"Tom Swift Inventors' Academy" Cancelled?

I'll admit to not bothering with the latest Tom Swift series, but I had been keeping an eye on it. After all, Tom Swift has crossed over the Hardy Boys before, and I was curious to see if it could happen again. 

The latest book, "Depth Perception", came out last month. For reasons that I will explain in an upcoming post, I was curious if there was an upcoming book listed on the back. Unfortunately, Amazon only had a preview of the ebook on its site, so no checking there.

I definitely wasn't paying money for a book I wasn't going to read, so I went off to the local Indigo to see if I could a copy over there.  When I got there, I saw the Diaries and Adventures series there, but no Tom Swift whatsoever. 

I checked with an employee and confirmed my suspicions. There were no "Inventors' Academy" books in the store. The only two "Tom Swift" books that could be ordered to the store were box sets, and not "Depth Perception". 

Fortunately, Hardy Boys Casefiles user "tomswift2002" had bought the book and was able to look at the back cover. It turns out, there was no next book in the series listed anywhere. Instead, the back cover shows "The Drone Pursuit", which is the first book in the series. 

Every other "Inventors' Academy" book gave readers a picture of the next book's cover on the back. So, I have to assume that there is no next book, and the series has been canceled. I suppose there could be an unpublished #9 laying around, but we'll never know.

This keeps up the unfortunate tradition of the Tom Swift series lasting nowhere as long as their Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew equivalents. 

Edit: 

There has been at least one Hardy Boys Adventures book where the back cover didn't show a cover for a new book. In other words, #9 might still be on its way. However, I'm still doubtful. 

The Mystery of the Unpublished George Edward Stanley Books- Part 1

 

Thanks to “The Hardy Boys Digest” blog for finding this link. It looks like the University of Southern Mississippi has a treasure trove of HardyBoys and Nancy Drew related documents under the collection title “George Edward Stanley Papers”.

George Edward Stanley was quite a prolific ghostwriter of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, having written books in both Digest series, the Clue Crew, Secret Files, and Girl Detective Series. I’ve only read one of them, the Nancy Drew Digest “No Strings Attached”, which I do remember liking.

I do know that he’s infamous for writing two of the worst Hardy Boys books; “The Mystery of the Black Rhino” and “The Case of the Psychic’s Vision”, but I can’t really comment on their quality, because I haven’t read them yet.

Looking at the listings, I noticed multiple things of interest, including a few unpublished books. I’d like to point out, before beginning, that the only thing I have to work from is book names. Without heading to the library myself, which is extremely unlikely to ever happen, I can only guess as to the contents of these unpublished works.

The Hardy Boys: Living with the Blue People

There are three listings on the page for this book:

“The Hardy Boys: Living with Blue People/Desert Danger/Sahara Oil” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished)

“Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers: Sahara Oil!” by Franklin W. Dixon (George E. Stanley); Simon & Schuster (unpublished)

“Living with the Blue People” by George E. Stanley (unpublished)

Of the three different listings, the first contains the most files, including several summaries. The UB listing only contains research and a summary, and the last one contains only a Proposal.

We do know that the first listing is probably for a Hardy Boys Digest. All the other digests on the page are listed as The Hardy Boys: (Book title). The first listing matches that format.  

If you are wondering who the Blue People the title refers to are, this is the likely answer. 

My guess is that the book never got published because of the cancellation of the Digest series.

The fate of the Undercover Brothers book is hard to guess. Maybe it was too similar to "The Mummy's Curse"? Or maybe they couldn't find a convincing way to get ATAC involved in the plot. 

The last listing has no mention of the Hardy Boys, and it looks like George Edward Stanley tried to get it published as its own book, with the Hardys out of the plot. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were far from his only mystery stories and he wrote plenty of other stories about kid detectives.

 

The Secret of the Skeleton’s Letter

The other interesting unpublished book is listed as Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Skeleton’s Letter/Hardy Boys and the Skeleton’s Letter” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished).  There’s also a listing for Future Changer/The Skeleton’s Letter” by George Edward Stanley (unpublished), though I can only speculate that they are related.

It looks like this book at some point considered for either the Hardy Boys Digests or the Nancy Drew Digests. If the second listing is connected, the book could have had a plot involving a letter that predicted the future.

Much like “Living with the Blue People”, George Edward Stanley appears to have tried to also get the story published without the Hardys or Nancy Drew but didn’t succeed.

 

Other bits of trivia.

-The Nancy Drew Digest “Danger on the Great Lakes” was originally called “Mystery on the Great Lakes”.

-The Bobbsey Twins book “Mystery on the Mississippi” was originally called “Bobbsey Twins and the Riverboat Mystery”.

-The collection also contains writers guidelines for; the Hardy Boys Digests, the Nancy Drew Digests, and the Clue Crew.

-There’s also a bunch of other unpublished books with no relation to the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. A few of the interesting titles are “My Daddy Robs Banks”, “Murder Goose”, “Dead Bugs Talk”, and “Saving My Ghost Sister’s Reputation.

Update:

I've had to fix some things. 

Review: The Secret in the Stars (Nancy Drew #156)

Well, I’m back after two years! Sorry, I’ve had a rough time, and have only gotten back into reading recently. Hopefully, I’ll actually manage to keep this blog running this time!

In "The Secret in the Stars", Nancy, Bess, and George go to a park for a "star watch" party hosted by Dr. Stars, a famous astronomer. When they arrive, the park is empty, and so is Dr. Stars' van. While investing in the van, Dr. Stars shows up and reveals that his telescope is missing its focus lens. Is somebody trying to sabotage the show?

Nancy Drew is awfully forgetful in this book. She forgets her notebook in a public park, she forgets to ask Bess a question that could have helped rule out a suspect, and she forgets to read Dr. Star’s biography on his website. That last one is particularly annoying, as had she actually read the biography, she would know that the Dr. Stars she’s been investigating was an imposter. Even worse, she clearly was on the page at some point, as she had it printed out.

Even if she weren’t so uncharacteristically forgetful, it really felt as if she could have solved the case a lot sooner than she did. It was blatantly obvious from the start that Dr. Stars was an imposter, but Nancy takes a painfully long time to start investigating him. I also have a really hard time accepting that nobody in River Heights knew what Dr. Stars looked like, even considering the year this book came out.

It doesn’t help that there’s a 20-year age difference between the fake and real Dr. Stars.  Dr. Stars even had a cartoon logo of himself on his van, showing that he looked nothing like the imposter, and only Nancy, her friends, and one of the suspects noticed. It doesn't make sense to me. It might be nitpicking, but it was quite distracting to me and took me out of the story several times.

The other major problem I have with this book is Bess’ actions during it. She acts like a creepy fan to a pair of celebrities, causing them to have to flee the place they are in twice. Why did she think that trying to take a photo of them without their permission would end well? While she is called out on this, and she does apologize for spying on the celebrities, it still feels out of character for Bess. Bess also decides it’s a good idea to try to crawl in through a window in the middle of the night while Nancy’s doing research online, scaring Nancy and nearly getting Bess bashed over the head. Apparently, she didn’t think of knocking on the window.

This book took me a long time to read, as I waited for Nancy to figure out the obvious. It doesn't help that the book is quite slow-paced. If I wasn't reading this for the blog, I wouldn't have bothered finishing it. The book does get a bit better when Nancy finally realizes that Dr. Stars is an imposter, but by then I was already bored of it. 

I would not recommend this book, as it's one of the worst digests I have read. Admittedly, it was probably not the best book to start off with, but I've got plenty more books to read. Up next, the Three Investigators Crimebusters! 

       

Rating 

2 out of 10

A Bunch of Ghostwriter Information

I'm having some personal problems, and that's why it's taken so long for me to post anything. I won't go into farther detail, but I will try to update this blog more often. I'm working on a review right now and hopefully will have it up soon.

I was looking through LinkedIn again and discovered a whole lot of Ghostwriter information. Not sure how I missed all this last time, but the profiles might not have been there.

First, we have two ghostwriters for the recent "Hardy Boys Adventures" series:
-Ruben Sack wrote #6,7,10,12,15. He also wrote the Diaries book "A Nancy Drew Christmas".
-Paul Crilley wrote #9.

We have three ghostwriters who I know wrote Nancy Drew books, but I'm not sure what ones:
-Louise Ladd was mentioned on someone's page as a Nancy Drew Ghostwriter.
-Janet Jones and Pamela Willis wrote a Nancy Drew Digest in 1996, no information on which one they wrote.
-Cathy Hapka wrote Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books.

Finally, Stacia Deutsch wrote the Nancy Drew Clue Crew book, "Pony Problems", and several other Nancy Drew books.

Review: "Danger On Ice" (Be a Detective Mystery Stories #2)

To kick off my return to blogging, I've decided to do something special for the next month or three. (Updates are going to be a bit erratic while I get back in the swing of things, apologies in advance) I'm going to be reviewing Gamebooks, which are better known as "choose your own adventure books".

While I will be reviewing a book or two from the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, and a couple of books from the spin-offs, that's not all I'll be looking at. There was a whole ton of other series published to compete with the CYOA, and I'll be reviewing a bunch of them.

As this blog started out as a Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew focused blog, I figured that I should start with the "Be a Detective Mystery Stories". The "Be a Detective Mystery Stories" series lasted six books, with two more books* planned but never published.

The "Be a Detective" series is a bit unusual in that there are no bad endings at all. (Except for one in "Danger on Ice", but we'll get to that) No matter what choices you make, Frank, Joe, and Nancy always solve the mystery. Instead, your choices change who the villain is, and how the villain is caught.

This is a bit disappointing, as part of the fun of Gamebooks for me is bad stuff happening when you make the wrong choice. It forces you to think about your choices, and it makes getting a good ending more satisfying. (Plus a lot of the time, the bad endings are more entertaining than the good ones)

In "Danger on Ice", Nancy and the Hardys have to rescue a kidnapped figure skater during a trip to Austria.

"Danger on Ice" is surprisingly Hardy-centric. There's only one ending where Nancy catches a criminal on her own and multiple paths where Nancy does almost nothing. The book is also more focused on action scenes then detective work, with plenty of fights and chases.

The focus on action isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the action scenes were well written. It's fun to read about Joe chasing someone in a hang glider, or Frank taking out a bad guy with a snowball, but it would be nice if Nancy was allowed to join in the fun.

That's not to say that Nancy does nothing in the book. She finds an important clue, and in the paths where she goes with Frank and Joe to places, she plays a major part in rescuing Kristy. It's just that she rarely got to do anything on her own.

There are 17 different endings in "Danger on Ice", which is a good amount. There's a whole ton of different choices to make, and the paths are all a decent length. This gives the book plenty of re-readability.

The book takes the reader through a verity of settings, including trains and a castle. Snowmobiles and skis are frequently used due to the book taking place during winter. The book is (mostly) well written and well paced, and never gets boring.

Due to the book's focus on action, the villains sometimes don't even get names. They are pretty much just there to get defeated, and several times, they defeat themselves. A villain breaks his leg hang-gliding, and another one crashes into a tree while skiing.

Once again, that's not necessarily bad, after all, there's only so much space in the book and a whole ton of different choices to make. There's just wasn't the room to give the villains more depth.

The most interesting villain that the detectives ran into was a delusional man who thought that Kristy was his dead daughter, which is surprisingly dark for a Digest continuity book. In another ending, the villains turn out to be terrorists sent to assassinate a diplomat. Said assassins don't have weapons for some reason, but still. 

Speaking of dark endings, remember the bad ending I mentioned? Well, it's not only a bad ending, but it's also a badly written ending.

 If you call the police as Frank and Joe instead of following some tracks, Nancy reveals had Kristy had randomly decided to run with a never before mentioned boyfriend. She also decided that instead of telling Nancy and the Hardys about this, she would leave a letter at the bottom of Nancy's suitcase. Of course, by the time Nancy finds this letter, the police have been called. So Kristy just wasted police manpower and got everyone panicked for no reason. Good job Kristy.

Yeah, I'm deducting a point for that nonsense.

If it seems I'm being a bit harsh on the book, maybe I am. However, when I read a Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew crossover, I expect at least a decent balance between the characters. The book is supposedly written by both Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon, so why do the Hardys get way more focus? Had Nancy been given more to do, this book would have a higher rating.

"Danger on Ice" was one of the first Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books I ever read, back when I was in Grade 6. I recall liking the book back then, but that was also when I used to do more skimming through books than actually reading them. Even then, I recall liking the other two "Be a Detective" books I had read around that time (#1 and 3) better.

That being said, if you like Gamebooks, you'll likely get enjoyment out of this one. The series is also quite hard to find so this might be the only book in the series you'll get to read.

A five isn't a bad rating, that just means that the book is average with nothing much to recommend about it. I don't use the four-point scale**. Despite my issues with "Danger on Ice", when compared to other Gamebooks that I've read, it is indeed average.

I will be reviewing two more books in the "Be a Detective" series. One of the two books has Frank and Joe visiting Nancy in River Heights, so I'm looking forward to that.

Rating
5 out of 10

* The two unpublished books were "Jungle of Evil" (which would have taken place in the South American jungle) and "Ticket to Intrigue".

**An explanation of the "four-point scale" is here. I'll have a short post explaining my rating scale very soon.

I'm Back!

I know I have been gone for almost a year, but a lot of personal stuff has gotten in my way, stuff that I'd rather not talk about. I'm pleased to announce that I now feel well enough to start work on this blog again.

You've might have noticed the blog name has changed. Don't worry, I'll still be reviewing Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, but there's other stuff I'd like to review as well. 

I know that this post is really short, but there is a review coming up soon. So stay tuned!

Also, I've just noticed that two comments on my E-Mail Mystery post, and the fact that my discovery ended up on Wikipedia. If whoever made those comments is still reading this blog, thanks!

Edit:

Also, turns out I was wrong, Famous Mistakes actually got published.

Review: Dino Hunt 2

You can play this game here, but I do not recommend it at all. I don’t even know why I played it honestly.

There’s not much to talk about graphics wise, there’s two generic outdoor maps. One with grass and one with snow. The game randomly alternates between the two.

Your gun has infinite range and infinite ammo. Aiming is ridiculously easy, if you see a dinosaur in the distance, just move your cursor over it until your reticle zooms in, then click the left mouse button.

There are four upgrades available, but only three of them are useful. The camouflage upgrade is a joke. I’ve upgraded it twice, and it just doesn’t work. You are best off just upgrading your speed, gun damage, and your rate of fire instead.

The game only has four dinosaurs to hunt; Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Diplodocus. The models look fine for a free game, but there’s one problem. The dinosaurs aren’t animated. They just float around the map like ghosts. When they die they just fall headfirst and clip into the ground.

The AI is a joke, I’m not even sure if I should call it AI. If a dinosaur is near you, or near a dinosaur that got shot, it will head straight for you, no matter what. This becomes a massive problem in the later levels and makes the game extremely boring in the early levels. They only make noise when they kill you, not when moving. I’ve been jump-scared by dinosaurs in this game several times.

The first few levels are fine, boring, but beatable. By level 8 or so, the game turns into an unfair mess. Despite the maps being a decent size, the game always spawns you close to your targets. The dinosaurs are also clustered together, and will gang up you, no matter what type of dinosaur they are.

When you spawn, you have about five seconds to shoot the five or so dinosaurs charging towards you. As you can’t hear them, you have no idea where they are coming from. If they are coming from multiple directions, you are pretty much dead. If you upgraded enough, you might be able to run around and dodge a few, but even that doesn’t work sometimes.

The Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurs move so fast that you won’t even know what hit you, and while the Velociraptors become 1-hit kills if you upgrade gun damage, the Tyrannosaurs still take multiple hits to kill no matter how high you upgrade.

Let me give you an example. You spawn, and there are five raptors, a Stegosaurus, and three Tyrannosaurs near you. All of them rush towards you in different directions. The Tyrannosaurs are the biggest threat, but if you try to kill one, the other dinosaurs will get you. If you try shooting the raptors, the Tyrannosaurs or the Stegosaurus will get you. You can’t shoot the Stegosaurus because of the carnivores that are about to kill you. If you try to back away, you’ll back into one of the dinosaurs.

It’s a Morton’s Fork, everything you do ends in miserable failure. Most of the levels are luck based, you just have to hope you only spawn near a few dinosaurs, or that they all come in one direction. Upgrading only helps you so much.

Also, do the dinosaurs have some sort of treaty? Why do the herbivores care if I shoot a Velociraptor? Why do the dinosaurs all ignore each other and go straight for me? It’s nonsensical.

I’ve made it to level 37, and I’m giving up there. I’m just getting mobbed within seconds of spawning. I honestly should have given up twenty levels earlier, but I’m stubborn. I’d call this game so bad it’s good, but I can’t because of how unplayable the later levels are.

This is one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Rating 

1 out of 10