Hey! Where'd all the water go?! (The Hardy Boys: Secret of Skull Mountain - Franklin W. Dixon)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	The Hardy Boys: Secret of Skull Mountain - Franklin W. Dixon
Date:	07/12/08 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very well written

Disadvantages: A little outdated

This story starts as Frank and Joe Hardy decide they want to go swimming, but there is a severe lack of water to do so in their favoured water hole. Investigating (as they do best), the brothers find out that water is mysteriously disappearing overnight from the Skull Mountain reservoir. As the boys investigate further, they are attacked a number of times, leading them to think that something more sinister is going.....

The Secret of Skull Mountain is the 27th Hardy Boys book. The books follow the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy, sons of fictional supersleuth Fenton Hardy, and are written by Franklin W Dixon, the pen name for the many ghost writers writing the Hardy Boys stories. This book marked the definitive move away from the main writer of the Hardy Boys books, Leslie McFarlane, as the writing style changed somewhat and a more simple and plodding style came to the fore.

The books will to many seem a little outdated as they are set in the 1920s and 1930s, the first one having been first published in the mid-1920s and a quick succession of volumes following it. They are aimed at young adults and as such don't make for heavy reading. Dixon's flowing writing style keeps the action coming throughout the books. This book was originally published in the late 1940s and was revamped in the 1970s to give it a more up to date feel. This happened with a lot of the books, which I feel spoilt the feel of the times a bit. The Secret of Skull Mountain is a well written book, with enough suspense and mystery to keep the reader interested all the way, and as with most Hardy Boys books, it is kept to under the 200 page mark.

The Secret of Skull Mountain is available from amazon.co.uk either as an individual book, part of 3 stories in 1 series or as a hardback copy, and the prices range from 1p to around the £8 mark depending on which version you want.

Summary: The 27th Hardy Boys book