Search For The Idol (Without Simon, Randy & Paula!) (The Hardy Boys: The Stone Idol - Franklin W. Dixon)

Member Name: keeperofthematri

Product:	The Hardy Boys: The Stone Idol - Franklin W. Dixon
Date:	11/08/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably well paced, Easter Island & Chile are described quite well as in Antarctica

Disadvantages: Slightly dated. A little too much running around

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 Stone Idol was published in the US in 1980 & was the sixty fifth in the series. The book first appeared in the UK in 1982 & was numbered 63 when it was published by Armada.

The book opens with Frank & Joe still in New York after the conclusion of their previous adventure, The Mystery Of Smugglers Cove. Frank notices an ad in the Times:- "Wanted: a sleuth to investigate a strange mystery". Needless to say Frank & Joe respond to the ad & find themselves meeting Kim Kimberley who's a partner in a compnay called South American Antiquities.

He tells them that whilst he was in South America the company bought a 6 inch high idol that had come from Easter Island. He packed the idol with a number of other items to bring back to the US but when he arrived at customs in New York it wasn't there. He also shows them an anonymous cryptic message he's received concerning the idol.

Frank & Joe soon find themselves on the way to Santiago to investigate the case. Posing at students they introduce themselves to Charles Bertrand, Kimberley's business partner & soon discover the missing idol secreted in a wall safe in the company's Santiago office. However, company chauffeur Julio Santana snatches the idol from their grasp & bolts out of the office.

The rest of the book details their search for Santana, along with a brief detour to Antarctica to help their father with a case of his own. But, catching Santana isn't easy, especially when news reaches the Hardys that his plane has crashed into the sea.......

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

+ Fenton Hardy
+ Aunt Gertrude
+ Chet Morton (mentioned but doesn't appear)
+ Chief Ezra Collig (mentioned but doesn't appear)

This book is similar in structure to "The Mummy Case" in that Frank & Joe get dragged somewhere else entirely during the course of the story to help out their father. In "The Mummy Case" they stop off at Rubassa & foil an attempted revolution. Here it's a brief sojourn to Antarctica where they unmask the ringleader of a gabg of thieves for the Navy. All in a days work for our boys! Still, the Antarctica trip makes for a welcome respite from the main "hunt for Santana" storyline & the setting is reasonably well described although the ringleader is rather obvious.

The main thrust of the book is, as I said, the hunt for Santana. This takes place initially in Chile & later on Easter Island. The amount of running around the boys do means that there are perhaps more characters used than you might expect to find in a book which just uses a single location but the fact that a number of locations are visited more than once means that some of the guest characters get a little more to do than the same type of characters in the other "runaround" books in the series.

As with a number of Hardy Boys book the reader is given some information relating to the settings & storyline. So, we find out facts about Easter Island & its history, Antartica & a few nuggets about Chile as well which might make the book appealing to anyone with an interest in South America or Antarctica / The South Pole.

There's a reasonable amount of plot to engage & sustain the interest & the language used is simple & undemanding. Overall though, as with most of the "runaround" Hardy Boys books I found this a rather average offering. It does enough to please the regular reader but you wouldn't list it in your Top Ten favourite stories.

At the time of writing the book is available in hardback for £4.27 from Amazon Prime. New & used paperbacks are available from 1p upwards.

Summary: Sixty Fifth Hardy Boys Book