Hardy Boys Adventures #9 Curse of the Ancient Emerald and #10 Tunnel of Secrets

In Hardy Boys Adventures #9, The Curse of the Ancient Emerald, the Phantom, a man once brought to justice by Fenton Hardy, is back to his old tricks.  The Phantom is believed to be responsible for a string of robberies.  He sends clues to Frank and Joe, daring them to try to stop him.

This is a very good mystery.   There is more than one suspect, and it's not apparent who is guilty.  Frank and Joe suspect several different people at various points in the story. I couldn't decide for sure who was guilty.  The book even has a few twists.

This is an excellent book, and I greatly enjoyed it.



In Hardy Boys Adventures #10, Tunnel of Secrets, a sinkhole opens up in the center of Bayport, swallowing up an large statue of Admiral James T. Bryant, one of the founders of Bayport.  Frank and Joe learn of a hidden treasure, and their search takes them into the tunnels underneath Bayport, where they make an astonishing discovery.

Parts of this book read like a young adult dystopian novel.

This is an excellent story.  It has the same tone as the first four books in the series.  I like the undercurrent of tension that runs through those books and this one, like evil is lurking somewhere near and could strike at any time.

Hardy Boys Adventures #7 Shadows at Predator Reef and #8 Deception on the Set

In Hardy Boys Adventures #7, Shadows at Predator Reef, Bayport Aquarium unveils its new exhibit, Predator Reef.  The crowd is shocked to discover that the star inhabitant, Captain Hook, is missing!  Captain Hook is a five-hundred pound sea turtle.  Frank and Joe search for the turtle.

The reader learns some interesting information about Bayport that I won't reveal since it spoils how the turtle was stolen.  This information is important in a later book.

Near the ending is a scene that is lacking information.  Without getting into specifics that spoil the plot, Frank and Joe are swimming after having not been in the water.  It's not clear whether they have scuba gear or whether they are wearing their regular clothing.

I enjoyed this book.

In Hardy Boys Adventures #8, Deception on the Set, a zombie film is being made in Bayport.  Frank and Joe have signed up to be extras so that they can investigate who is sabotaging the film.

On page 6, we learn that Frank and Joe have been working on cases since the ages of 8 and 9.

The story has way too much boring detail about zombie makeup.

Why are the other zombies random kids from Bayport High that have not appeared in this series?  The story would have been more meaningful if Neanderthal or Chet had been present.

Since this book lacks the recurring characters from the previous books, the story was likely an unused plot from the Undercover Brothers series, which would explain the excessive detail about zombie makeup.  A mainstay of the Undercover Brothers series is excessive detail about a bunch of nothing, always imparted in the most boring fashion possible.

At least this story has fewer characters than other similar movie set sabotage stories.

This story is weakly good.  It could also be considered not good.  And that's exactly how I described much of the Undercover Brothers series.  I bet this was supposed to be one of them.

Discussion of Vintage Teen Books

Prior to Sunday night, Facebook did not have a good group to discuss vintage teen books.  All of the teen and young adult book groups on Facebook are full of spammers and are useless for discussion.

I created a group for discussion of vintage teen and young adult books.

Vintage Teen Books

The group is for all young adult books, past and present, but the group is styled as a discussion group for vintage books in hopes of avoiding some of the spammers of the modern books.

We also have some excellent well-established groups for series book enthusiasts.

Collecting Vintage Children's Series Books

Nancy Drew Book Fans

Nancy Drew Game Fans

Trixie Belden

Judy Bolton Fans

Hardy Boys Adventures #5 Peril at Granite Peak and #6 Battle of Bayport

In Hardy Boys Adventures #5, Peril at Granite Peak, Frank and Joe enjoy their winter break at Granite Peak Ski Lodge.  A series of accidents endangers several people at the resort.  Frank and Joe soon suspect that someone is sabotaging the resort.

This book has a different tone than the first four books.  The author uses a more colloquial approach, and it reminds me of some of the Nancy Drew Diaries books that I don't like as much. The plot is also blatant sabotage, which doesn't help.

On page 15, Chet smirks at Frank and Joe. Bess and George also smirk at Nancy in some of the Diaries books that aren't as good. I don't like it when the protagonists' friends smirk. It's a word that is better used to apply to an enemy, not a friend.

I wouldn't be surprised if the author of the subpar Nancy Drew Diaries books is also the author of this book.  This book is kind of annoying just like those books.  In fact, I refer to that Nancy Drew Diaries author as the "Obnoxious Author," because that person's writing is obnoxious.

On page 25, we learn that Chet has an old yellow roadster named Queen.  Good grief! How long has it been since we've seen Queen?  She last made an appearance in the era of the revised text Hardy Boys books from the original set, which is no later than the 1970s.

Bathroom needs are mentioned on page 66 and 97.  This is important since I plan to compare this series to the Nancy Drew Diaries series.  It is also important as further circumstantial evidence that this book might have been written by Obnoxious Author.

I enjoyed this book, but it's not as good as the first four books in the series.

In Hardy Boys Adventures #6, The Battle of Bayport, Bayport is conducting a Revolutionary War reenactment, with one group playing British redcoats and the other playing American rebels.  During the battle scene, Don Sterling is shot and killed. Someone's musket had a musket ball inside!

This book begins with an excessive amount of description about the reenactment, and it is all boring.  Even the killing of Don Sterling is not written in an interesting fashion.

I love the quote on page 54 about teachers.

You don't ever think much about your teacher's personal lives.  Or even that they have them.  They're supposed to be kind of like scholastic vampires, who just climb into big school lockers after the day ends and only come back out to teach when the bell rings the next morning.

Pretty much.

Bayport High School is a strange school.  A teacher doesn't show up for class, so the principal cancels it.  The students get to wander around the school or go home.

Except for one chapter, I was never very interested.  I was never compelled to keep reading.  The story is good, but something is missing.  I didn't feel much suspense. While the book is overall good, I did not enjoy it very much.

Vintage Teen Horror Series

I am currently reading the Twilight and Dark Forces teen horror series from the 1980s. The experience is going so well that I want to find other older teen horror books to read.  This is where you can help me.

I ran some searches for teen horror books and came upon Scholastic's Point Horror set.  I am definitely going to purchase and read some of those books, since I spotted Richie Tankersley Cusick's name as the author of a number of them.  I recently read Evil on the Bayou by Cusick and greatly enjoyed it.  Evil on the Bayou is one of her first books, and authors typically get better as they write additional books.  I have to try some of her Point Horror books since they came later.

Of course this means that I am also interested in sampling some of the Point Horror books by other authors.  The other author that interests me is Diane Hoh and her Nightmare Hall set.  I want to try at least one of those.  Has anyone ever read books by Diane Hoh?  If so, what did you think of them?

And then there's that other author who shows up in the Point Horror Set:  R. L. Stine.

I read most all of Christopher Pike's teen horror books in the 1980s and 1990s.  Pike is an author I hold in high esteem.  I lived and breathed those books.  I read them over and over again.  Last Act, Spellbound, Gimme a Kiss, and all the rest.  I still remember many of them vividly even though I haven't read them in around 15 years.  I plan to read them again sometime in the next year.

I read exactly one R. L. Stine book during the time that I was reading Christopher Pike. I believe it was Stine's Blind Date, which happens to be the first book in the Point Horror set.  I did not like it very much.  When I read it, all I could think was how it paled in comparison to Christopher Pike.  I never purchased another R. L. Stine book, and they were shelved in abundance in bookstores in those days.  I saw them everywhere but refused to buy them.

I want to make sure that I still would not like R. L. Stine, so I need to purchase at least one to try.  I am quite reluctant since I can't get Blind Date out of my mind.  Have any of you read R. L. Stine's books and do you like them?  How does Blind Date compare to Stine's other books?

As I have looked to see what is available in the Point Horror series, I have spotted other teen horror books.  If you are familiar with any teen horror books from the 1980s and 1990s, let me know what you think of them.  I want to go on another buying spree.

Hardy Boys Adventures #3 Vanishing Game and #4 Into Thin Air

In Hardy Boys Adventures #3, The Vanishing Game, Hector Rodriguez owns Funspot, an amusement park in Bayport.  Funspot is old and dilapidated, but Hector is hoping to increase business with G-Force, a new ride which is the park's premiere attraction.  But on the very first ride, a teenage girl vanishes without a trace, and later, another teenager vanishes on the ride.

The premise of this book is very interesting. Frank and Joe are on the ride when the girl vanishes without a trace.

Joe throws up after riding G-Force.  He even throws up after thinking about a certain situation connected with the ride.  I won't give details since it would spoil the plot.  I find the continual throwing up to be a bit hard to believe.

One of the culprits is extremely obvious.  In fact, this person's name is used in the back cover excerpt.  The nature of the back cover excerpt makes it apparent that the named person is the culprit, so the back cover excerpt basically reveals the culprit.  I don't get why publishers do that.

The story ends with a cliffhanger.  The mystery has been solved, but... now Daisy Rodriguez has disappeared!

This book is very good.

In Hardy Boys Adventures #4, Into Thin Air, Daisy Rodriguez is the latest teenager to vanish off of the G-Force ride.  The problem is that the culprits have already been arrested. Frank and Joe reluctantly conclude that someone else must be responsible.

The first book in the series, Secret of the Red Arrow, centered around a criminal gang headed by someone known as the Red Arrow. The culprit was arrested at the end of the book, but it was apparent that the true mastermind was still free.

I was puzzled when the Red Arrow wasn't mentioned again in the second and third books.  Finally, the Red Arrow is mentioned again briefly in this book, which tells me that we might learn more about the Red Arrow in a future book.  I like having an undercurrent of mystery run through the series.

This book is excellent.

Hardy Boys Adventures #1 Red Arrow and #2 Phantom Heist

In Hardy Boys Adventures #1, Secret of the Red Arrow, Frank and Joe are supposed to be retired from detective work.  Their detective work had begun to cause too many problems, so they had to agree to quit or be sent to reform school.  The boys find themselves pulled into another case after violent pranks occur around Bayport.  The boys soon learn that a criminal mastermind known as the Red Arrow is responsible.  The boys seek clues as they try not to let anyone know about their investigation.

This book reads in a similar fashion to a young adult novel.  The text is smaller than in the Nancy Drew Diaries series.  The smaller text also makes the book seem more like a young adult novel.  The target age for the stories is 8 through 12, the same as the Nancy Drew Diaries.

The story is very suspenseful and has none of the stupidity of the Undercover Brothers series.

This is an excellent book.

In Hardy Boys Adventures #2, Mystery of the Phantom Heist, a group known as the Scaredevils breaks windows and is responsible for other criminal acts around Bayport.  Soon, Frank and Joe suspect that Lindsay Peyton's Sweet Sixteen party may be the next target of the Scaredevils.

On page one, I was a bit worried after seeing the word "sick" used twice, as in calling something "totally sick."  I was afraid that the story was going to degenerate into another Undercover Brothers story.  Fortunately, that does not happen.

While the writing and story are not as good as in the first book, this story is still better than most all books in the Undercover Brothers series.

This is an overall very good book.

Nancy Drew Diaries #12 The Sign in the Smoke

In Nancy Drew Diaries #12, The Sign in the Smoke, Nancy, Bess, and George sign up to be counselors at Camp Cedarbark.  After the girls arrive, they learn that the previous camp, Camp Larksong, closed five years ago after some kind of tragedy.  Another counselor, Bella, insists that a camper drowned and that her ghost haunts Camp Cedarbark.  Nancy and her friends are skeptical, but when several swimmers are held underwater by something, they must consider all possibilities.

On page 70, Bella tells the story of the drowning.  "The rumor is, one of the counselors went nuts.  She was having mental health issues or something, but nobody knew. And she kind of lost it during the middle of the night of the campout."

George then mutters, "I'm pretty sure that's not how mental illness works."  Actually, mental illness can work in any way that it manifests itself.  Each time I read a statement like this, I realize that the author of the book is clueless about mental illness.  I have interacted with severely mentally ill people, and I can assure you that mental illness does not fit a tidy textbook definition.

I find it interesting that cell phones don't get signals in the camp.  One of my complaints about the Nancy Drew Diaries has to do with cell phones, and I was glad that phones are not part of the plot.

On page 115, Nancy hopes that there is not a mystery, since she wants to have time off from solving cases.  This is a character inconsistency, but it's not anywhere near as bad as what was done with Nancy in previous titles.

I knew as I read the book that it would turn out to be a sabotage book.  However, this is the type of sabotage that is not boring.  Sabotage is not mentioned until page 135.

Whenever I read the modern Nancy Drew books, I hear Bess's voice just like she sounds in the Nancy Drew games.  On page 154, George suggests that the dead camper would haunt what actually killed her, rather than someone else.  Bess replies, "Maybe the other thing was really boring.  Like an allergy to bee stings or something. Would you want to waste your afterlife haunting a bee?"  Now imagine that in Nancy Drew game Bess's voice.  Perfect.

There are some things about this story that are less than ideal, but I didn't notice them until after I read this review.  There are a lot of spoilers in the review, so don't read it unless you don't mind being spoiled about the entire plot including the ending.  The reason I totally overlooked the flaws is because I had just slogged my way through the Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers series.  That was some difficult reading which traumatized me.  I didn't realize until after I finished that series exactly how bad my experience had been.  This book, while flawed, is great literature in comparison to those books.

After I finished this book, I decided that if every Nancy Drew Diaries book were like this one, I would be very happy.  I rated the book as excellent.  After I had read the review to which I linked above and had time to think about it, I changed my mind.  I would now rate this book as very good and suspect that my rating would go down if I ever read the book again.