Saturday, March 3, 2018

Review: "No Way Out" (Hardy Boys Casefiles #75)

Casefile #75, “No Way Out” could have easily have been a Hardy Boys Digest. It doesn’t have much action, and much like most of the Digests published around the time this book was, the plot involves sabotage.

This time around, the target of the sabotage is Rob Niles, a champion orienteer. Much of the book focuses on his rivalry with his teammate Takashi Okira, and both characters acted like jerks to each other for most of the book. This got so annoying, I stopped caring about both characters, and started skimming through the parts where they got into arguments.

To make matters worse, something about Takashi brings out the worst in Joe, and for a few chapters, he starts acting like a jerk too. Early in the book, Rob breaks into Takashi’s hotel room to play a prank, and Frank and Joe follow him inside. When Takashi catches them, Joe gets angry at him for not listening to them, despite the fact he really has no reason to. After Takashi kicks them out, Joe says “I can’t believe we let that guy talk to us that way.”  

Later, Joe breaks into Takashi’s hotel room again, gets into a fistfight with him, and acts like it’s Takashi’s fault. I understand that Joe is more hotheaded in the Casefiles then he is in the other series, but the ghostwriter took it too far.  To be fair though, Joe does apologize for his behaviour at the end of the book.

We are eventually introduced to a rival team, as a chapter ends with Rob noticing Takashi eating lunch with that team. This of course leads to another argument. It turns out that the rival team’s coach, Malika Morris, is pretty much a female version of Takashi, and I ended up doing even more skimming through pages. I actually considered not finishing the book, that’s how annoying the constant arguments got.

It really didn’t help that the plot is pretty dull.  There’s not much variety in the sabotage, and most of it is stuff I’ve seen countless times in other Hardy Boys books.

Frank and Joe don't do very much investigating, and most of the time they either watch Rob argue with Takashi or Malika, or rescue Rob from sabotage attempts. They barely try to question suspects, and when they do try to, the suspect just walks off in anger.

The cliff-hangers are rather dull as well. Four cliff-hangers involve Rob, Frank, or Joe falling down something. One of the chapters near the end of the book ends with Rob accusing Malika of giving people Australian compasses. I think the ghostwriter was having trouble with the “every chapter must end in a cliff-hanger” rule. *

Spoilers are below:
I instantly guessed that Jeremy Foote was the person trying to kill Rob because he was one of the only minor characters to act nice to Rob. Takashi and Malika were obvious red herrings, and the book tried way too hard to make them look suspicious.

I was surprised when it turned out that Takashi admitted to sending Rob threatening notes and leaving a Rattlesnake in Rob’s bed. I was even more surprised when he got away with this, with everyone treating it as a mean prank. Also, nobody points out to Takasahi that the snake would have killed Rob had Joe not noticed it.

On a positive note, it was nice that Liz Webling made an appearance. She and Callie join the Hardys on their trip, and actually help with the investigation a tiny bit. I'm always happy to see recurring characters, and Liz was one of the best parts of the book. 

The final three chapters were rather exciting, and the showdown with the villain was good, if a bit short. The villain's motivation made sense, unlike in the last Casefile I read. (Poisoned Paradise **)  I also learned some stuff about orienteering, a sport that I knew nothing about. So the book has some educational value, I guess.

There are much worse Hardy Boys books out there, and I debated on giving this one a slightly higher rating. But in the end, the book had too many problems. I would not recommend this book to anyone, unless you have an interest in orienteering. Even then, there has to be something better you could read.

Rating
3 out of 10

*  "I was told the emphasis was on high action and suspense and there had to be a cliff-hanger ending to every chapter." -  Barbara Steiner, a Casefiles ghostwriter. 

** You can see my review of Poisoned Paradise here

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