Hijacked! (The Hardy Boys: Trapped at Sea - Franklin W. Dixon)

Member Name: keeperofthematri

Product:	The Hardy Boys: Trapped at Sea - Franklin W. Dixon
Date:	25/08/09 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well plotted & paced

Disadvantages: Dated in parts, some unrealistic elements

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 occurences....

Trapped At Sea was published in the US in 1982 & was the seventy fifth in the series. The book first appeared in the UK in 1984 and was numbered 73 when it was published by Armada.


This book opens with Frank, Joe & Chet being involved in a traffic accident with a Mack truck. Their car damaged, the drivers of the Mack truck offer the boys a lift to the next town. Unfortunately the truck gets hijacked by a gang and the drivers locked up in the trailer. Later Mr. Hardy tells the boys that there have been a number of hijackings against that firm, the Ortiz Trucking Company, and that he's going to Washington the following day to help the FBI investigate the hijackings.

Initially, Frank, Joe and Chet work undercover as drivers at the Ortiz Trucking Company before Joe finds himself hijacked by one of the gang. Tracking the gang down, Frank, Joe & Chet stow away on a ship named the Mary Malone and find themselves facing the gang, corrupt officials and a bomb making scientist who accidentally starts the countdown on one of his bombs......


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

+ Fenton Hardy
+ Laura Hardy
+ Aunt Gertrude
+ Chet Morton
+ Iola Morton
+ Callie Shaw


This was a book I really enjoyed as a teenager. There's a fair amount of running around but this is more about Frank and Joe pursuing the gang than searching for somebody or something that is lost or hidden so various members of the gang crop up in different times at different locations. That, to me, is much more preferable than Frank, Joe and whoever they're with moving from location to loaction and meeting lots of new characters at each new place.

The fact that they're actually trapped somewhere (a ship) for a length of time is perhaps a step forward as far as the series as a whole is concerned as in most previous books Frank and / or Joe usually invariably spent less than a chapter trapped in whatever location the 'baddies' had forced them into.

The book has a nice pace to the book and there's enough incidence within the plot to hold the interest of the reader. Most of the "guest characters" do reasonably well in terms of characterisation and emerge as more than just names on a page. As with most books in the series though, there are elements in the story which make it somewhat dated. Here, for example, Frank, Joe and Chet are trapped on an island not friendly to the USA and are refused permission to have a call connected from the island to America. Nowadays, of course, they'd just pull out a mobile and make a call, send a text or send an e-mail!

On the downside, as with many of the books published by Simon & Schuster (volume 59 onwards) the plot is "bigger" than the majority of the early books and comes across as somewhat unbelievable as a result, especially when seen though adult eyes. This time around there's a subplot involving bombs and one to take over the world. And when you read lines like "we just saved the world" there's no denying that the writers and the editors of the series have thrown any semblance of reality well and truly out of the window in favour of excitement.

All in all though, this will keep most kids occupied for a couple of hours and may well be a story that they'd like to read again.


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

Summary: Seventy Fifth Hardy Boys Book