Review: "Open Season" (Casefiles #59)

So, I’ve spent the last three weeks reading through the 3^rd Casefiles Collector’s Edition. Which is why the last two books I reviewed were “Beyond the Law” and “Spiked!”. I wasn’t too excited to read the last book in the collector’s edition, “Open Season”, because it’s by Rick Oliver.

Every single Casefile by Rick Oliver that I’ve read has been either mediocre or terrible. The only book by him that I really liked was “Murder By Magic”, and he wrote that one with someone else.

“Open Season” is one of Rick Oliver’s better books. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much. The book has some major problems, problems that made reading this book take me longer then I thought. (Hence the posting delay) 

In this book, Frank and Joe go on a skiing trip and end up investigating the shooting of a conservationist. Or be more precise, Frank ends up investigating the shooting of a conservationist while Joe tags along.

Frank does most of the detective work in this book, while Joe is pretty much his Watson, someone who’s basically there for Frank to explain everything to. Frank pretty solves the entire case on his own, with Joe finding a clue maybe once or twice.

It’s not unusual for a Hardy Boys book to focus on one Hardy over the other, the problem is that while Frank Hardy solves the case pretty much single-handedly, Joe Hardy spends most of the book acting like a dumb jock. 

He rushes into situations without thinking, and can't seem to figure anything out without Frank's help. At one point, Frank admits to question a suspect, only for Joe to act like a hothead and get them kicked off the suspect’s property. 

Frank and Joe spend most of the first five chapters of the book clashing with the county Sheriff. I’m surprised they didn’t try mentioning to him that they were Fenton Hardy’s sons, as that worked last book. Their constant arguments with the sheriff got rather boring. At one point Frank calls the Sheriff out for eavesdropping on a conversation, which to me seemed extremely hypocritical. 

There are some good things about the book. There were quite a few memorable quotes from Frank and Joe. There was some good action scenes, even if a few of them felt drawn out. Frank and Joe's run in with the mountain lion hunters could have probably have been a bit shorter. The action scenes were pretty the only scenes in the book where Joe got to do anything useful. 

The mystery was rather interesting. I wasn’t able to instantly guess the culprit behind the shooting, and the clues made sense. The trap that Frank and Joe set to catch the villain was rather clever, and it was a nice change from the last two books where Frank and Joe got ambushed and had a Q and A session with the villain at gunpoint.

I originally planned to give this book a higher rating, but I decided against it because Joe Hardy's characterization in this book annoyed me so much. I have no issue with books that focus on one brother over the other, my issue is that this book turned Joe into an idiot so that Frank could solve everything. 

Rating

4 out of 10