Hardy Boys #98 Spark of Suspicion, #99 Dungeon of Doom, and #100 Island Treasure

In Hardy Boys #98, Spark of Suspicion, someone is threatening to sabotage the Founder's Day fireworks display.  Frank and Joe use their jobs at the television station, WBPT, to investigate the fireworks company, where they suspect that the saboteur works.

One employee of the fireworks company goes out of his way to cooperate with Frank and Joe.  He makes copies of some of the private files of the company and gives the boys information that incriminates certain employees.  I was suspicious of him from the beginning because he is too helpful.

On page 122, Frank and Joe finally figure it out.  They realize that the culprit is the one person who was feeding them misleading information.  Right, guys. You should have been suspicious of that person much sooner.

The action ends on the penultimate page with no time for boring questions and answers.  That's good, because I don't get bored when that happens.

Even though the villain is quite predictable, I enjoyed this book.

In Hardy Boys #99, Dungeon of Doom, Frank and Joe sit in on a meeting of the Greater Bayport Area Wizards and Warriors Club.  The members learn that another member has been threatened, so Frank and Joe go with them to an abandoned mine that the group uses for its role-playing games.

The entrance to the mine is blasted shut soon after the group enters the mine.  They are trapped and find themselves in a dangerous role-playing game that their enemy has set up for them.  There appears to be no exit from the mine, and deadly traps have been placed everywhere.

The book is good, and I enjoyed it.  However, I do feel that the story could have been written better.  The events in the mine are told in a perfunctory fashion that leaves them less thrilling than they could have been. 

In Hardy Boys #100, The Secret of the Island Treasure, Frank and Joe revisit the scene of their very first case.  Hurd Applegate's mansion is being turned into condominiums.  The boys find a secret workroom in the tower, and in the workroom, they find a map that shows the location of a treasure on a nearby island. 

I had trouble figuring out how a workroom could be hidden in the tower.  Applegate knew about the workroom but could never find it.  Wouldn't someone have noticed that the inside of the tower is smaller than the outside of the tower?  Couldn't they have used that information to figure out the location of the hidden workroom?

On page 63, the boys are in a pit that they have dug on the island.  Water begins coming into the pit.  Frank wonders where the water is coming from.  Let's think about this.  The boys are on an island in the ocean.  Where do you think the source of the water is?  Joe notices that the water is salty, and the boys are further puzzled.  They wonder why saltwater would seep into a pit on the island!  And these boys are famous detectives?

The ending of this book does not drag.  There is more than one villain, and they are not working together, so the reader is left guessing.

This is a very good book.