Friday, January 4, 2008
Story Background
| The Hardy Boys are brother amateur detectives, aspiring to follow in their famous father's footsteps. Frank Hardy is the elder of the two and has dark hair. Joe Hardy is the younger brother, and has blond hair and blue eyes. The stories are an unaging series, in which Frank and Joe are always 18 and 17 years of age, respectively. In the original series the brothers were a younger 16 and 15 years of age, but their ages were increased during the revision process that began in 1959. The series utilizes a "floating timeline", in which events always take place in the present day. The two boys live in the fictional city of Bayport (on Barmet Bay) with their famous father, Fenton Hardy, a private detective formerly with the New York Police Department, their mother Laura Hardy (erroneously called Mildred in The Flying Express), and their Aunt Gertrude, a character often used for comic relief. Frank's longtime platonic girlfriend is Callie Shaw, while Joe is often linked with Iola Morton, the sister of the duo's good friend Chet Morton, who is described as being a large boy who loves to eat, another comic relief character. Other friends who assist the brothers include Phil Cohen, Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy and Tony Prito. The Bayport Police Department is represented by Police Chief Ezra Collig (in Flying Express he is called Chief Finch), a close friend of the Hardys who constantly asks their assistance and advice in dealing with crime in Bayport. Detective Oscar Smuff is sometimes seen in cases as he comically blunders trying to solve a mystery. In the older stories, the Hardy Boys' cases often are linked to the confidential cases their detective father is currently working on. He sometimes asks them for help, while at other times they stumble upon villains and incidents that are connected to his cases. The Hardys have a motorboat named the Sleuth and a yellow convertible (In volumes 1–6, they use motorcycles, but this changes when Joe's is destroyed in The Shore Road Mystery). Mr. Hardy has an airplane, which is described in some books as being twin-engined, single-engined in others. Chet Morton has a jalopy called the Queen, which is at times described as being tomato red, other times being bright yellow (in The Shore Road Mystery it is green). Biff Hooper has a jalopy, Tony Prito has a motorboat called the Napoli and drives his father's pick-up truck. In 1987, a spin-off series, The Hardy Boys' Casefiles, targeted at older readers, was introduced. Consisting of 127 volumes, these stories were much darker in tone and featured plots involving bioterrorism and other kinds of terrorism, espionage, government conspiracies, cults, militia groups and organized crime. They also featured a level of violence unseen in previous Hardy Boys stories, a fact that became evident to readers in the opening pages of the first book in the series as long time supporting cast member Iola Morton was murdered by a bomb planted in the Hardys' car. |
