Friday, September 23, 2016

Hardy Boys Adventures #3 Vanishing Game and #4 Into Thin Air

In Hardy Boys Adventures #3, The Vanishing Game, Hector Rodriguez owns Funspot, an amusement park in Bayport.  Funspot is old and dilapidated, but Hector is hoping to increase business with G-Force, a new ride which is the park's premiere attraction.  But on the very first ride, a teenage girl vanishes without a trace, and later, another teenager vanishes on the ride.

The premise of this book is very interesting. Frank and Joe are on the ride when the girl vanishes without a trace.

Joe throws up after riding G-Force.  He even throws up after thinking about a certain situation connected with the ride.  I won't give details since it would spoil the plot.  I find the continual throwing up to be a bit hard to believe.

One of the culprits is extremely obvious.  In fact, this person's name is used in the back cover excerpt.  The nature of the back cover excerpt makes it apparent that the named person is the culprit, so the back cover excerpt basically reveals the culprit.  I don't get why publishers do that.

The story ends with a cliffhanger.  The mystery has been solved, but... now Daisy Rodriguez has disappeared!

This book is very good.

In Hardy Boys Adventures #4, Into Thin Air, Daisy Rodriguez is the latest teenager to vanish off of the G-Force ride.  The problem is that the culprits have already been arrested. Frank and Joe reluctantly conclude that someone else must be responsible.

The first book in the series, Secret of the Red Arrow, centered around a criminal gang headed by someone known as the Red Arrow. The culprit was arrested at the end of the book, but it was apparent that the true mastermind was still free.

I was puzzled when the Red Arrow wasn't mentioned again in the second and third books.  Finally, the Red Arrow is mentioned again briefly in this book, which tells me that we might learn more about the Red Arrow in a future book.  I like having an undercurrent of mystery run through the series.

This book is excellent.

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