Bloodtyhirsty Claims Overstated ~ This One's More Anaemic! (The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Whale Tattoo - Franklin W. Dixon)

Member Name: keeperofthematri

Product:	The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Whale Tattoo - Franklin W. Dixon
Date:	30/07/09 (30 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You learn a bit about whales!

Disadvantages: Not very well written, poorly plotted, dated

Frank & Joe Hardy are the teenage sons of famous private detective Fenton Hardy & his wife Laura. Together, (& sometimes from help with family & friends) they investigate all sorts of crimes & strange occurences....

The Mystery Of The Whale Tattoo was published in the US in 1968 & was the forty seventh in the series. The book first appeared in the UK in 1973 & was numbered four when it was published by Armada.

The case this time around comes from Fenton Hardy who calls his sons from New York & asks them to try & locate somebody called "Blackright". He's contacted a collector, offering to sell him a stolen life size statue known as the "Ivory Idol". By sheer coincidence Blackright's telephone call to the dealer has been traced to Bayport (who would have thought it?), or more precisely to the fairground. Frank & Joe point out that Solo's Super Carnival arrived in town the previous day so tracing the caller might not be as straightforward as it might have seemed at first.

Just after the conversation ends, Mr. Solo turns up at the Hardy house (how convenient!) wanting to hire Fenton Hardy to deal with the problem of pickpockets at the carnival. Frank & Joe tell him that their father is working on another case but offer to work for Mr. Solo instead. The boys start their work at the carnival, intending to keep an eye on people using the phonebooth as well as dealing with their pickpocket spotting duties.

Events take an unexpected turn when Tony Prito & Biff Hooper buy a recently discovered stuffed whale & intend to "show" it to the people of Bayport. This causes people to stay away from the carnival which doesn't please the carnival workers. Tony is then "gassed", the whale is stolen & one of the clowns from the Carnival disappears. How do all these events fit together & why exactly are Frank & Joe's opponents so eager to try & capture them?


The usual supporting characters who appear in this book are:-

+ Fenton Hardy
+ Laura Hardy
+ Aunt Gertrude
+ Chet Morton
+ Biff Hooper
+ Tony Prito
+ Iola Morton
+ Callie Shaw
+ Tom Wayne
+ Chief Ezra Collig



The blurb on the back of the Armada version of this book started with:- "Solo's Super Carnival is in town! The two young Hardy detectives can't know that this will embroil them in one of their most bizarre & bloodthirsty cases...." After reading the book you get the feeling that the blurb writer was over-egging the pudding rather a lot as this is a fairly mediocre offering in the series.

Plotwise there's rather too much running around for my taste with the boys visiting New York, Los Angeles & a number of other places, although, for once, their enemies pop up with a degree of regularity so at least the reader feels as if they're getting to "know" them. On the flipside of the coin, of course, you could also view the fact that Frank & Joe keeping running into their adversaries are a little too contrived.

I remember that this wasn't one of my favourite books when I first read it & I think that's probably down to the fact that the plot doesn't gel together all that well. It seems that the ghost writer that penned this one was more intent on having a lot of running around & also resorted to a number of situations with quite poor resolutions. There's a sequence in which Frank & Joe have been captured by the gang & are then rescued by Chet & a taxi driver which is particularly poor.

Overall, then, not one for a child to put high up on their list of Hardy Boys books to read first.


At the time of writing paperback copies are available from Amazon Prime & can be obtained from 1p upwards.

Summary: Forty Seventh in the series