Panic on Gull Island
ISBN: 9780671692
Description
When Chet's sister, Iola, is kidnapped while visiting a friend at the Royal Palms resort, Frank, Joe, and Chet hurry to find her, and they soon discover that the abduction is only the tip of a tidal crime wave.
Reviewed on 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).
