tourism. For Frank and Joe the economic isolation and general lack of development is quaint. For the locals, it’s a slow economic death sentence.

Plan and plan! What is plan?: Frank uses a “clever” subterfuge to get close enough to a suspect to question him. Joe turns the questioning into a series of accusations, because in Open Season Joe is an idiot. After the failure of the interview, Frank criticizes Joe, saying, “The plan was to draw him into a conversation and see if anything slipped out, not hurl accusations in his face.” Good general rule, perhaps, but Frank didn’t see fit to actually fill Joe in on the plan before the interview — the extent of his instructions to his brother were, “Leave this to me.” More polite than “Keep your mouth shut,” perhaps, but what intelligent person is going to think that’s going to work with Joe?

Are they blind?: After a perilous climb that ended with them falling several feet in a pickup truck that flipped over as an avalanche started, Frank and Joe drive to the hospital to see Becker. The ER nurses think the boys are there for treatment; Frank is amazed that he and his brother look like they need treatment. Didn’t they see each other after the dust from the avalanche settled? Or while they were driving back to Elk Springs? I swear, they have to be the least observant detectives in the history of ever.

Opinions: I don't know why it bothers me so much that Frank and Joe don’t do any detecting in Open Season. They often trespass, break and enter, and randomly accuse people in other books; why is it so bad here? Perhaps because they encounter a sheriff who is actually willing to enforce those laws against the Hardys; perhaps because I’m just getting fed up with it. Their techniques have the subtlety of a brick wrapped in burlap, although their shadowing skills are generally pretty good given the lack of cover.

Open Season does get points for its underused setting. Winter in the mountains — the isolation, the closed pool of suspects, the potential for “accidents” … it’s a good setup. Open Season fails to make full use of it, but it’s a good idea.

Grade: C. A dull “adventure” in which Frank and Joe’s atrophied detecting skills are helped by the target-rich environment.

Beyond the Law (Casefiles #55)

Plot: Ezra Collig is accused of corruption from his time in Millerton, a quarter of a century before. When the Hardys and others investigate, the police commissioner and a TV reporter are nearly blown up.

“Borrowing” from the past: Beyond the Law really takes the time to fill in Ezra Collig’s past in a way that hadn't been done before. In the original canon, Collig’s life was a blank slate; he’s an old acquaintance and occasionally friend of the Hardys who professionally serves as anything from a hindrance to a lackey. Other than being afraid of bad publicity, being in his late 40s, and gaining the office of chief of police fewer than five years before, Collig has done little but sell Frank and Joe the supervan they use in the Casefiles and Digests. But Beyond the Law fills in the gaps. He dropped out of school to earn some money, joined a road construction crew, then made it onto the Millerton Police Department. After a brief term of service — he quit after exposing his partner’s graft — he returned to high school in Atlantic Heights, married his teacher Bea Cowan after graduation, and then joined the force in Bayport, rising all the way to the top. Bea passed away shortly before the beginning of Beyond the Law.

Collig also reminisces about how the increasing awareness of the legal rights of criminals has put a crimp in crimefighting. It’s amusing to hear Collig talk about how gunning a man down used to get you medals and a promotion but now gets you fired or that whacking suspected thieves on the calves was just prudent; it’s somewhat worrying to hear Collig complain about having to have sufficient cause to search a suspect, what with the Constitution and whatnot. Although on one hand this is a reminder that the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there — it’s also a reminder that the Hardy Boys canon, while ostensibly less violent than the Casefiles, had a lot of dodgy rights stuff going on within them that had nothing to do with racism. It’s also clear that the Hardy Boys can ignore the constitutional rights thing, as long as they don’t kill people or whack them in the calves.

Joe repairs the van, adjusting its timing. Joe has done a lot of mechanical work over the years, repairing the roadster and his motorcycle with his brother in While the Clock Ticked (#11), souping up a dirt bike in The Mystery of the Samurai Sword (#60), and tuning up the car in The Billion Dollar Ransom (#73). In A Figure in Hiding (#16), it’s said he liked “nothing more than a mechanical problem”; in The Crimson Flame (#77), the narration mentions he and his brother often work on their car.

Fenton’s sartorial advice for the mystery: “Wear a good suit, and you’re bound to get mud, crud, or blood on it. Only cops who stay in offices can dress up for the job.” For more of his pearls of wisdom, see Last Laugh (Casefiles #42).

Frank and Joe give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The boys have always been good at first aid, and both have given mouth to mouth before: Joe in The Secret of Pirate’s Hill (#36) and The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), Frank in The Clue in the Embers (#35), The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge (#45), and The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48). Probably the most challenging first-aid work that either has ever done was in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#20), during which Frank attended the victims of a train derailment.

Where is Bayport?: After Frank and Joe have a few sticks of dynamite lobbed at them while on the interstate on their way back to Bayport, Joe asks, “Hey, you’re not going to try to catch the Mad Bomber of Route I-forty-nine, are you?” Although I don’t know what Route I-49 could mean other than Interstate 49, Bayport is nowhere near that road. I-49 runs between I-10 in Lafayette and I-20 in Shreveport, entirely within the state of Louisiana.

When Joe looks for Millerton on the map, he notes that it’s as far away from Bayport as one can get and still stay in the same state. Later, when the boys head to Millerton, the narration says it took a couple of hours. That leaves New York and Connecticut out of the running for Bayport (at least for this book); from New York City to Buffalo is more than six hours, and nothing in Connecticut is even close to being two hours from anything else in Connecticut (traffic permitting). But two hours works out about right for New Jersey; both the southeast and southwest corners of the state are about two and a half hours from the New Jersey part of the New York metropolitan area. If you move away from New York, say to Long Branch, Keansburg, or Asbury Park, the time works out about right.

Idiot’s Affairs: Obviously, when the scandal about what Collig might have done in Millerton comes out, the publicity conscious Bayport PD kicks him to the curb and starts their own Internal Affairs investigation. Why they do this is beyond me; the allegations were more than a quarter century earlier, and it has nothing to do with Bayport. (The Millerton PD seems uninterested in the allegations.) The IA detectives turn up nothing, of course; it takes two motivated teenagers to get something done. Like notice that a bunch of cops quit at about the same time as Collig. Frank and Joe don’t actually talk to any of these cops, but hey, they took the first step.

The new top of the police bureaucracy is portrayed as the villains in this book, but it’s hard to dispute two of their points: Kid vigilantes have no business in modern crime control, and if the entire city government was corrupt, it’s a reasonable assumption that Collig or someone on his force was also corrupt. Of course the investigation is shoddy and wrongheaded, but they at least started from the right point.

The March of Technology: While using the Millerton Police Department’s equipment, Frank finds their link to state databases is a “nearly obsolete computer.” I (barely) remember computers in 1991, and I’m having trouble figuring out what could be both nearly obsolete in 1991 and could still uplink with the state servers. A TRS-80? An Apple II?

When Frank and Joe announce on live radio they are going to Millerton to investigate the allegations against Collig, nearly everyone seems to hear the news. In a town with its own TV station, would everyone really be listening to the radio for an update on the Collig “corruption” case?

When Frank and Joe go with Callie to visit her friend Liz at the Bayport Times, they find her working on a typewriter. When I worked at newspapers, a half decade later at newspapers not much bigger than the Times, no one used typewriters — everything was computerized, although sometimes clunkily. But in 1991 … is Liz’s typewriter an anachronism, or is it a possibility? I don’t know.

I’ll take Forced Metaphors for $400, Alex: In a bit of deathless prose, Frank muses, “They’ll figure Collig left Millerton under a cloud … I just hope that cloud doesn’t rain on the chief’s parade.”

The Eagle: According to Beyond the Law, Bayport’s TV station is WBPT. There is, of course, no television station with that call sign; however, since 2001 it has been the call sign of a radio station in central Alabama: 106.9, the Eagle — “Birmingham’s home for classic hits.” When Beyond the Law came out, the station was WBMH, a country station. That iteration lasted about a year.

Modesty will get you nowhere: Frank mentally complains about the media always using the phrase “famous private detective” to describe Fenton. I know it must get monotonous — Fenton might as well change his name to Famous Private Detective Fenton Hardy, FPDF Hardy for short — but he is a famous private detective. Again, Frank and Joe have been using his name across the country as a get-out-of-logic-free card for years.

Separation of Frank and Joe, Part II: Like in Panic on Gull Island, Joe has a friend independent of Frank. Unlike in Gull Island, this cryptozoological specimen has a name: Johnny Berridge, a cameraman at WBPT. Berridge is obviously not a chum, which means he’s a … a … (I can hardly bear to say it) … a source.

In the old days, of course, the Hardys didn’t have sources — at least not consistent ones. They would come to town, pump you dry of information, and go about their business, never to see you again. If you were lucky, you might get to be a chum for a book, serving as extra manpower or as a sort of guide. But a consistent source? That suggests the Hardys have some sort of plan about their sleuthing, and that’s just un-Hardylike. On the other hand, it probably fits the Casefiles better.

Taking the wrong notes from Collig: After replacing Collig, acting chief Parker Lawrence tells Frank and Joe they are “finished on this case”; like Collig in Power Play (Casefiles #50), he forgets Frank and Joe have no real standing to be on the case, so there isn’t really a “case” where they are concerned, and they don’t work for him, so it’s not like he has the power to order them off the case. Threaten them with arrest, yes; order them like a boss, no.

Yee-haw!: This Dixon notes Joe uses the high beams on the way to the Morton farm. This is not noteworthy. If you live on or travel to a farm at night, chances are you will frequently get to use the high beams.

Don’t give Joe any ideas: After Collig tells Frank and Joe that (in a non-creepy way) he married his high school teacher, Joe muses that it’s “one way to get good grades.” Joe, I know you’re single, what with Iola being reduced to particles, and the book learnin’ is sometimes a challenge, but there are laws against that sort of thing. I know you don’t care about laws when they apply to you, but they’re there for your protection. Trust me. The short-term gain isn’t worth it.

Now, your brother — he’s 18. He can do what he wants.

Opinions: This is the book that should have been #50 for the Casefiles. It uses the series’ continuity, referring to Frank and Joe’s work in See No Evil (Casefiles #8) as the impetus for the anti-corruption drive that ends up with the reform candidates seeking to drive out Collig. It also features Collig, a long-time supporting character. It’s also nice to see Ezra Collig’s backstory get fleshed out, although a random Casefile is an odd place for that to happen.

As for the mystery itself … Well, it’s better than Power Play, but that’s not saying very much. The reform party’s attempts to dig up dirt on Collig are feeble — actually, calling it feeble is an insult to all the feeble people out there, especially the feeble minded. Forget the technology of the computer, which Frank understands but the Internal Affairs cops do not; they don’t quite get the combination of telephones and personnel records. Or, when it comes down to it, talking, something Frank and Joe mastered quickly. Frank and Joe even found the right guy to talk to immediately.

Also: Tossing dynamite at the Hardys while both are driving down the interstate. I can’t tell if that’s completely mental or completely awesome, but either way, it has no part in a Hardy Boys book, and it’s quite telling that Frank and Joe drive away from the bombing as quickly as possible so that they don’t get caught up in the mentalness / awesomeness or the justice.

Grade: C. When you balance the highs and the lows, it’s completely average.

Power Play (Casefiles #50)

Plot: Frank and Joe are hired to check the security at Bright Futures, a company that makes solar cells. However, before their investigation can get underway, one of the company’s top researchers is murdered.

“Borrowing” from the past: In Power Play, Frank mentions he recently got his pilot’s license, certifying him for single-engine planes. Frank first flew a plane (under supervision) in The Mystery of the Flying Express (#19). In The Short-Wave Mystery (#24), both he and Joe get instruction from a pilot named Stewart, but Jack Wayne — Fenton’s personal pilot — doesn’t start teaching them until The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37). He even makes an emergency landing in that book. He and Joe get their license in The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (#39). By The Viking Symbol Mystery (#42), he can perform loops, banks, and rolls in a seaplane, and he passes the FAA proficiency test for float planes. In The Arctic Patrol Mystery (#48), he lands a twin-engine plane … on a glacier. The Stone Idol (#65) mentions he has flown helicopters at the Bayport air field; in The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), he and Joe build an ultralight with their friends.

That last is important, because in Power Play, Frank rides in and briefly flies a solar-powered ultralight plane. Now, I kept track of how the Hardys get around, but I don’t think they’ve ever used a solar-powered ultralight plane. In The Blackwing Puzzle, they do fly an ultralight called the “Silver Falcon,” but it wasn’t solar powered. In fact, I don’t think they ever traveled in something solar powered in the first 85 books. (There was an electric car in The Skyfire Puzzle, #85, but that doesn’t count.) That’s surprising, since the Hardys have flown in hot-air balloons and a space shuttle, used parachutes, skimmed across the bay in ice boats, swum powered by porpoises, trekked with mules, even used a hand car. But never a solar-powered ultralight.

Frank and Joe get extra time to investigate because of Spring Break. I expected the boys to have experienced Spring Break about forty times before the Casefiles, but during the canon, they used it to get out of school only three times: The Arctic Patrol Mystery, The Firebird Rocket (#57), and The Voodoo Plot (#72). They also used Spring Break to track down Iola in Panic on Gull Island (#107).

The March of Technology: Oh, 1991. Computers were so exciting then — even interoffice electronic mail (“e-mail” not being a common enough usage) and 300 megabyte optical “disks” (the ones I have sitting by my desk, made for CDs, hold 700 MB) are breathlessly reported as exciting advances … even though you had to have a special drive for the 8-track like optical disks. Some technological plot points are relevant, however; the murdered researcher smuggled sensitive information out of Bright Futures by switching the label from a rock CD to the optical disk. This is similar to how Private Bradley Manning smuggled sensitive information off a secure Army intelligence server in Baghdad to give to Wikileaks; he brought in a CD-RW labeled “Lady Gaga,” erased the music, then copied the information onto the now empty disc. (I’m still not sure how the researcher switched the label, however; were the labels on early CDs stickers?)

Frank and Joe have a cellular phone (again, “cell phone” is not in common enough usage in 1991), but when they try to use it, there’s too much static. Their provider must be AT&T. Zing!

You’re slipping, old man: Fenton … I worry about the old man. In Power Play, all those concussions seem to be catching up with him. In the beginning, when a client calls him a “famous detective,” he says, “I don’t know about the ‘famous’ part.” That could be him being humble, but I don’t think you can be humble about your reputation when your sons use your name as a “Get out of jail free” card from coast to coast.

Later in the book, Fenton tells his sons that a researcher for Bright Futures has been arrested. Two pages later, he says, “[The researcher] could be home by now — if she has a good lawyer. She doesn’t have an arrest record, and there’s probably not enough evidence to charge her.” Not enough evidence to charge her? She’s already been arrested! That means she’s been charged! Do you even listen to yourself, Fenton?

Halfway through the book, Fenton goes jogging in a mesh shirt. Putting aside how smart I think jogging is, I keep getting an image of Fenton in an open-mesh shirt that is pretty much see-through (been watching too much anime, I guess). That’s not a pretty picture. In any event, in this picture of parental authority, he tells his sons that he wants to pull them off the murder investigation because they were only hired to investigate security, and murders are dangerous. Neither of these considerations have either bothered Fenton before; I don’t know if this is how Fenton is portrayed in the Casefiles, but it does fit in with the worrywart who founded ATAC in the Undercover Brothers series.

Speaking of slipping: Frank and Joe suffer the indignity of the “cut-the-brakes” trick. Frank later says it wasn’t a murder attempt; they shouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot. That seems an awful chance to take; I think, under New York law — as given unto us by DA Jack McCoy on Law & Order — that it shows a reckless indifference to the boys’ life and therefore would be classified as attempted murder, but what do I know?

In any event, Joe, who is driving, tries to use the parking brake to slow the van first. Only after that does he downshift. He should have tried it in the other order, which would have been more effective.

Speaking of ‘off the case’: At one point, Chief Collig — who has been antagonistic to Frank and Joe the entire book — tells them, “You’re off the case.” Firstly, he has no real authority over them, except when they break the law. (Which admittedly is all the time in this book, so perhaps I’m selling him short.) Secondly, a “case” suggests an official investigation of some sort, but Frank and Joe have no official standing — not even a private investigator’s license. For the Hardy Boys, there’s no case for them to be on. In fact, by telling them they are off the case, Collig implies they were either on the case before or had some sort claim to be on the case. I think Ezra just wanted to say those words to a couple of loose cannons, and whether the words made sense be damned.

Asking for trouble: Weirdly, Bright Futures hires Fenton’s sons just to check security. That is, the company had no idea there were no problems before Frank and Joe came along. Of course, afterwards, there’s a murder, the company is revealed to be rife with industrial sabotage, and the company’s remaining researcher is poached by a competitor. Nice job, boys.

The new math: After the head of Bright Futures tells Frank and Joe about a dispute between his top researchers — one of whom is now dead — Frank “filed this information with what they already knew. According to his math, none of this added up to murder yet.” I would really like to see what that equation looked like: Motive + death ≠ murder?

So there’s a … “Superb Bowl”?: God knows I am not a big fan of American football. I prefer baseball by far, and I agree with George Will’s contention that football combines the two worst aspects of modern American society: violence and committee meetings. But dammit, why can’t Dixons ever get the game quite right?

In The Crisscross Shadow, Chet is listed as a center, which is an offensive position, but he’s shown only as a defensive player. Even if there is a defensive center — and there isn’t really, although perhaps a defensive tackle in on a three-man line could be considered a “center” because he’s between two other players — he wouldn’t cover receivers on pass plays, as Chet tries and fails to do. (Maybe he’s a middle linebacker, which would fit the criteria.) Joe is said to be a left halfback — “halfback” is usually as specific as it gets — but he throws all the passes for Bayport, which is the quarterback’s job. Frank’s supposed to be the quarterback, but he functions as a receiver. At one point, the teams are locked in a defensive duel which forces each side to run two plays, then punt; each side gets three plays before they need to decide whether to punt. I’ve already gone over the ludicrousness of everything in Foul Play, which had no clue about football.

In Power Play, the offense is much lesser: Chet is said to have the “wide, massive frame of a football linebacker.” There are many other positions that could be better said to have a “wide, massive” frame; offensive or defensive linemen are prime candidates. Linebackers are large but have to be more athletic than linemen since they not only have to overpower people but also cover receivers. In fact, if you want a stereotypical description of linebackers, it would be quick and powerful rather than wide and massive.

It’s a small detail. But it’s a small detail about the most popular sport in America. Is it that hard to get right?

Opinions: Frank and Joe are at the nadir of their investigative abilities in Power Play, with Frank and Joe’s investigative techniques alternating between random accusations and breaking and entering, with a bit of bullying Chet thrown in to keep things from getting too predictable. They antagonize all the authority figures they can find, and Chief Collig and Fenton decide to finally draw a line and rein in the boys for reasons I can’t quite discern. Child endangerment laws catching up with Fenton and Bayport, maybe? Perhaps other municipalities giving Collig hell for using teenagers to solve his crimes? I don’t know, but neither Collig nor Fenton seems to want Frank and Joe on the case despite their results and their ability to avoid death.

I also find it odd that the Casefiles would hit their fiftieth book and not do some sort of anniversary stunt. Then again, the series was less than five years old at the time, so perhaps it was considered too early to do something like that.

And as I mentioned before, I really don’t like the cover. That it superficially resembles something that happened in the book is irrelevant.

Grade: D. Not very good. The optimistic “unlimited promise of solar power” angle and technology dates it more than perpetual teenagers Frank and Joe ever could.

The Last Laugh (Casefiles #42)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Baseball Card Conspiracy (#117)

Plot: Counterfeit baseball cards start popping up at shows in the New York / Bayport area; when Biff gets burned, Frank and Joe are on the case.

“Borrowing” from the past: For dramatic purposes, Shore Road is considered to be “dangerous,” even to the point of washing out in very wet weather. Frank and Joe take Shore Road to Southport, but it hasn't been used to reach a specific local destination very often. In The Tower Treasure, the road is rutted and rough, and in 1931’s What Happened at Midnight (#10), Shore Road “doesn’t lead anywhere in particular” (pg. 196). It became the main road to the new airport by The Great Airport Mystery (#9). In Danger on Vampire Trail (#50), it merges with a superhighway several miles from Bayport. By The Blackwing Puzzle (#82), much of its rush-hour traffic was diverted by expressways, completing its evolution from a back road to main artery and back to secondary road. Perhaps The Baseball Card Conspiracy is implying it is about to fade back into back road status.

Biff Hooper’s home is said to be in one of Bayport’s “newer” housing developments. Given that the city hasn’t grown in population in 70 years, that may not be very new. The only time the Hoopers’ house was mentioned in the original canon was to place it within walking distance of the boys’ boathouses in The Shore Road Mystery (#6).

Frank and Joe — mostly Frank — identify a symbol used in geometry: parallel lines with a backslash is called a transversal. Frank and Joe were last seen in geometry class in 1930, in The Great Airport Mystery, so they're demonstrating an impressive memory.

At one point, Joe claims to have collected stamps in the past; that’s never been stated before, although Hurd Applegate’s stamp collection was a plot point in While the Clock Ticked (#11) and Elroy Jefferson's stolen stamps were the MacGuffin in The Mystery of Cabin Island (#8).

Bayport’s baseball team — semipro? minor league? Heaven forbid, major league? — is nicknamed the Blues. Frank mentions the team was founded in the 1890s. In The Wailing Siren Mystery (#30), Bayport’s nine is named the Bears. This may not be a mistake since many bush-league teams have switched their names over the years, even switching back to previous names.

Biff trails one of the thugs down to the Bayport Mall. For those of you who are interested in how American consumerism is portrayed in popular culture, the mall just barely managed to show up during the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s ownership of the books — 1984’s The Blackwing Puzzle was the mall’s first appearance.

On the cover of the Hardy Boys: I don’t say this often — I can’t imagine why — but I really like the cover to Baseball Card Conspiracy. Frank and Joe look like plausible teenagers, albeit ones who are a little too buff. The criminal, who looks like a red-haired James Dean or Luke Perry, is literally escaping the illustration, with his foot and hand outside the border. Frank is running onto the illustration, with his foot cut off by the cover’s edge. There’s a lot of details, like the strewn cards and the bystander’s barely greeked Pirates’ cap (the Pirates’ “P” is replaced with a “K”), the pennants, the baseball equipment. The two bystanders look like the same person, unfortunately, but that’s a minor quibble.

For those who are curious, the jersey in the background — a #8 in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ colors — is probably meant to be that of Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, who played his entire career for Pittsburgh. Although this book was published in 1992, when the Pirates won their third straight National League East title, I think we have to consider the cover artist — “Daniel R. Ho????” (it’s cut off by the cover’s cropping, but it’s almost certainly Daniel R. Horne) — is a Pirates fan. According to Wikipedia, he was born in Pittsburgh in 1960, which would have made him 19 when the Pirates last won a World Series.

Talkin’ baseball: The counterfeited cards are those of Don Mattingly, Darryl Strawberry, and Ken Griffey, Jr. The manufacturer and year of the cards are never mentioned. The cards were fairly valuable when the book came out, but the baseball card market crashed in the '90s and didn't recover until the pandemic. Now they're valuable again, decades after mine were stolen — not that I'm bitter ...

Anyway, Franklin W. Dixon isn’t an economist either. The counterfeiters in The Baseball Card Conspiracy are selling the fake Mattinglys for $10 a pop. Biff buys his from a dealer for … $10. Obviously, in this case the dealer won’t be making any money. Dixon is making the classic collector mistake: the price-guide price is retail price. If you sell to a dealer, he will give you much less than that amount; the dealer has to make a profit, and the seller doesn’t have the customer base to sell the collectible (or didn’t, until eBay). The counterfeiters likely would have been selling the fakes for somewhere between a quarter and three-quarters of the price-guide price.

Police employment: Frank and Joe drop off a screwdriver used to commit sabotage at the police station, with Frank blithely commenting that he’ll see if the police can match the fingerprints for them. Do the police work for Frank and Joe? It usually seems so, but at one point, Con Riley and an officer confront Frank and Joe after a tip-off and find them with a bunch of (planted) counterfeit cards. Con explains how he has observed their civil liberties — it figures the first time anyone’s civil liberties are respected, it would be the Hardys — but despite being caught redhanded, Frank and Joe weasel their way out of an arrest and avoid being treated like regular folks. This is especially ironic since they later marvel at two crooks exercising their right to remain silent just before the brothers break into an innocent man’s mansion to prove he’s guilty. They also leave the scene of an accident (admittedly, no Hardy was driving) without giving those at the scene a way to contact them to help with the accident report.

Fortune favors the prepared: On their trip to Southport, Frank and Joe’s vans get two flat tires, courtesy of a sniper. Frank and Joe have learned from their adventures, and the van actually comes stocked with two spare tires. Both Frank and Joe also carry a spare packed overnight bag in their van.

Even the prepared mind can be baffled: Fenton is working on a case involving a stolen duplicating machine / printer of uncanny resolution. Frank and Joe are working on a case that involves many copies of excellent forgeries of baseball cards. The boys see a connection between the cases … and that connection is that maybe the person who Fenton is helping can inform them about printing technologies. So close!

Time catches up with all of us: Fenton seems to be in a bit of a decline. He literally is unable to escape from a cardboard box at one point. Near the end of The Baseball Card Conspiracy, he goes to the police to get them to search for Frank and Joe after only a single night’s absence. That’s either too much time or too little, and I can’t figure out which.

Ami d’hypocrite!: In Panic on Gull Island (#107), Joe absolves Iola for looking at guys while she’s on Spring Break with a friend. (He doesn’t do it to her face, of course, since she’d probably hit him and make him cry for saying it.) In The Baseball Card Conspiracy, Joe flirts with and even asks for the phone number of a woman who was bilked by a counterfeiter. Sure, he says it’s to notify her if her money is recovered, but I think we all know what’s going on here.

March of technology: The Hardys recover a 3 ½-inch diskette that helps them figure out what’s going on. This is amusing from a modern perspective for two reasons: one, the diskette is an outmoded form of data storage, and two, Dixon had to distinguish it from the even more outmoded 5 ¼-inch diskette. Someday — by which I mean now — people will be saying, “Remember CD-ROMs? Man, I haven’t seen one of those in forever!”

On a similar note, Frank and Joe have to go to a public library to search through old telephone directories. Although those directories are still useful to many people, a lot of libraries have thrown them out, and any real private investigator would have purchased a subscription to a database that would do the same thing.

Nothing half-hearted about this guy: Usually, you wonder why the villains don’t just kill the Hardys and be done with it. That’s not the case with the main thug in The Baseball Card Conspiracy, who tries to throw Frank from a train, shoots out their tires while they are driving on Shore Road, attempts to firebomb their van, and hits both boys in the head with fastballs before clubbing Joe in the skull with a baseball bat. (That probably should have been debilitating, if not fatal.)

Double Entendre Theater, where we like what we see, if you know what we mean: One morning, Frank goes to the breakfast table and finds his parents “lingering over breakfast.” They had been up late the night before … “discussing the case.” So that’s what the kids call it these days.

Yes, I know it’s juvenile. I don’t care.

Opinions: I was surprised by this one. I had low expectations, but this book managed to function on two levels for me: a time capsule of the time when collecting baseball cards was a craze and as a solid digest. As I mentioned, economics is not this book’s long suit, but there are a few touches that show the author knows the Hardys, and the plot is simple enough, with just enough good suspects, to keep the reader guessing.

Grade: B+ — although if you don't have fond memories of collecting baseball cards, it might not get much above average for you.

Panic on Gull Island (#107)

Plot: Iola is missing on Spring Break, and Joe and Chet eventually head down to a Florida motel to find her.

“Borrowing” from the past: Iola Morton is Joe’s girlfriend — it even says the pair are “going together” on the very first page. That reasonable and natural description of their relationship may not seem remarkable, but it was never used in the first 50 Hardy Boys books. Never. Instead, there were euphemisms like Iola being Joe’s “special friend,” “best girl,” “regular date,” even “staunch supporter.” It’s also revealed in Gull Island that Joe gave Iola a watch engraved with the romantic (for him) inscription of, “To Iola, From Joe.” This is the first thing, as far as I’ve known, that he’s ever given her.

Iola is kidnapped in Panic on Gull Island. In the original canon, Iola was particularly resistant to such shenanigans; she was tied up, with the rest of the Mortons, in The Ghost at Skeleton Rock (#37), and that’s it. As for injuries, her hair was singed in The Clue in the Embers (#35), and she was knocked out after hitting her head on a boat’s gunwale, which caused her to fall into Barmet Bay in The Secret of Pirate's Hill (#36). (The ‘50s weren’t great for Iola.) She was also pulled underwater in Tic-Tac-Terror (#74). Falling into the bay was the worst thing that happened to her … until she was blowed up in the first Hardy Boys Casefile, Dead on Target.

The Hardys are chased by some Doberman pinschers during Panic on Gull Island. The Hardys have been chased by dogs for years, starting with a Russian wolfhound named Chan in Footprints Under the Window (#12) and continuing too many times to get into. They had previously been menaced by Dobermans in the first paperback adventure, The Night of the Werewolf (#59), and the revised A Figure in Hiding (#16).

Do you care?: Joe seems slightly concerned but not exactly upset when Chet tells him Iola has disappeared. The first thing he does is drive to the airport to pick up Frank and Fenton — like they couldn’t have hailed a cab — and the narration notes that Iola’s disappearance would “affect him as much as it did Chet.” Such a effaced way of expressing the thought — it allows the sentiment to be interpreted as an expression of possible grief (or joy, when she is found) as much as it does legal troubles the disappearance could cause them (did you have anything to do with it?). Nobody else seems too worked up either. It takes the adult ostensibly looking after Iola and her friend Daphne Garnett two days to call the Mortons. Two days! The Mortons send Chet, rather than a responsible adult, to investigate. And Fenton tells the boys to drive all the way down there — a 24-hour trip that leaves them exhausted — rather than flying them down there.

On the other hand, Joe is so worked up over Iola’s disappearance he can’t muster the will to make a fat joke while he and Chet wait for Fenton and Frank to arrive. Frank, on the other hand, doesn’t miss a beat, going for a joke about Chet’s appetite minutes after surviving a crash landing on a passenger plane.

Separation of Frank and Joe: At the beginning of Panic on Gull Island, Fenton and Frank are returning from a detecting trip to Chicago. Why was Joe left behind? To make some calls and talk to a “friend” from the telephone company about some things. He could have done that from Chicago! Besides, Joe doesn’t have any friends that Frank doesn’t have, right?

What are you driving, a wheelbarrow?: At about 3 a.m., Chet estimates he and the Hardys are 300 miles from the Florida border and about 18 to 19 hours from Gull Island. The fictional Gull Island is somewhere between Naples and Sarasota. That’s … that’s incredibly slow.

Since they’d just eaten, they wouldn’t have to stop again until Florida, at least — about five hours away, since the speed limit back then was probably 55 mph. But to get from the Florida border to Fort Myers, Fla. — which is between Sarasota and Naples and closer to Naples, the more southerly city — is between 300 and 350 miles, depending on the route. Most of it would be on the interstate. Even with highway driving, eight hours would be a long time; Mapquest estimates it at about five and a half, although the speed limit is higher now. So will they be taking four to six hours of meals and bathroom breaks on such an important trip? I suppose they could actually, you know, rest, which would add about that much time to their ETA, but they are three teenagers driving on the interstate. The whole point of multiple drivers is not to have to stop to rest.

Long arm of the Syndicate: The Stratemeyer Syndicate, which created and controlled the Hardy Boys series for decades, revised the books in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. One of the things they wanted to do was have Frank and Joe more respectful of the police (and other authority figures) and to make those with authority more worthy of respect.

In Panic on Gull Island, the Hardys and Chet are stymied in their investigation by the worst lawman ever. The deputy sheriff obviously wouldn’t know a crime wave if it bit him in the hinder. He decides a kidnapping, a boat theft, destruction of a private dock, vandalism, and a boat explosion are not only unconnected incidents but not crimes at all. He responds to the kidnapping concerns by saying that since there was no ransom note, there obviously was no kidnapping — financial gain evidently being the only reason for kidnapping a pretty teenage girl that he can conceive of. And that’s putting aside the possibility that the case was murder! The only question is whether the deputy is incompetent or corrupt, but the end of the story suggests (in its omission of the deputy) that the readers were never supposed to regard the deputy as corrupt at all. Still, he’s pretty awful.

On the other hand, everyone else is stupid in how they handle him. The locals seem to think he has no superior, with no one mentioning appealing to the county sheriff’s office. One local suggests running against him in an election, but that’s asinine — deputies are generally appointed by the sheriff, who is the one who runs for office. It takes until two-thirds of the way through the book before anyone mentions the state police, let alone any other level of law enforcement. In a technical sense, even if the deputy believed Iola was kidnapped, that crime is the jurisdiction of the FBI rather than a county office. No one even mentions talking to insurance companies and their investigators about the crimes.

In the end, though, it shows how little everyone wants to get Iola back that no one alerts the media. There might not have been a 24-hour news cycle in 1991, but I guarantee that the disappearance of a female teenager on Spring Break would have caused a firestorm of attention on the case. Things would start happening. But no one thinks about putting pressure on the police by even threatening that. No, no — that would interfere with Frank and Joe’s “investigating,” which mainly involves trespassing and crashing parties.

Seriously, Iola, you might want to think about finding better friends.

Com-put-tor: The Hardys are on the cutting edge of technology; they take a portable phone (which gets stolen), a fax machine (!), and a portable computer (which if I remember those days correctly, was only barely portable). But that’s not all; by connecting through Fenton’s computer, they’re able to find a client list for a local car rental agency (primitive hacking?), and when they go to the police in Miami, all the current real estate owners are listed on a computer by the parcel they own. Given that many counties haven’t made that leap twenty years later, the Hardys are very lucky.

Gator gonna getcha: In the book, Alligator Alley — the highway that runs between Naples and Miami across the Everglades — is described as a narrow road, with a soft, sandy shoulder. One mistake, according to Joe, would end with the van in the swamp.

As originally constructed, the road was indeed a two-lane highway, but now it’s a four-lane toll road, part of Interstate 75. It’s long and straight, and in the middle of the night, it could serve as prime territory for someone wanting to see how fast their vehicle can go. Interestingly, the change from two to four lanes came during the time Gull Island saw print; Gull Island was published in 1991, and the expansion took place between 1986 and 1992.

Hurricane … No?: I am shocked — shocked! — that there is no hurricane in this book. There’s plenty of wind and rain, but there’s no hurricane. I know that Spring Break does not fall during hurricane season, but logic has never been a concern as far as the Hardys are concerned.

Do you remember what happened in previous cases, Frank?: Frank leads Joe to trespass on a suspect’s property. He tells Joe, “The worst that can happen … is he’ll tell us to get off his property.” That sentiment is interrupted by a charge from the suspect’s guard dogs. Also, they suspect the man of being involved in a kidnapping; shouldn’t Frank have considered getting abducted a possibility? Not to mention worse fates, like being injured or killed?

Chet seems to have figured things out, though. When Frank and Joe ask him to pose as a cable installer and tell him, “Just check out the person’s reaction to the name. That’s all,” Chet says, “Every time you say ‘that’s all,’ I seem to get knocked out or tied up!”

Joe is not a lawyer: At one point, when Joe picks up a real estate contract and starts browsing it, the narration notes his lack of legal knowledge. For an “amateur” private investigator and someone his mother wanted to be a lawyer, his ignorance of the law is amazing. He enters a man’s house; because the door was unlocked, he claims that he isn’t guilty of breaking and entering, although that doesn’t matter. He hands over a pair of thugs who tried to run him off the road to police, claiming they’re guilty of aggravated battery; that’s not what trying to knock someone off the road with a vehicle is, and the reader never sees them commit aggravated battery. And finally, he obtains a confession from a suspect with the threat of letting the man drown; obviously, Joe has never heard of “duress.”

This is still better than Frank. To stop the criminals from escaping, he steals a speedboat and destroys it by ramming it into the criminals’ boat.

Oh, this time you’re interested: At the end of The Secret of the Island Treasure, Frank and Joe reject Hurd Applegate’s offer of another mystery, which involved finding a lost silver mine in Latin America. In fact, they run away like little children at the mention of the boogey man. But when their local contact in Panic on Gull Island talks about a sunken treasure galleon, they are all over that action.

Opinions: I think the Dixon for this book was trying to write a James Bond story for teenagers rather than a Hardy Boys book. There was little or no help from the police — in fact, when the Hardys do secure their cooperation, they act rashly and violently before the police arrive. They attend a party to try to gain intelligence. They ignore the law to go where they want to go. They talk with the chief suspect, with each side knowing the other’s true intentions but with each maintaining a patina of civility. There’s a nice semi-tropical location as well. The villain even has a pool full of sharks, like Largo has in Thunderball. As you can imagine, it doesn’t work very well, especially since the sharks don’t eat anyone.

The Hardys’ remarkable resistances and powers are taken to ridiculous extremes. They wander into Miami off Alligator Alley and hand over a couple of thugs to police, and instead of having to answer a lot of inconvenient questions, the police take their word for things — and the boys don’t even have to invoke the name of Fenton Hardy. The boys and Iola are also gassed with the pesticide methyl bromide (also known as bromomethane), with Joe and Iola falling unconscious; they are both revived without complications. However, methyl bromide at those concentrations should have caused some sort of complications, since the pesticide is highly irritating to the eyes, skin, and linings of the nose and throat. It’s not just a random knockout gas: it’s a chemical gas meant to kill things.

Grade: C-. One of those books whose plot falls apart if you look at it wrong, and not in a fun way.