Into Thin Air by Franklin W. Dixon

Into Thin Air by Franklin W. Dixon

This is easily the best book in the new Hardy Boys Adventures series thus far. In the previous novel, Frank and Joe sifted through the clues to discover who was behind the disappearance of two teenagers riding G-Force, the star attraction of the amusement park, Fun Land. They identified the villains and got the police to lock them up. So how is it that a third teenager, Daisy, the daughter of Fun Land’s new owner and the girl who just broke up with Joe, has disappeared on the same ride?

 

This is a great story. Frank and Joe are highly motivated to rescue Daisy and even their sometimes enemy, Chief Olaf of the Bayport Police, is acting human toward them out of compassion for the obvious stress they are feeling because of Daisy’s disappearance. His compassion turns to truly well-meaning concern when two efforts are made to either kill or seriously injure the boys and three clear warnings to back off the case are also delivered. But Frank and Joe are persistent and this time it was totally believable. They aren’t going to let their friend down.

 

Now this is where the book leaps up to a new level for these stories. We actually were given a lot of information about Fun Land, Daisy and her family, the villains of the last piece, and the G-Force in the previous book and all of it can be used in this novel to help the reader shortcut to the ending. The two books were clearly planned together and that makes the outcome of this novel one that everyone should predict (but probably didn’t). It certainly will make the reader who didn’t figure out what happened kick themselves for having overlooked important clues.

 

There really is only one thing that seriously detracts from this novel and the author gets away with it because it actually happened between the two books. The Hardy Boys already exposed how a person can disappear on G-Force, but apparently the authorities (and the Hardy Boys themselves) were slow to investigate that method. If they had done so, this novel wouldn’t have been necessary.