Books 33 and 34 - Double your (mystery-solving) pleasure.

Titles: Shock Waves (1989) and Dangerous Games (1991)
Author: Carolyn Keene

Annnnyway, a while ago I read some Hardy Boys books and mentioned that Nancy Drew was about a million times cooler than they were. But! Having now read two Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Mysteries I can inform you that it's probably only about a hundred times when they're hanging out together. I assume Nancy's coolness rubs off on Frank and Joe.

The first thing to tell you is that both of these books have HORRENDOUS puns as their titles. Shock Waves takes place during a seaside holiday, and Dangerous Games is set (during another holiday) at some kind of international athletic competition. The second important thing is that the characters have "grown up" a bit since their earlier books. By "grown up" I mean that Joe's girlfriend (or his favourite date) Callie... died. In a terrorist bombing. And now Frank and Joe work for some mysterious international organisation where they do undercover work. In other words, you need to suspend your disbelief even further than you had to back in the 70's.

Since Nancy is a girl, her equivalent grown-upness is that she occasionally has fights and/or temporarily breaks up with her boyfriend, Ned. Perhaps the writers went to the Todd Wilkins and Elizabeth Wakefield school of relationship writing. In the course of these two books, Ned proves himself to be jealous of pretty much every guy Nancy spends time with, particularly Frank Hardy. To be fair, Nancy thinks Frank is hot like jalapeños, but she loves Ned and would never do anything to hurt him, so Ned kind of comes across as a huge dick. Since in Nancy's own books he's generally really sweet and supportive, I'm going to choose to believe he's been corrupted by the Hardys.

Anyway, in Shock Waves, Joe's dead girlfriend's ring that is the only thing he has to remember her by, (sob), gets stolen. The boys are determined to track the thief down. Nancy, meanwhile, starts to think that someone wants her new friend Buck dead when he first claims to have seen a dead body and is then attacked by poisonous jellyfish. The cases turn out to be related! I did not see that coming. Most of the plot surrounds Buck hitting on Nancy, and Nancy not noticing, and Ned getting jealous. This is actually not what I look for in a mystery, Nancy dear.

Dangerous Games is so much more awesome. Nancy and the boys are both seperately called to investigate when an international sporting star starts getting threatening notes, and everyone, including Nancy's friends Bess and George (yay!) go undercover. George (who's the sporty one) turns out to be so good at swimming that she considers taking it up professionally, and the sporting star's sister is totally hot for her. This is awesome, because usually it's Bess (the pretty, girly one) that all the guys want. Sorry, did I say I don't want to read about relationships in my mysteries? I meant I don't want to read about melodramatic relationships in my mysteries. Meanwhile Nancy and the Hardys realise that the threat has something to do with a drugs scandal that happened five years before, and I totally called who the bad guy was going to be ages before any of them did. Clearly I would make a much better teen detective than the Hardy Boys! But not Nancy. Her and I would just hang out with George and Bess and solve mysteries and be BFFs for ever and ever and ever.

Sometimes I guess we'd let the Hardy Boys join us and, IDK, fight vampires or something.



In conclusion: I need to get my hands on some more of these books.

One last thing - I know I'm late posting again! But here's why:

His name is Frosting. Frosting the Snowman. He took a while to make.

Books 28 and 29: "There was nothing the two brothers liked more than tackling a tough case."

Do you know what teenagers love doing best? No, it's not drugs. No, it's not groping each other in their parents' cars. No, it's not dressing all in black and talking about how anti-establishment they are. Teenagers love solving mysteries! And I know what I'm talking about, because I spent about two hours last week hangin' out with the Hardy Boys.

Titles: The Flickering Torch Mystery (1971 revised edition)
The Secret of the Old Mill (1972 revised edition)

Author: Franklin W. Dixon, although he's not actually an actual person as far as I know.

Why these books?
Well... I found them at a flea market. And they were cheap! And they reminded me of my childhood! I couldn't resist.

So what's it all about anyway?
OK, I'm going to do my best to remember the actual plots of these books, but they are honestly so convoluted I can barely separate the two.

In Flickering Torch, the Hardy's detective father is busy on a case involving the constant theft of government property, so he fobs off a new client on to Frank and Joe. Needless to say the client is unimpressed that this famous detective is telling him that his teenage sons will take his case. But! Frank and Joe are used to being treated like this, because it is hard to believe they're so brilliant! The mystery has something to do with silkworms being stolen, and the brothers start working on the farm next door to the silk-worm farm, where they talk like the inbred country bumpkins so no one will actually know their true identities. For some reason, this actually works. Then, um, I guess there's a whole lot of detecting that goes on, mostly at night, and there's flickering torches involved somehow, and the boys' case improbably has something to do with their father's, and there's illegal mining involved? I don't even know.

The Old Mill was less confusing. There is money forging going on, and... you know what? It's not less confusing. The counterfeiting is somehow inexplicably tied to this new technology company that has just moved into Bayport, which keeps having its projects sabotaged. For some reason the criminals behind this scheme set their base in the titular mill, which is far less exciting than, say, an underground lair inside a hollowed out volcano. But! Frank and Joe nevertheless solve the mystery! Oh, and I just remembered there was some kind of motor-boat shenanigans in there. The Hardy's boat is called the Sleuth, just in case you were wondering.

The Good and the Bad
Man, these books are hilarious. Frank and Joe are pretty much indistinguishable, except that Joe is slightly more impulsive because he's a whole year younger than Frank (he was the one I had a crush on when I was a kid, incidentally). Neither of them have actual personalities, though. You can tell their best friend Chet Morton is comic relief because not only is he Fat, but he also isn't Super Keen About Mysteries! He is a Reluctant Mystery Solver! Is there anything more hilarious than that? Chet's hobbies involve eating, and also getting a new hobby every book (hilarious!) Alos, you can tell that this is a book for boys, because unlike Nancy Drew, who has a boyfriend she spends quite a lot of time with, Frank and Joe just have "favourite dates", both of whom are not only pretty, but also excellent cooks. That's what every boy wants in a favourite date!

So yeah, really, really outdated. Everything is "swell", everyone is a stereotype, and each page is so dripping with wholesomeness that it is difficult not to choke on it. These books were written at a time when children's books had Bad Guys and Good Guys and zero moral uncertainty. I mean, the Hardys are so amazing that they can tell who the bad guys are just at looking at them. This because bad guys are Surly and Unpleasant, whereas good guys have Honest Faces! Oh Hardys. If only it were really that easy.

Relatedly: You might want to check out Kate Beaton's comic about Mystery Solving Teens. I found it amusing and accurate!

So, should I read it or what?
Ahahahahahaha... hahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Do yourself a favour and don't ruin your childhood.

Later this week, probably: Fairytale characters that are alive! And, in some cases, dead.