The Hardy Boys

The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book-packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books themselves were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.[1]

The Hardy Boys have evolved, since their debut in 1927. Beginning in 1959, the books were extensively revised. The books were also written in a simpler style to compete with television.

A new Hardy Boys series, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, was created in 1987, and featured murders, violence, and international espionage. The original “Hardy Boys Mystery Stories” series ended in 2005. A new series, Undercover Brothers, was launched the same year, featuring updated versions of the characters who narrate their adventures in the first person. Undercover Brothers ended in 2012 and was replaced in 2013 by The Hardy Boys Adventures, also narrated in the first person.

Through all these changes, the characters have remained popular; the books sell more than a million copies annually,[2] several new volumes are published each year, and the adventures have been translated into more than 25 languages. The boys have been featured in five television shows and several video games, and have helped promote merchandise such as lunchboxes and jeans. Critics have many explanations for the characters’ longevity, suggesting that the Hardy Boys embody simple wish fulfillment,[3][4] American ideals of boyhood[5] and masculinity,[6] a well-respected father paradoxically argued to be inept in the later books,[7] and the possibility of the triumph of good over evil.[8]

The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional teenage brothers and amateur detectives. Frank is eighteen (sixteen in earlier versions), and Joe is seventeen (fifteen in earlier versions). They live in the city of Bayport on Barmet Bay[9] with their father, detective Fenton Hardy; their mother, Laura Hardy;[a] and their Aunt Gertrude. The brothers attend high school in Bayport, where they are in the same grade,[b] but school is rarely mentioned in the books and never hinders their solving of mysteries.[11] In the older stories, the Boys’ mysteries are often linked to their father’s confidential cases. He sometimes requests their assistance, while at other times they stumble upon relevant villains and incidents. In the Undercover Brothers series (2005–2012), the Hardys are members of and receive cases from American Teens Against Crime. The Hardy Boys are sometimes assisted in solving mysteries by their friends Chet Morton, Phil Cohen, Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, and Tony Prito; and, less frequently, by their platonic girlfriends Callie Shaw and Iola Morton (Chet’s sister).

In each novel, the Hardy Boys are constantly involved in adventure and action. Despite the frequent danger, the boys “never lose their nerve … They are hardy boys, luckier and more clever than anyone around them.”[12] They live in an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue: “Never were so many assorted felonies committed in a simple American small town. Murder, drug peddling, race-horse kidnapping, diamond smuggling, bank robbing, kidnapping, dynamiting, burglaries, medical malpractice, big-time auto theft, even (in the 1940s) the hijacking of strategic materials and espionage, all were conducted with Bayport as a nucleus.”[13] With so much in common, the boys are so little differentiated that one commentator facetiously describes them thus: “The boys’ characters basically broke down this way – Frank had dark hair; Joe was blond.”[14] In general, however, “Frank was the thinker while Joe was more impulsive, and perhaps a little more athletic.”[14] The two boys are invariably on good terms with each other and never engage in sibling rivalry, except in the Undercover Brothers series.[15]

Frank and Joe are somewhat wealthy and often travel to far-away locations, including Mexico in The Mark on the Door (1934), Scotland in The Secret Agent on Flight 101 (1967), Iceland in The Arctic Patrol Mystery (1969), Egypt in The Mummy Case (1980), and Kenya in The Mystery of the Black Rhino (2003). The Hardys also travel across the United States by motorcycle, motorboat, iceboat, train, airplane,[16] and their own car.[17]