The Haunted Fort - Franklin W Dixon
Revised from the original edition, first published 1965.
When I was growing up I loved the Hardy Boys series. Two teenage detectives, the brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, who along with their friends (most often Chet Morton) would solve various mysteries, either on their own or on behalf of their father, the famous detective Fenton Hardy. I loved the stories, and was also highly impressed with the number of Hardy Boys books that had been written. The author, Franklin W Dixon, was a role model for me, as a child who wanted to write.
I still have over 50 Hardy Boys books.
Once I became an adult, I realised that Hardy Boys books were still being written, which was odd considering they had been around since the 1920s, and something clicked. The horrific truth emerged.
My favourite author, Franklin W Dixon, was not even a real person.
That's right, my loyal readers. The Hardy Boys books are created by a corporate group, and ghost written by various anonymous authors. You can probably find out who the individual authors are if you look into it enough. But... I must hold on to my childhood somehow.
So, anyway.
At the start of the year I took a number of my Hardy Boys books to my classroom with me, in order that my students would have books they could grab if they had failed to bring their own to class. And in order to model good practice, I have occasionally grabbed one myself. Finally today I finished one that I've been reading slowly in occasional classes throughout the year.
The Haunted Fort is the third adventure in one of the rewritten Hardy Boys series, and the 44th in the original series, although the stories are all fairly self contained anyway.
Frank and Joe, with Chet, travel to an art school at Millwood, where the school's sponsor, Jefferson Davenport, has had two valuable oil paintings stolen. The paintings are of the nearby Fort Senandaga, and are part of a series done by the "prisoner-painter" who had been imprisoned in the fort during the American Civil War. The paintings are all similar, but it is believed that they may point the way to a hidden treasure if the clues can be deciphered.
A number of close calls occur, including tomahawk attacks, sinking boats, cut cables, and being locked in a barrel and then thrown into a lake. These are spread throughout the book, allowing for most of the chapters to end on a cliffhanger. We know that Frank and Joe are never really in danger, but the villains certainly try to disuade them from investigating in the most random ways....
The story wraps up well, and Frank and Joe save the day. Chet also gets to shine in a subplot involving an art competition, and improbably wins a prize even after his painting has been vandalised and needs reworking at the last minute.
All in a days work for the Hardy Boys.
As with most books in the series, The Haunted Fort is a fun read with a lot of twists and turns, but it is also fairly light, as suits books for a younger audience. Apparently the earlier editions of the Hardy Boys were slightly more in depth, slightly better written, and slightly longer (25 chapters to the later 20). This is something I might look into myself at some point.
But whether deep or light, 25 or 20, it is a fairly satisfying and easy read. Which is really what the aim of a Hardy Boys book is!
So, well done, anonymous ghostwriter.
Completed 23 June 2021.
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