The Secret Agent on Flight 101
ISBN: 0448089467
Description
Frank and Joe, the Hardy boys, solve a mystery involving a magician, American secret agents, and international spy ring, and a Scottish castle.
Reviewed on 26th December 2020
The forty-sixth of the original Hardy Boys novels sees the brothers leap into action after their father goes missing during a magician’s demonstration.
It feels like we’ve entered a weirdly experimental era in Hardy Boys history, as this stands out for being much more perilous than earlier novels, as well as feeling like it’s trying to move into a new space introducing two secret organisations cheekily called SKOOL and UGLI. I don’t recall hearing about them again but it felt a bit like they were intended to become regular appearances - or that the ghostwriter was totally taking the mick.
As adventures go, this one is pretty adventurous - but I struggled a bit following the passage of time in such a short novel that seems to take maybe as much as a month with a lot of flights and moving around between scenes.
A digression from the usual Hardy Boys style, and it’ll be interesting to see whether this sort of thing continues or if we will find ourselves back in the normal pattern.
