Hardy Boys #158 London Deception, #159 Daredevils, and #160 Game Called Chaos

In Hardy Boys #158, The London Deception, Frank and Joe are in England as foreign exchange students.  They help out their friend, Chris Paul, and his father on a play.  It appears that someone is trying to make the play a failure, so Frank and Joe investigate.

I could not keep the male characters straight in this book.  They are introduced too fast and are not memorable.  Aside from that problem, this is a very good book.  I found it quite engaging.

In Hardy Boys #159, Daredevils, Hollywood stuntman Terrance McCauley is in grave danger.  His stunts keep failing, nearly resulting in his death.  The Hardys travel to Hollywood to investigate.  Frank and Joe enter a contest with Terrance in order to keep an eye on him.  Frank and Joe also meet with accidents.

On page 94, Frank gives a reporter a warning.

"Oh," Frank added, turning to face Edrich once more, "don't think I won't let it out what you two are up to if you tell anyone about our talk. Then you'd have to start looking for a new job," Frank added.  "I hear they need ghostwriters for kids' books."

This book starts out like a generic sabotage story on a movie set.  As I read further, the story caught my interest, and I read it quickly.  I greatly enjoyed this story.

In Hardy Boys #160, A Game Called Chaos, computer game designer Steven Royal has disappeared.  Phil Cohen's cousin works for the company that produces Royal's game, so Phil asks Frank and Joe to help find Royal.  Soon, the Hardys find themselves in the middle of a dangerous role-playing game that the culprit has set up.

I correctly guessed the culprit on page 19.  Let's just say that whenever someone dies in a plane crash with no body ever found, only one conclusion can be drawn.  This did not detract from my enjoyment.  Rather, I was intrigued as to how the story would play out and when that person would reappear.

I was bothered about Phil tracing the emails.  He is given paper copies of the emails, and nothing is said about the full headers.  The average printed email would not have the full headers, which is the information needed to trace the messages.

Later in the story, Phil says that he traced the emails to Europe but that his computer isn't strong enough to go further.  This also bothered me.  I think tracing the messages has more to do with the skill of the tracer than the strength of the computer.  I get the idea that the author was writing about something out of their area of knowledge.

The end is thrilling.  While parts of the book are hard to believe, I still found the story to be excellent.