Hardy Boys Adventures #22 Trouble Island, #23 Mayhem Express, and #24 As the Falcon Flies

Early in the run of the Hardy Boys Adventures and Nancy Drew Diaries series, I found the Hardy Boys books to be vastly superior to the Nancy Drew books.  I no longer feel that way.  The Hardy Boys books now tend to bore me.  Part of the problem is the first-person narrative.  I have trouble telling which brother is the narrator.  I get confused, but even more importantly, I don't care which one is narrating.  I find the text to be uninteresting.

Hardy Boys Adventures #22 Trouble Island annoyed me.  All I could think about the entire time I was reading it was that I didn't know which race a certain boy was.  It bothered me a lot, all because the ghostwriter chose to be vague.  I shared the following in my post about the books I read in 2021.

I did not like the Hardy Boys Adventures book at all.  Since I couldn't be bothered to write a review, I'll say it here.  The ghostwriter tried to telegraph a certain boy's race to the reader by being as vague as possible.  This is what I wrote while I was reading the book:  "I am really annoyed that the son has medium brown skin but I don't know which race.  His hair can be tucked behind his ear.  What am I supposed to visualize?  It's an epic fail when I have no idea.  I decided just to picture a white kid who is really tanned."

I know how bad that sounds, which is why I included it here.  I actually have grown to enjoy diversity in books and media, and I enjoy learning about people who are different from me.  I love the diversity of the Nancy Drew television series on The CW.  I shouldn't have to do mental gymnastics while reading a book to figure out the characteristics of diverse characters.  Attempting to picture the kid as white was what enabled me to cope.  Even so, I was bothered the entire time I was reading, because I knew that he wasn't white.  Also, (SPOILER ALERT) the kid with the medium brown skin is the culprit.  

 

The kid being the culprit was also irritating.  The ghostwriter chose to be vague about the one and only potentially diverse character, and then made that person the culprit.  I was highly annoyed when I finished the book.  I felt like the vagueness drew more attention to the character than if the character's race had been explicitly stated.  Making that same character the culprit drew even more attention to it.

I also didn't enjoy Hardy Boys Adventures #23 Mystery on the Mayhem Express that much.  As I look at the notes I made, I realize that the Hardy Boys Adventures are now more like the Nancy Drew Diaries books were.  Hmm.  On page 35 of this title, the book has a bathroom joke.  How very earlier-title Nancy Drew Diaries-ish. 

Mayhem Express does have some Easter eggs referring to the older Hardy Boys books plus a reference to the Nancy Drew game Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon.

Earlier this month I read Hardy Boys Adventures #24 As the Falcon Flies.  I enjoyed it marginally more than the previous two Hardy Boys Adventures books, but still not that much.  I find that something is missing from these books that the earlier titles had. 

I do have to consider that a large part of this is just me.  I'm having trouble reading most all books at this time, so I may not be in the right frame of mind to enjoy these books.  On the other hand, I feel like something has changed.