I’ve had this book on my reading list for a while, but never
got around to reading it until recently. This is for two reasons. The first
reason is that don’t like Hardy Boys books that have an environmental theme.
This is because those books tend to be incredibly dull, and the villains’
identities tend to be obvious. (It’s almost always an evil businessman)
The second reason is that “At All Costs” is pretty much a
sequel to my least favorite Hardy Boys Casefile, “Survival of the Fittest”. If
you’ve never read “Survival of the Fittest”, it basically consists of Frank and
Joe body-guarding a kid, then wandering through the desert while the reader is
bored to death. Kip Cole appears in both books, and the events of “Survival of
the Fittest” are mentioned several times in “At All Costs”.
Fortunately, “At All Costs” is much better then “Survival of
the Fittest”. For starters, the pacing is a lot better. There’s a good balance
between action and mystery, and there’s some good cliff-hangers. The last half
of the book is really fast paced, and unlike in “Survival of the Fittest”, the
villains actually know how to use guns.
Unlike some of the more recent Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew
books, clues don’t appear out of nowhere (save for an incident at the start of
the book), and Frank, Joe, and Nancy have to put some effort into their
investigation.
The book does a good of giving Frank, Joe, and Nancy equal
time to shine, unlike a few SuperMysteries where Nancy takes center stage.
I’m don’t really remember how much Kip appeared in “Survival
of the Fittest”, but in “At All Costs”, he’s a major character. We get to meet
some of his family, including his sister, Shana, and he joins Frank and Joe for
most of their investigation. I can’t help but wonder if there was plans for him
to make a third appearance somewhere, as he’s one of the few Casefiles
characters to appear in a SuperMystery. *
“At All Costs” does have a few problems.
Nancy knew who one of the villains was by the third chapter,
as he just happened to walk into Taylor’s apartment while Nancy and Allison
were inside. In the book’s defense, this is handled quite well, with Nancy
spending a lot of the book trying to prove that he’s the villain.
However, said villain only appears in person once in the
entire book. Nancy doesn’t even talk to him, and all we really know about him
is that he is corrupt and that he’s a liar. We know a lot of this because of
monologues given by Allison and Kip about his actions, breaking the “Show,
Don’t Tell” rule.
There are some twists near the end, but one of them near the
end seems to come out of nowhere, and involves a character who never appeared
until then, and Frank and Joe only briefly investigated. While his motives make
sense, it still felt like a Diabolus Ex Machina.**
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Earth At All Costs, the
group the book is named after. That’s because there isn’t much to talk about.
They appear a bit in the first half of the book, then vanish. They are
mentioned as suspects a few times after that, but they don’t appear again.
I think the main problem is that the book has too many
villains. There’s several of them and one of them working independently from the
others. There’s also a few unnamed henchmen as well.
Then you have Kip and his family, Allison, and the other
people that Frank, Joe, and Nancy meet along the way. It felt like the writer
had a really hard time dealing with all the minor characters and villains, so
you have characters that should be important vanish for most of the book.
Also, I take issue with Joe and Shana dating in this book,
as the ghostwriter never mentions the fact that Joe already has a girlfriend.
Either the writer didn’t know about Vanessa or didn’t care. To me at least,
Vanessa not being mentioned counts as either an error or lazy writing, and I'm
deducting 0.2 points off the book's score for it.
“At All Costs” is an enjoyable SuperMystery, despite having
too many characters. I would recommend giving it a read.
Rating
6.8 out of 10
*Fenton Hardy and the Grey Man made appearances in some of
the other SuperMysteries.
** Major Spoilers below:
