Power Boys #2 The Mystery of the Flying Skeleton

Jack, Chip, and their father are heading to Key West so that Mr. Power can photograph the International Conference.  As the group prepares to board a plane, it blows up!  Mr. Power decides that the delegates were being targeted and that Key West is too dangerous for the boys.  He rents the boys a motel room and has them stay behind.  Quickly, the boys find a mystery.

Since Indians were featured so prominently in the first book, I expected one to jump out of the hangar on page one of this book.  Alas, no Indians appeared.

Both this book and the previous one get rid of dear old dad by having him go somewhere on business so that the boys can sleuth on their own.  At least the boys sort of sleuth; they fight more than anything else.  On pages 34 and 35, the boys overhear the suspected villains in the adjacent motel room and then hear them leave the room.  Any other pair of series sleuths would have managed to pursue the villains or at minimum have had a coherent discussion about what had transpired.  But these geniuses?

The boys remained motionless for a long moment.  Chip was the first to snap into action.  He switched on an overhead light.  Jack lunged for the switch and switched off the light.

"Are you crazy?" Jack demanded.  "You want them to know that we think they are—"

"I want to get my clothes on," his brother snapped.  "Let go!  We're wasting time.  We'll lose their trail.  Let go—"

They wrestled in the darkness—Jack holding on, Chip trying to break free.  Blaze halted the wrestling match by barking.  Both Jack and Chip turned to quiet him.

"What a good job you did," Chip snapped at Jack.  "Great!  We had a chance to follow them—"

I have about decided that both boys have a mood disorder, perhaps several of them.  They have some serious problems.  The boys don't even get along well with other people.  They meet a boy named Matt, and pretty soon, Chip is telling him off for something he plans to do, something that should be none of Chip's concern. 

This story is disjointed with seemingly random events.  Of course, every random event is somehow part of the mystery, although the reader is never quite sure exactly what the mystery is.  Somehow the randomness fits together with a rough end result.  I enjoyed this story less than the first book but still enough that I will continue to the third book.  I have read far worse books, and I am interested enough in these two screwed-up boys to want to see what happens to them.