6th May 2023

The Hardys and Chet barely break a sweat when their friend/girlfriend/sister Iola is kidnapped in Florida. This is probably the most glaring plot hole in this novel, in which the only people to go looking for a missing teenager are three other teenagers, with all their parents just carrying on with their lives.

Beyond that, it’s the usual tale of near-misses, breaking and entering to look for clues, and eventually finding the coincidences that tie everything together. Pretty standard on that front from this era of Hardy Boys books.

Reasonably well paced though and with a good variety of characters and clues, and although Iola isn’t visible, she clearly has some level of agency throughout which is more than sometimes (although that hardly makes up for the incredibly low amount for any other female character).

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31st December 2022

The Hardys and Chet spend book 106 in New York, where Joe is playing in an early esports championship - until someone starts stealing all the game cartridges.

It’s actually a delightfully retro story in retrospect, inspiring nostalgia for the early 90s, but at the time would have been the height of modernity.

The story suffers from reverting to some older tropes though - I don’t think there was a single female character in the entire book.

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31st December 2022

For story 105 the Hardy brothers sign up to be volunteer fire-fighters, which despite this being a book from 1990 still feels like an archaic way to run your fire service.

While the plot works, the characters seem to have become a lot more willing to break a lot of laws in their investigations - this in particular is full of things which would not hold up in court as legitimate crime-fighting activity.

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31st December 2022

The Hardys and their friend Chet visit New York in book 104 to see a famous magician, but more than just glamorous assistants start to disappear.

It’s a more traditional story, but continues the new 1990s characterisation of Joe as a hot-head. The plot feels a bit convoluted at the end, but possibly I was just very tired when reading it.

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31st December 2022

The Hardy brothers are once again on their summer holidays (the last few books have leapt around the seasons, almost as if they’re targeting release in different school holidays) and find themselves in San Francisco, where a horse has been stolen.

There’s a string of coincidences, but the boys do manage some investigating - they’ve become much less concerned about breaking the law during their investigations though. I’m not sure how I feel about how far they go this time.

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31st December 2022

A very computer-focussed adventure 102 for the Hardy brothers, when Frank’s first online friend is poisoned.

It’s a good introduction to 1990s computing - although in retrospect Joe’s character feels like an old man when reading with a modern point of view. It’s interesting how Joe’s character has shifted in the last few novels into much more of a jock.

The mystery hangs loosely, and doesn’t feel like it’s really the main focus this time out.

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31st December 2022

In book 101 the Hardy brothers go on holiday again to visit an old friend of their dad’s whose cabin in the woods is being haunted.

It’s a fairly typical adventure, with a range of suspects and danger. Not much of a mystery or investigation - more just a series of cliffhangers.

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