Hardy Boys Revised Text #10 What Happened at Midnight and #12 Footprints Under the Window

In the revised text of Hardy Boys #10, What Happened at Midnight, Frank and Joe are tasked with keeping a secret invention safe.  The beginning of the story is quite different from the original text, but soon, the plot converges with the original text and parallels it closely through most of the story.

I feel like the revised text is too much like the original text.  Some parts are better, like the aftermath of Joe's abduction.  Other parts bored me.  Just like with the original text, I enjoyed the first half of the story much more than the second half, when I began to skim.

I enjoyed both texts about equally, which is not very much.


In the revised text of Hardy Boys #12, Footprints Under the Window, Frank and Joe seek clues to a plot involving the smuggling of refugees from an island near the coast of South America.

I dreaded beginning this revised text, because the original text version is my least favorite Hardy Boys book of all of the books I have read so far.  I cannot stand it.  

Parts of this book are similar to the original, which is not good at all.  Fortunately, the revised text has no "Chinamen," but it still deals with foreigners from South America.  They aren't swarming into Bayport like the Centrovians of River Heights and the "Chinamen" of the original text, so at least the situation is less absurd.

I enjoyed the book less and less the more I read.  The plot is too convoluted, like with so many of the higher-numbered books.  I commented in another review that the revised text books are better than the higher-numbered books.  That is not the case with this book.  It is about the same as the higher-numbered books.

While I enjoyed the revised text more than I did the original text, that is not saying much.  I do not like either version.  I intend never to read either one ever again.