The Hardy Boys - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional teenage brothers and amateur detectives who appear in various mystery series for children and teens.

The characters were created by Edward Stratemeyer

Edward Stratemeyer

Edward Stratemeyer was an American publisher and writer of books for children.He is one of the most prolific writers in the world, producing in excess of 1300 books himself, selling in excess of 500 million copies, and created the well-known fictional book series for juveniles including The Rover...

, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate

Stratemeyer Syndicate

The Stratemeyer Syndicate was the producer of a number of mystery series for children, including Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others.- History :...

, a book-packaging firm, and the books have been written by many different ghostwriter

Ghostwriter

A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...

s over the years. The books are published under the collective pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate...

.

The Hardy Boys have evolved in various ways since their first appearance in 1927. Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised, largely to eliminate racial stereotypes. The books were also written in a simpler style in an attempt to compete with television. Some critics argue that in the process the Hardy Boys changed, becoming more respectful of the law and simultaneously more affluent, "agents of the adult ruling class" rather than characters who aided the poor.

A new Hardy Boys series, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, was created in 1987, and featured murders, violence, and international espionage. The original Hardy Boys Mystery Stories series ended in 2005. A new series, Undercover Brothers

Undercover Brothers

The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers is a detective fiction series of books published by Aladdin Paperbacks , which replaced The Hardy Boys Digest paperbacks in early 2005. All the books in the series have been written under the pen name of Franklin W...

, was launched the same year, featuring updated versions of the characters who narrate their adventures in the first person

First-person narrative

First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

.

Through all these changes, the characters have remained popular. The books sell more than a million copies a year. Several additional volumes are published annually, and the boys' adventures have been translated into more than 25 languages. The Hardy Boys have been featured in computer games and five television shows and used to promote merchandise such as lunchboxes and jeans.

Critics have offered many explanations for the characters' longevity, suggesting variously that the Hardy Boys embody simple wish-fulfillment, American ideals of masculinity, American ideals of white masculinity, a paradoxically powerful but inept father, and the possibility of the triumph of good over evil.

Premise

The Hardy Boys are fictional teenage brothers and amateur detectives. They live in the town of Bayport with their father, detective Fenton Hardy, their mother, Laura Hardy

Laura Hardy (Hardy Boys)

Laura Hardy is the pretty and petite stay-at-home mother of Frank and Joe in the Hardy Boys novels . She is married to Fenton Hardy the private investigator and they all live in Bayport, New York with Fenton's sister, Aunt Gertrude...

, and their Aunt Gertrude. Frank, the elder brother, is 18 (16 in earlier versions), and his younger brother Joe is 17 (15 in earlier versions). The brothers nominally attend high school in Bayport, where they are in the same grade, but school is rarely mentioned in the books and never hinders the Hardys in solving mysteries. In the older stories, the Hardy Boys' cases often are linked to the confidential cases their detective father is working on. He sometimes asks them for help, while at other times they stumble upon villains and incidents that are connected to his cases. In the Undercover Brothers

Undercover Brothers

series, begun in 2005, the Hardys are members of an organization known as American Teens Against Crime

American Teens Against Crime

American Teens Against Crime, is a fictional organization in the The Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers book series.ATAC is a top secret government agency co-founded by Fenton Hardy. He created it when he realized that there are some places where an adult spy would stand out too much...

, which assigns them to cases. The Hardy Boys are sometimes assisted in solving mysteries by their friends Chet Morton

Chet Morton

Chet Morton is a fictional character in the The Hardy Boys book series by Franklin W. Dixon.-Fictional history:Chet grew up with Frank and Joe Hardy and has been one of their best friends since second grade. He usually says he doesn't want to have anything to do with the Hardy boys' mysteries,...

, Phil Cohen, Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, and Tony Prito, and, less frequently, by their platonic

Platonic love

Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...

girlfriends Callie Shaw and Iola Morton (Chet's sister).

The Hardy Boys are constantly involved in adventure and action. Despite frequent danger the boys "never lose their nerve ... They are hardy boys, luckier and more clever than anyone around them." They live in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue: "Never were so many assorted felonies committed in a simple American small town. Murder, drug peddling, race horse kidnapping, diamond smuggling, medical malpractice, big-time auto theft, even (in the 1940s) the hijacking of strategic materials and espionage, all were conducted with Bayport as a nucleus." With so much in common, the boys are so little differentiated that one commentator facetiously describes them thus: "The boys' characters basically broke down this way – Frank had dark hair; Joe was blond." In general, however, "Frank was the thinker while Joe was more impulsive, and perhaps a little more athletic." The two boys are infallibly on good terms with each other and never engage in sibling rivalry.

Frank and Joe do not lack for money and they travel frequently to far-away locations, including Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

in The Mark on the Door
The Mark on the Door
The Mark on the Door is Volume 13 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1934, purportedly by Leslie McFarlane however the writing style is noticeably different from other books in the series known to have...

(1934), Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

in The Secret Agent on Flight 101
The Secret Agent on Flight 101
The Secret Agent on Flight 101 is Volume 46 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Tom Mulvey in 1967...

(1967), Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

in The Arctic Patrol Mystery
The Arctic Patrol Mystery
The Arctic Patrol Mystery is Volume 48 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Andrew E. Svenson in 1969.-Plot summary:...

(1969), Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

in The Mummy Case (1980), and Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

in The Mystery of the Black Rhino (2003). The Hardys also travel freely within the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

by motorcycle, motor boat, iceboat, and airplane, as well as their own car.

Creation of characters

The characters were conceived in 1926 by Edward Stratemeyer

Edward Stratemeyer

, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate

Stratemeyer Syndicate

, a book-packaging firm. Stratemeyer initially pitched the new series to publishers Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap is a United States book publisher founded in 1898.The company was purchased by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982 and today is part of the British publishing conglomerate, Pearson PLC through its American subsidiary Penguin Group....

and suggested that the boys might be called the Keene Boys, the Scott Boys, the Hart Boys, or the Bixby Boys. Grosset & Dunlap editors, for reasons unknown, chose the name "The Hardy Boys" and approved the project. Stratemeyer accordingly hired Canadian Leslie McFarlane

Leslie McFarlane

Leslie McFarlane was a Canadian journalist, novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker. McFarlane is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful Hardy Boys series using the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.- Early life :The son of a school principal, McFarlane was raised in...

to ghostwrite the first volumes in the series. McFarlane would author 19 of the first 25 volumes in the series. Subsequent titles have been written by a number of different ghostwriters, all under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate...

. The first three titles were published in 1927, and were an immediate success: by mid-1929 over 115,000 books had been sold. So successful was the series that Stratemeyer created the character of Nancy Drew

Nancy Drew

Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...

as a female counter-part to the Hardys.

Ghostwriters

All Hardy Boys books have been written by ghostwriter

Ghostwriter

s. In accordance with the customs of Stratemeyer Syndicate series production, ghostwriters for the Syndicate signed contracts that have sometimes been interpreted as requiring authors to sign away all rights to authorship or future royalties. The contracts stated that authors could not use their Stratemeyer Syndicate pseudonyms independently of the Syndicate. In the early days of the Syndicate, ghostwriters were paid a fee of $125, "roughly equivalent to two months' wages for a typical newspaper reporter, the primary day job of the syndicate ghosts." During the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

this fee was lowered, first to $100 and later to $75. All royalties went to the Syndicate; all correspondence with the publisher was handled through a Stratemeyer Syndicate office, and the Syndicate was able to enlist the cooperation of libraries in hiding the ghostwriters' names.

The Syndicate's process for creating the Hardy Boys books consisted of creating a detailed outline, with all elements of plot; drafting a manuscript; and editing the manuscript. Edward Stratemeyer's daughter, Edna Stratemeyer Squier, and possibly Stratemeyer himself, wrote outlines for the first volumes in the series. Beginning in 1934, Stratemeyer's other daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

Harriet Adams

Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was an American juvenile mystery novelist and publisher who authored some 200 books over her literary career. She wrote many books in the Nancy Drew series and a few in the Hardy Boys series...

, began contributing plot outlines; she and Andrew Svenson wrote most of the plot outlines for the next several decades. Other plot outliners included Vincent Buranelli, James Duncan Lawrence, and Tom Mulvey.

Most of the early volumes were written by Canadian Leslie McFarlane

Leslie McFarlane

, who authored 19 of the first 25 titles between 1927 and 1946. Unlike many other Syndicate ghostwriters, McFarlane was regarded highly enough by the Syndicate that he was frequently given advances of $25 or $50, and during the Depression, when fees were lowered, he was paid $85 for each Hardy Boys book when other Syndicate ghostwriters were receiving only $75 for their productions.

Beginning with volume 17, The Secret Warning
The Secret Warning
The Secret Warning is Volume 17 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in collaboration by John Button and Leslie McFarlane in 1938...

(1938), John Button took over the series; McFarlane resumed with volume 22, The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery is Volume 22 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1943. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a...

(1943). McFarlane's last contribution was volume 24, The Short-Wave Mystery
The Short-Wave Mystery
The Short-Wave Mystery is Volume 24 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1945. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a...

(1945); his wife, Amy, authored volume 26, The Phantom Freighter
The Phantom Freighter
The Phantom Freighter is Volume 26 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Amy McFarlane, the wife of long time Hardy Boys author Leslie McFarlane, in 1947...

(1947). Over the next several decades, other volumes were written by Adams, Svenson, Lawrence, Buranelli, William Dougherty, and James Buechler (a teenager at the time). Beginning in 1959, the series was extensively revised and re-written. Many authors worked on the revised books, writing new manuscripts; some of them also wrote plot outlines and edited the books. Among the authors who worked on the revised versions were Adams, Svenson, Buechler, Lilo Wuenn, Anne Shultes, Alistair Hunter, Tom Mulvey, Patricia Doll, and Priscilla Baker-Carr.

In 1979, the Hardy Boys books began to be published in paperback, rather than hardcover. Lawrence and Buranelli continued to write titles; other authors included Karl Harr III and Laurence Swinburne. The rights to the series were sold, along with the Stratemeyer Syndicate, in 1984 to Simon and Schuster. New York book packager Mega-Books subsequently hired authors to write the Hardy Boys Mystery Stories and a new series, the Hardy Boys Casefiles.

Legal disputes

In 1980, dissatisfied with the lack of creative control at Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap

and the lack of publicity for the Hardy Boys' 50th anniversary in 1977, Harriet Adams switched publishers for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, as well as other series, to Simon and Schuster. Grosset & Dunlap filed suit against the Syndicate and Simon and Schuster, citing "breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition" and requesting $300 million in damages.

The outcome of the case turned largely on the question of who had written the Nancy Drew series. Adams filed a countersuit, claiming that, as author of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, she retained the rights to her work. Although Adams had written many Nancy Drew titles after 1953, and edited others, she claimed to be the author of all of the early titles. In fact, she had rewritten the older titles, but was not the original author. When Mildred Benson

Mildred Benson

Mildred Wirt Benson was an American author of children's books, in particular several Nancy Drew mysteries. Writing under Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name Carolyn Keene from 1929 to 1947, she contributed to 23 of the first 25 originally published Nancy Drew mysteries...

, the author of the early Nancy Drew volumes, was called to testify about her work for the Syndicate, Benson's role in writing the manuscripts of early titles was revealed in court with extensive documentation, contradicting Adams' claims to authorship. The court ruled that Grosset had the rights to publish the original series of both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys as they were in print in 1980, but did not own characters or trademarks. Furthermore, any new publishers chosen by Adams were completely within their rights to print new titles.

Evolution of characters

The Hardy Boys have gone through many permutations over the years. Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised, and some commentators find that the Hardys' characters changed in the process. Commentators also sometimes see differences between the Hardy Boys of the original Hardy Boys Mystery Stories and the Hardy Boys of the Hardy Boys Casefiles or the new Undercover Brothers series.

1927–1959

The early volumes, largely written by Leslie McFarlane

Leslie McFarlane

, have been praised for their atmosphere and writing style, qualities often considered lacking in juvenile series books. McFarlane's writing is clear and filled with specific details, making his works superior to many other Stratemeyer series titles. Such, at least, was McFarlane's intention: "It seemed to me the Hardy Boys deserved something better than the slapdash treatment Dave Fearless had been getting... I opted for Quality." The volumes not written by McFarlane or his wife were penned by John Button, who wrote the series from 1938 to 1942; this period is sometimes referred to as the "Weird Period" as the writing is full of inconsistencies and the Hardy Boys' adventures involve futuristic gadgetry and exotic locations.

"Of course, chief," said Frank smoothly, "if you're afraid to go up to the Polucca place just because it's supposed to be haunted, don't bother. We can tell the newspapers that we believe our father has met with foul play and that you won't bother to look into the matter, but don't let us disturb you at all–"

"What's that about the newspapers?" demanded the chief, getting up from his chair so suddenly that he upset the checkerboard.... "Don't let this get into the papers." The chief was constantly afraid of publicity unless it was of the most favorable nature.

The House on the Cliff, 1927

In general, the world of these early volumes is a "[dark] and ... divided place". In these early titles, the boys are cynical about human nature, an attitude apparently justified when the police, whom they have repeatedly helped, throw them into jail on slim evidence in The Great Airport Mystery
The Great Airport Mystery
The Great Airport Mystery is Volume 9 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1930. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a...

(1930). The police and authority figures in general come off poorly in these books, so much so that at one point Edward Stratemeyer wrote McFarlane to reprimand him for "grievous lack of respect for officers of the law." The Hardys are less affluent than earlier Stratemeyer characters; they eagerly accept cash rewards largely to finance college educations, and, with their parents, strive to please their Aunt Gertrude, because she possesses a small fortune. The rich are portrayed as greedy and selfish. This view of the world reflects McFarlane's relative "lack [of] sympathy with the American power structure." In his autobiography, McFarlane described his rationale for writing the books this way, writing: "I had my own thoughts about teaching youngsters that obedience to authority is somehow sacred.... Would civilization crumble if kids got the notion that the people who ran the world were sometimes stupid, occasionally wrong and even corrupt at times?"

The books' attitudes towards non-Anglo characters are a matter of disagreement. These early volumes have been called models of diversity for their day, since among the Hardys' friends are Phil Cohen, who is Jewish, and the Italian immigrant Tony Prito. However, these two friends are rarely involved in the Hardys' adventures, a level of friendship reserved for Biff Hooper and Chet Morton

Chet Morton

. The books have been extensively criticized for their use of racial and ethnic stereotypes and their xenophobia

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

. Vilnoff, for example, the villain in the The Sinister Sign-Post
The Sinister Signpost
The Sinister Sign Post is Volume 15 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1936...

(1936), is described as "swarthy" and "a foreigner", notes critic Steve Burgess.

We sense his untrustworthy nature immediately when he sits down beside the boys at a football game and doesn't understand it, despite the boys' best efforts to explain. When he does grasp something, you know it. "I onnerstand pairfectly," he says. Later he adds genially, "I haf you vhere I vant you now!" Can't quite place the accent? It's foreign. Twenty-five chapters are not enough to solve the mystery of his nationality.

African Americans are the targets of much racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, being depicted as unintelligent, lazy, and superstitious, "bumpkin rescuers" at best and "secretive and conspiratorial villains" at worst. Benjamin Lefebvre notes that Harriet Adams at times rebuked Leslie McFarlane for not sufficiently following her instructions regarding the portrayal of African-American characters; he writes that it is not clear "whether Adams rewrote parts of McFarlane's manuscripts to add [racist] details or to what extent these early texts would now be considered even more notoriously racist had McFarlane followed Adams's instructions more carefully." In Footprints Under the Window
Footprints under the Window
Footprints Under The Window is Volume 12 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1933, purportedly by Leslie McFarlane; however, the writing style is noticeably different from other books in the series known...

(1933), Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

men are portrayed as effeminate threats both to national security and white heteromasculinity. Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

received mixed treatment; those living within the continental United States are portrayed as members of once-noble tribes whose greatness has been diminished by the coming of white men, while those living outside the continental U.S. are "portrayed as uneducated, easily manipulated, or semi-savage." However, Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

s are generally treated as equals; the Hardy Boys as well as their father speak Spanish, and Mexico's history and culture are treated with respect and admiration.

1959–1979

The Hardy Boys volumes were extensively revised beginning in 1959 at the insistence of publishers Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap

and against the wishes of Harriet Adams. The revision project, which also encompassed the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories was the long-running "main" Nancy Drew series, published between 1930 and 2003. Initially, titles were published by Grosset & Dunlap, but with #57 publication switched to Simon & Schuster. Most people consider these first 56 to be the original series and consider the...

, was sparked largely by letters that parents had been writing to Grosset & Dunlap since at least 1948, complaining about the prevalence of racial stereotypes in the books. Volume 14 in the Hardy Boys series, The Hidden Harbor Mystery
The Hidden Harbor Mystery
The Hidden Harbor Mystery is Volume 14 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1935, purportedly by Leslie McFarlane; however, the writing style is noticeably different from other books in the series known...

(1935), was singled out for particular and repeated attention for its portrayal of a black criminal who organizes a gang of black boys and treats whites disrespectfully. As one parent put it, the books were "ingraining the old race-riot type of fear." As such letters became more frequent, Grosset & Dunlap informed the Stratemeyer Syndicate that the books must be revised and such stereotypes excised. The end result, however, was less the removal of stereotypes than the removal of non-white characters altogether. and the creation of an "ethnically cleansed Bayport", By the 1970s, however, the series began to re-introduce black characters.

An additional rationale for the revisions was a drop in sales, which became particularly significant by the mid-1960s. Accordingly, the revisions focused on streamlining the texts, as well as eliminating stereotypes. The books were shortened from 25 chapters to 20 and the writing style was made terser. Difficult vocabulary words such as "ostensible" and "presaged" were eliminated, as was slang. As a result of the new, more streamlined writing style, the books focus more on non-stop action than on building atmosphere, and "prolonged suspense [is] evaporated." The books were also aimed at an increasingly younger audience with shorter attention spans. For this reason, many commentators find the new versions nothing less than "eviscerated", foremost among them being the first Hardy Boys ghostwriter, Leslie McFarlane, who agreed with a reporter's statement that the books had been "gutted".

"Great, Dad!" Frank said, jumping to his feet. "With spring vacation coming up we won't miss any time at school!"

"Are your passports up to date?" his father asked.

"Sure, we always keep them that way."

The Arctic Patrol Mystery, 1969

In the course of revising and modernizing the series, many plots were completely re-written. The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery is Volume 22 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1943. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a...

(1943), for example, was changed from a plot involving an actual flickering torch used as a signal by a gang to a plot featuring a rock group called "The Flickering Torch". When plots were kept, their more lurid elements were eliminated; Vilnoff, the villain in The Sinister Sign-Post, was changed from a criminal who compulsively sculpts miniature models of his own hands to a car thief without such eccentricities, and another villain, Pedro Vincenzo, who branded his victims no longer does so in the revised version of The Mark on the Door (1934, rev. 1967).

The books became more respectful of law and authority. Even villains no longer smoked or drank, and scenes involving guns and shoot-outs were compressed or eliminated, in favor of criminals simply giving themselves up. The boys, too, become more respectful of rules and of the law; for example, they no longer drive faster than the speed limit even in pursuit of a villain. The Hardys also became more and more wealthy, prompting the criticism that the "major problem in [these volumes] is that the Hardy Boys have risen above any ability to identify with people like the typical boys who read their books. They are members and agents of the adult ruling class, acting on behalf of that ruling class."

1979–2005

"A secret door!" Joe said.

"We haven't seen one of these in, oh, several months," Frank said.

Casefiles #65, No Mercy, 1992

The Hardy Boys began to be published in paperback in 1979. The Hardys were also featured in two new series, the Hardy Boys Casefiles and the Clues Brothers. The latter series, modeled on the Nancy Drew Notebooks

Nancy Drew Notebooks

The Nancy Drew Notebooks are a series of books featuring the amateur sleuth Nancy Drew. The stories are aimed at younger readers and portray an 8-year-old Nancy and her friends in the third grade. The books are illustrated by occasional black and white drawings...

, was aimed at a younger audience, and ran from 1997 to 2000. In contrast, the Casefiles, begun a decade earlier in 1987, was aimed at an older audience than the Hardy Boys Mystery Stories. In the new series, the Hardys work with a secret government organization simply called the "Network", with which they collaborate to "infiltrate organized crime, battle terrorists and track down assassins around the world." The Hardys' personalities are portrayed as more separate and distinct, and they sometimes fight; in the first of the series, Dead on Target
Dead On Target
Dead on Target is the first book in The Hardy Boys Casefiles series. It was first published in the year 1987.-Plot summary:Joe Hardy's girlfriend, Iola Morton, is caught in a car bomb and dies. Joe is unable to believe it. The brothers begin their investigation...

, for example, the brothers brawl after Frank tries to restrain Joe after Joe's girlfriend, Iola Morton, is killed by a car bomb. In general, the series is more violent, and the Hardy Boys carry various guns; Lines like "Joe! Hand me the Uzi!" are not out of character. Barbara Steiner, a Casefiles ghostwriter, describes a sample plot outline: "I was told that Joe Hardy would get involved with a waitress, a black widow kind of character, and that Joe would get arrested for murder. I was told the emphasis was on high action and suspense and there had to be a cliff-hanger ending to every chapter."

2005–present

The long-running Hardy Boys Mystery Stories series ended in 2005 and was replaced with a reboot series, The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers
Undercover Brothers
The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers is a detective fiction series of books published by Aladdin Paperbacks , which replaced The Hardy Boys Digest paperbacks in early 2005. All the books in the series have been written under the pen name of Franklin W...

. In these volumes, the Hardys' adventures are narrated in the first person, each brother alternating chapters. This fresh approach to telling the adventures reveals two boys quite foreign to how they have been portrayed before, egotistical and jealous, and long time readers will find few connections with the boys previous personalities. The boys' Aunt Gertrude becomes "Trudy", their mother Laura is given a career as a librarian, and their father is semi-retired. The boys are given their cases by a secret group known as ATAC, an acronym for American Teens Against Crime

American Teens Against Crime

. In this new series, the Hardy Boys seem "more like regular kids – who have lots of wild adventures – in these books, which also deal with issues that kids today might have thought about. For example, the second book in the series, 'Running on Fumes,' deals with environmentalists who go a little too far to try to save trees." The Hardys are also featured in a new graphic novel

Graphic novel

A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...

series, begun in 2005 and produced by Papercutz, and a new early chapter book series called The Hardy Boys: Secret Files, begun in 2010 by the publisher Simon & Schuster under their Aladdin imprint.

Books

The longest-running series of books to feature the Hardy Boys is the Hardy Boys Mystery Stories, sometimes also called the Hardy Boys Mysteries. The series ran from 1927 to 2005 and comprised 190 volumes, although some consider only the first 58 volumes of this series to be part of the Hardy Boys "canon". The Hardy Boys also appeared in 127 volumes of the Casefiles series and are currently the heroes of the Undercover Brothers series.

International publications

Hardy Boys books have been extensively re-printed in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, with new illustrations and cover art. The Hardys' adventures have also been translated into over 25 languages, including Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

, Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, Malay

Malay language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...

, and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

. The books are widely read in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

's Kyoto Sangyo University

Kyoto Sangyo University

is a private university in Kita-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan.- History :The university was established in 1965. The founder was an astronomer named Toshima Araki , who intended to nurture students so that they could have their spiritual foundation upon the traditions of Japanese culture and contribute...

listed 21 Hardy Boys books on its reading list for freshmen in the 1990s.

Television

There have been five separate Hardy Boys television adaptions. In the late 1950s, Disney contracted with the Stratemeyer Syndicate

Stratemeyer Syndicate

and Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap

to produce two Hardy Boys TV serials, starring Tim Considine

Tim Considine

Timothy Daniel "Tim" Considine is a former American child actor and young adult actor who was popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s...

and Tommy Kirk

Tommy Kirk

Thomas Lee "Tommy" Kirk is a former American actor, and later a businessman.-Disney years:Kirk was discovered by talent agents at the age of thirteen in a production of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California...

. The first of the serials, The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure, was aired on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1956 during the show's second season. To appeal to the show's audience, the Hardy Boys were portrayed as younger than in the books, seeming to be 11 or 12 years old. The script, written by Jackson Gillis

Jackson Gillis

Jackson Clark Gillis was an American radio and television scriptwriter whose career spanned more than 40 years and encompassed a wide range of genres....

, was based on the first Hardy Boys book, The Tower Treasure
The Tower Treasure
The Tower Treasure is the first volume in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap. The book ranks 55th on Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Book List for the United States, with 2,209,774 copies sold as of 2001...

, and the serial was aired in 19 episodes of 15 minutes each with production costs of $5,700. A second serial, The Mystery of Ghost Farm, followed in 1957, with an original story by Jackson Gillis.

In the mid-1960s, sales of Hardy Boys books began to drop. The Stratemeyer Syndicate conducted a survey, which revealed that the decline in sales was due to the perceived high cost of the books and to competition from television. As a result, the Syndicate approved an hour-long pilot

Television pilot

A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

for a new Hardy Boys television show. The pilot, based on The Mystery of the Chinese Junk
The Mystery of the Chinese Junk
The Mystery of the Chinese Junk is Volume 39 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by James Duncan Lawrence The Mystery of the Chinese Junk is Volume 39 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories...

, was aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1967 and starred Tim Matthieson

Tim Matheson

Tim Matheson is an American actor, director and producer. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the smooth-talking Eric 'Otter' Stratton in the 1978 comedy National Lampoon's Animal House and has had a variety of other well-known roles, including providing the voice of the lead character...

(later Matheson) as Joe Hardy and Rick Gates as Frank. Both actors were 20 at the time of production and portrayed the Hardy Boys as young adults rather than children, as they had been in the Mickey Mouse Club serials. The show did poorly, however, and the series was abandoned.

Two years later, in 1969, the American Broadcasting Company

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

aired a Saturday morning cartoon

Saturday morning cartoon

A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...

series based on the Hardy Boys; the series was produced by Filmation

Filmation

Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...

and ran from 1969 to 1971. In this series, the Hardys were members of a rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

band. A group of professional musicians performed all the songs on the series, and toured across the United States. The animated series produced two bubblegum music albums "of moderate quality with no commercial success." The series was notable for being the first cartoon to include a black character. The show took note of current concerns; although aimed at a young audience, some plot lines dealt with illegal drugs, and the animated Frank and Joe spoke directly to children about not smoking and the importance of wearing seat belts.

ABC aired another series featuring the Hardy Boys, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries is a television series which aired for three seasons on ABC...

, from 1977 to 1979. The prime time

Prime time

Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...

series starred Parker Stevenson

Parker Stevenson

Parker Stevenson is an American television and film actor.-Career:His first notable screen appearance was a starring role in the 1972 movie A Separate Peace...

and Shaun Cassidy

Shaun Cassidy

Shaun Paul Cassidy is an American actor, singer, writer, and producer. He is the eldest son of Academy Award winning actress Shirley Jones, and the second son of Tony award-winning actor Jack Cassidy...

as Frank and Joe Hardy; Pamela Sue Martin

Pamela Sue Martin

Pamela Sue Martin is an American actress best known for playing Nancy Drew on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries TV series and Fallon Carrington Colby on the ABC nighttime soap opera Dynasty.-Biography:...

and later Janet Louise Johnson played Nancy Drew. During the first season, the series alternated between episodes featuring the Hardy Boys one week and Nancy Drew the next. The Hardy Boys were cast as young adults (Stevenson and Cassidy were 24 and 18 respectively during the filming of the first episodes) to appeal to a prime time television audience. The series featured original plots as well as ones based on Hardy Boys books, among them The Disappearing Floor
The Disappearing Floor
The Disappearing Floor is Volume 19 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by John Button in 1940. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a project...

and The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery
The Flickering Torch Mystery is Volume 22 in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap.This book was written for the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Leslie McFarlane in 1943. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a...

. The series received an Emmy nomination and featured a number of guest stars, including Kim Cattrall

Kim Cattrall

Kim Victoria Cattrall is an English actress. She is known for her role as Samantha Jones in the HBO comedy/romance series Sex and the City, and for her leading roles in the 1980s films Police Academy, Big Trouble in Little China, Mannequin, and Porky's...

, Ray Milland

Ray Milland

Ray Milland was a Welsh actor and director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985, and he is best remembered for his Academy Award–winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend , a sophisticated leading man opposite a corrupt John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind , the murder-plotting...

, Howard Duff

Howard Duff

Howard Green Duff was an American actor of film, television, stage, and radio.Duff was born in Charleston, Washington, now a part of Bremerton. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in Seattle in 1932 where he began acting in school plays only after he was cut from the basketball team...

, and Ricky Nelson

Ricky Nelson

Eric Hilliard Nelson , better known as Ricky Nelson or Rick Nelson, was an American singer-songwriter, instrumentalist, and actor...

. During the second season, the series format changed to focus more on the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew appearing mostly in crossover episodes with the brothers; midway through production of the second season, Martin quit and was replaced by Johnson. The series returned for a third season, dropping the Nancy Drew character completely and shortening its title to The Hardy Boys.

In 1995, a TV show called simply The Hardy Boys was produced and syndicated by New Line Television

New Line Television

New Line Television was the television arm of the company of the same name, in turn a subsidiary of Time Warner.The company was founded in 1988 in order to produce Freddy's Nightmares, a television series based on the studio's popular Nightmare on Elm Street film series...

, a division of New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema

New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...

. The show was co-produced by Canadian broadcasting company Nelvana

Nelvana

Nelvana Limited is a Canadian entertainment company founded in 1971 known for its work in children's animation. It was named by founders Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith after a Canadian comic book superheroine created by Adrian Dingle in the 1940s...

and was dubbed in French

French language

for airing in Quebec and France as well as in the United States. Colin Gray starred as Frank Hardy and Paul Popowich

Paul Popowich

-Biography:Popowich was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and was raised in Stoney Creek, Ontario. In high school, he studied dramatic art and played classical piano...

played Joe. The characters were portrayed as in their early 20s, Frank working as a reporter and Joe still in college. The show only lasted for one season of 13 episodes due to poor ratings.

In other media

The Hardy Boys have appeared in several titles in the Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for all ages. She was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate book packaging firm. The character first appeared in 1930. The books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published...

computer game series produced by Her Interactive
Her Interactive
Her Interactive is the leading mystery-maker and pioneer of fun and inspiring interactive entertainment. The company, with 24 awards to its name, designs, develops and publishes high-quality, mystery adventure games and apps, and is the world leader in the mystery games category. Her Interactive's...

. As of April 30, 2009, Her Interactive has announced that it will partner with Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...

to release its own series of Hardy Boys games. The first game in the series is titled Treasure on the Tracks and is scheduled to be released in 2009 for Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...

.

JoWood Productions and DreamCatcher Games
DreamCatcher Games
DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. is a Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based publisher of video games founded in 1996 by Richard Wah Kan.-Beginnings:...

have released a Hardy Boys computer game called The Hidden Theft
The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft
The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft is the first title in The Hardy Boys PC game series created by JoWood Productions and The Adventure Company...

. Jesse McCartney
Jesse McCartney
Jesse McCartney is an American singer-songwriter, actor and voice actor. McCartney achieved fame in the late 1990s on the daytime drama All My Children as JR Chandler. He later joined boy band Dream Street, and eventually branched out into a solo musical career...

and Cody Linley
Cody Linley
Cody Martin Linley is an American actor and singer. He is best known for his recurring role as Jake Ryan in the television series Hannah Montana and for being a contestant on the seventh season of Dancing With The Stars, in which he was partnered with Julianne Hough.-Career:Linley made his acting...

are the voices of Frank and Joe.

The Hardy Boys have also been used to sell a variety of merchandise over the years, much of it tied to television adaptations. They have appeared in several board games, comic books, coloring books, and activity books, jigsaw puzzles, and lunch boxes; two LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

s, Here Come the Hardy Boys and The Hardy Boys Wonderland; a Viewmaster set, a toy truck, charm bracelet
Charm bracelet
A charm bracelet is an item of jewelry worn around the wrist. It carries personal "charms": decorative pendants or trinkets which signify important things in the wearer's life.-History:...

s, rings, wristwatches, greeting cards, jeans, and guitars.

In July 2009 DreamCatcher Games
DreamCatcher Games
DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. is a Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based publisher of video games founded in 1996 by Richard Wah Kan.-Beginnings:...

released another computer game called The Perfect Crime.

The Hardy Boys have been parodied in the animated series South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...

in an episode titled "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce," where the "Hardly Boys" investigate a 9/11 conspiracy theory
9/11 conspiracy theories
9/11 conspiracy theories are theories that disagree with the widely accepted account that the September 11 attacks were perpetrated solely by al-Qaeda. These theories arose because of what proponents of the conspiracy theories believe to be inconsistencies in the official conclusions or some...

.

Thematic analysis

The Hardy Boys have been called "a cultural touchstone all over the world". Their adventures have been continuously in print since 1927. The series was an instant success: by mid-1929 over 115,000 books had been sold, and as of 2008 the books were selling over a million copies a year (the first Hardy Boys book, The Tower Treasure, alone sells over 100,000 copies a year). Worldwide, over 70 million copies of Hardy Books have been sold. A number of critics have tried to explain the reasons for the characters' longevity.

One explanation for this continuing popularity is that the Hardy Boys are simple wish-fulfillment. Their adventures allow readers to vicariously experience an escape from the mundane. At the same time, Frank and Joe live ordinary lives when not solving mysteries, allowing readers to identify with characters who seem realistic and whose parents and authority figures are unfailingly supportive and loving. The Hardy Boys also embody an ideal of masculinity: by their very name they "set the stage for a gentrified version of hardness and constructed hardiness as an ideal for modern American males", part of the "cultural production of self-control and mastery as the revered ideal for the American man." Further, according to Meredith Wood, the characters embody not just an ideal of masculinity, but an ideal of white masculinity. She argues that "racist stereotypes are ... fundamental to the success of the Hardy Boys series." In support of this claim, Wood cites the replacement of one stereotype (evil Chinese) with another (evil Latin Americans) in the original and revised versions of Footprints Under the Window and the popularity of the Applewood Books

Applewood Books

Applewood Books is a book publishing company founded by Phil Zuckerman in 1976. They specialize in publishing exacting recreations of historic books, including complex reprints of children's art and pop-up books and other books published by methods which duplicate antique publishing techniques. ...

reprints of the original, unrevised texts.

Critic Jeffery P. Dennis argues that one reason for the books' popularity is that they, especially in the early volumes, provide readers with something they cannot get in other media: homoromance

Homoeroticism

Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...

. While the Hardy Boys have nominal girlfriends in Callie Shaw and Iola Morton, the boys exhibit little interest in them, planning no individual dates with them, for example. Instead, the Hardys spend time in the early volumes with male friends; "Frank favors chubby, good-natured Chet, who frets over household chores, befriends girls, and eventually goes to art school" while Joe "favors Biff, with 'muscles like steel,' who dislikes school chores, dislikes girls, and plays every school sport." Later, the Hardys no longer have particular friends; they do everything as a group: rescue each other from being tied up, finish each other's sentences, attend the same classes at school despite their age difference, and never argue or disagree with each other. According to Dennis, they "behave precisely as if their bond is romantic", but they are portrayed as brothers because the culture at large demanded that latent homoeroticism be masked by girlfriends and fraternalism. However, critic Gary Westfahl argues that the Hardy Boys are neither heterosexual or homosexual, but asexual, although he and others suggest that Chet is portrayed as a feminine male character.

The Hardys' ignorance of sex and their increasing respect for the law, along with the possibility of homoerotic tones to the books, have led to some negative perceptions and many parodies of the characters. They are "well-scrubbed Boy Scout types" who "fetishized squareness". They have been parodied numerous times, in such works as The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of Where Babies Come From by Christopher Durang

Christopher Durang

Christopher Ferdinand Durang is an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s.- Life :...

, The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical by Timothy Cope and Paul Boesing, and Mabel Maney's novel A Ghost in the Closet: A Hardly Boys Mystery. National Lampoon ran an article in 1985 entitled "The Undiscovered Notebooks of Franklin W. Dixon," in which the authors "purport to have stumbled upon some unpublished Hardy Boys manuscripts", including "The Party Boys and the Case of the Missing Scotch" and "The Hardly Boys in the Dark Secret of the Spooky Closet".

Others have pointed to the Hardy Boys' relationship with their father as a key to the success of the series. As Tim Morris notes, while Fenton Hardy is portrayed as a great detective, his sons are usually the ones that solve cases, making Fenton Hardy a paradoxical figure:

He is always there, he knows everything. He is infallible but always failing. When the Boys rescue him, he is typically emaciated, dehydrated, semi-conscious, delirious; they must succor him with candy bars and water. He can take on any shape, but reveals his identity within moments of doing so. He never discusses a case except the one he's working on in a given novel, so that his legendary close-mouthedness turns to garrulousness when a Hardy Boys novel begins, which is of course the only time we ever get to see him. All the same, he only discusses the case in enough detail to mislead his sons and put them in mortal danger. He has systems of information and data-gathering that put the FBI to shame, yet he is always losing his case notes, his ciphers, his microfilm, or some other valuable clue, usually by leaving it in his extra pair of pants, meaning that the Boys have to drive to Canada or Florida or somewhere to retrieve it. I suppose he isn't mysterious at all; he simply embodies what many think of their own fathers: utterly powerful, contemptibly inept.

As a result, the Hardy Boys are able both to be superior to their father and to gain the satisfaction of "fearlessly making their dad proud of them."

In the end, many commentators find that the Hardy Boys are largely successful because their adventures represent "a victory over anxiety". The Hardy Boys series teaches readers that "although the world can be an out-of-control place, good can triumph over evil, that the worst problems can be solved if we each do our share and our best to help others."

External links

The Hardy Boys Wiki. A wiki hosted by Wikia, that anyone can edit.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Premise

Creation of characters

Ghostwriters

Legal disputes

Evolution of characters

1927–1959

1959–1979

1979–2005

2005–present

Books

International publications

Television

In other media

Thematic analysis

Further reading

External links