by Lichfield1979

Created on: November 17, 2008

The Hardy Boys # 1

The Tower Treasure

By Franklin W. Dixon

Frank and Joe Hardy are the sons of famous private detective Fenton Hardy and solve mysteries of their own when they aren't attending Bayport High School, which would be most of the time. It must always be the summer holidays or something. Sixteen-year-old Frank has brown hair and his blonde haired brother Joe is fifteen. Yes I know what you're probably thinking, but wait; I'll explain that in a minute. That's about all the characterisation you get to be honest, although I'll concede it's possible to draw a more detailed biographical sketch if you composite information from all the books in the series. There are some wonderful descriptions of food though, and a nice comedic sequence involving a practical joke and the local police.

We first meet the boys talking to each other whilst riding their motorbikes along the coast. Apparently being heard over the noise of the wind and the engines isn't a problem for them, so I guess they must have loud voices. They quickly become ensconced in a plot involving a robber and some hidden treasure, and are deeply concerned with clearing the name of a friend who gets falsely accused of being up to no good. I wonder how that goes. Meanwhile, their father investigates a mystery of his own, and the boys help him with that too, except, you know, perhaps these two totally unrelated cases have more in common than anybody thinks. I bet I'm the only person who thought of that.

This book was written by Canadian writer Leslie McFarlane in 1927, from an outline by Edward Stratemeyer, and is one of the best-selling children's books of all time. McFarlane would have been around twenty-four years old. It was revised and condensed by Stratemeyer's daughter Harriet Adams in 1959, ostensibly to modernize the text but perhaps also to consolidate the Stratemeyer Syndicate's authorship of The Hardy Boys. McFarlane was originally paid a flat fee of $125 for this work and did not earn any royalties. He led his life in obscurity but never expressed bitterness, knowing full well the nature of the contract he was signing to become the first and most accomplished ghostwriter of The Hardy Boys. Stratemeyer died in 1930 and control passed to his daughters, Adams and Edna Squier.

Because the Stratemeyer Syndicate had already enjoyed success with the Tom Swift series, and went on to employ another ghostwriter, Mildred Wirt Benson, to author the Nancy Drew series under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, it

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