Hardy Boys #143 Giant Rat, #144 Skeleton Reef, and #145 High Tide

In Hardy Boys #143, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, Joe has joined the cast of the play, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, which is based on Sherlock Holmes.  But will there be a play?  Someone is sabotaging the production, and it is up to Frank and Joe to find the culprit. 

This story is a an obvious retread of earlier stories and is a tired-out sabotage plot.

I enjoyed this story, but it's nothing special.

In Hardy Boys #144, The Secret of Skeleton Reef, Frank, Joe, and Jamal vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia in Jamal's uncle's bungalow.  Soon after their arrival, the boys discover a dazed woman who has washed up on the beach.  Someone apparently tried to murder the woman, and she refuses to reveal what happened.  The boys have an intriguing mystery to solve.

It was when I reached this book that I realized that Simon and Schuster had begun reusing easily identifiable words from the titles of the original 58 Hardy Boys books.  Previous to this book is The Desert Thieves, which is not that obvious.  After I saw this title, The Secret of Skeleton Reef, I looked ahead at later titles and found The Crisscross Crime and The Mark of the Blue Tattoo.  I'd say they did it on purpose.

It is not obvious who the villains are.

The way the boys find the woman on the beach and the way the story develops makes this book quite interesting.  This is a real mystery without an obvious solution.

This is a very engaging book.  I was interested from the very first page, and the book held my attention all the way through.  I greatly enjoyed this story.

In Hardy Boys #145, Terror at High Tide, Callie is interning at a newspaper in Nantucket.  Frank and Joe travel to Nantucket to visit Callie, but soon, Callie's friend Alicia and her father are involved in a mystery.  Someone sabotages Alicia's father's museum, and then he vanishes!

Since this book is set in Nantucket and involves sabotage at a museum, I felt like I was revisiting the Nancy Drew Diaries book, The Phantom of Nantucket.  Exactly how many times is Simon and Schuster going to reuse the "sabotage in a museum" plot?  I guess as many times as they will reuse the "sabotage on a movie set" and "sabotage at a sports competition" plots.

I overall enjoyed this book, but it is not a memorable story.