Encounter With The Jaws of Death.... (The Hardy Boys: Swamp Monster - Franklin W Dixon)

Member Name: keeperofthematri

Product:	The Hardy Boys: Swamp Monster - Franklin W Dixon
Date:	04/09/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting plot, well described locations

Disadvantages: Dated, lack of characterisation

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

The Swamp Monster was published in the US in 1985& was the eighty second in the series. The book first appeared in the UK in 1986 and was numbered 80 when it was published by Armada.

This book opens with Frank and Joe returning from the gym and finding their father talking to his old college friend, Professor Martin Pierce. Pierce is an internally acclaimed naturalist whose been working in southeast Texas trying to conserve an area called the Big Thicket. However, there have been a number of attempts on Pierce's life and he feels that Nelson Zeigler, head of the Zeigco Corporation may be behind them.

Fenton Hardy asks Frank and Joe to accompany Professor Pierce back to Big Thicket the following day whilst he wraps up the case he's currently working on. As it turns out the Professor also invites Chet to come along as well when he finds out that the three lads were planning a camping trip. But, it looks as if trouble has followed the professor to Bayport as they later discover an alligator in his car which has been parked outside the Hardy household.

Journeying down to the Big Thicket the following day the three boys meet historian Harrison Baker who picks them up from the airfield. Danger's not far away though as an eighteen wheel truck tries to run them off the road on their way back to the professor's house. But that's just the start of things as the lads find themselves being chased around the thicket by a large man eating alligator, and, later a masked man in a speedboat.

There's house breaking, a stampede of horses, a bug with large ears and a stampede of horses to keep our intrepid sleuths occupied and puzzled but who is behind all the accidents and trouble and what motive does he or she have?


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

+ Fenton Hardy
+ Laura Hardy
+ Aunt Gertrude
+ Chet Morton
+ Chief Ezra Collig



I was moving out of the Hardy Boys target group by the time that this book came out and it was the last one I purchased. There would be another 107 books written by ghost writers under the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon before the digest series came to an end in 2005. So how did the last one I'm about to review fare?

Well, this is, I suppose, a rather average book. On the plus side the Big Thicket and it's surrounding areas are well described and make a suitable backdrop for the story. I had to keep reminding myself that the story wasn't set in Florida though but Texas because I always think of Texas as being quite a dry place whereas I think of Florida, and particularly the Everglades, as being more damp, swampy, watery etc.

The central mystery of who is 'driving' the events around Big Thicket is well developed too. On the face of it it looks as if Nelson Zeigler is the guilty party and anyone who has read a number of books in the series will know that sometimes the most obvious person ends up being the culprit. So, with that in mind, the reader is never quite sure whether this particular ghost writer will go down the obvious route or whether it transpire that Ziegler's been framed and someone else altogether is guilty. However, it's not down to detective work on the part of the boys that finally unmasks the villain(s), but the fact that they set a trap. Until that point they really don't know who they're dealing with.

On the downside most of the characters came across as faceless and little more than names on a page. I had to keep reminding myself on who they were, how they fitted into the story, what their "roles" were etc because there was nothing in the story that gave any of them, perhaps with the exception of the professor, any individual personality at all which was rather disappointing.

As with the rest of the rest of the series upto this point there are no mobile phones, no internet, very few computers and not even any mention of things like arcade games which makes the books seem a little dated.

Overall then, this book has a fairly decent plot but it's rather let down by the lack of characterisation. Not one any child needs to be in a hurry to read.

At the time of writing the new & used paperbacks are available from 1p upwards from Amazon Prime.

Summary: Eighty Second Hardy Boys Book