Hardy Boys #188 Farming Fear, #189 One False Step, and #190 Motocross Madness

In Hardy Boys #188, Farming Fear, Chet and Iola are worried about their grandparents, who live out on the old family farm.  Strange accidents have happened, and someone is trying to force the Mortons to sell the farm.  Frank, Joe, Chet, and Iola spend their winter holidays on the farm in order to help the Mortons.

This book is about sabotage, but it's an interesting sabotage book.  I liked the story being set on the Morton farm.

Since I read this story immediately after reading #186 Hidden Mountain, I couldn't help comparing it to that book.  Hidden Mountain is outstanding, and this book does fall short of that.  However, this book is very good, and I greatly enjoyed it.

In Hardy Boys #189, One False Step, Frank, Joe, and their friends attend Aerocirque in Philadelphia.  In Aerocirque, tightropes are strung between helicopters, and acrobats walk the tightropes as the helicopters fly through the air.  Meanwhile, burglaries of high-rise apartments occur, and the thieves did not enter through the front door.  Frank and Joe soon begin to suspect a connection to Aerocirque.

In the early part of the story, the high-rise burglaries are considered a very puzzling mystery.  The front cover of the book reveals the solution to the mystery.

This book has a very similar premise to #132 Maximum Challenge, but it is a fresh take on the crime.

The last part of the story with Frank, Joe, and the tightrope is not believable at all, and that is my main problem with the story.  The events are as hard and maybe harder to believe than the climax of Nancy Drew #84, The Joker's Revenge.

I enjoyed this book.

In Hardy Boys #190, Motocross Madness, Frank, Joe, and Jamal participate in a motorcycle competition, which is being sabotaged.  What else is new?

On page 26, Aunt Gertrude worries about the boys joining the competition, and Frank comforts her.

"Joe and I have been riding motorcycles for years," he said.  "Our dad rode before us, and our grandparents before him.  I remember reading an account of Hardys riding cycles as long ago as nineteen twenty-seven."  

On page 40, Joe gets reflective.

"Remember that time we rode down Bay Road to that house by the cliffs? ...Sometimes I feel like we've been solving mysteries for the better part of a century."

It's nice that the author inserted these references to the past Hardy Boys books in this final volume of the Hardy Boys series.  Unfortunately, the final Nancy Drew book did not do anything like that.

This story has too much detail explaining the races.  The "sports sabotage" plays out as usual.  The first race begins, and sabotage occurs.  The second race begins, and more sabotage occurs.  It's as boring as always.

I skimmed the second half of the book.  This book is not very interesting, but at least it's not as stupid as the final entry in the Nancy Drew series, Werewolf in a Winter Wonderland.