#76 Game Plan For Disaster

[tomswift2002]

The Hardy Boys #76 Game Plan For Disaster
Continuity: Original
Published: 1982
Publisher: Wanderer Books (1982-1985), Minstrel Books (1987-199?)
Written by: Laurence Swinburne

Plot: Ace Harrington, the team captain and star of State University's college football team, has been involved in several "accidents", and the President of State has brough in the Hardy's to figure out what is going on.

Review:  This book didn't exactly open up very swiftly, but it did pick up speed towards the end.  But I must say that while I was reading Game Plan For Disaster I kept thinking of how, if it were being written now in 2010, how Simon & Schuster would've most likely chopped this story up into a trilogy or even a 4-book story, but this story really works in this single story volume, since there are 2 seperate subplots, and 2 subplots that are connected but are also seperate, but all 4 add to the overall main plot of the story of the Hardy's protecting Ace Harrington. 

I know that you guys are probably thinking that this story probably has just 4 people doing all the crimes, but that's about as far from the truth as it is, since the book starts off with two rival gambling gangs trying to make sure that Ace does and doesn't play in the big game against rival University, Northern.  And each gang contains 4 to 6 men in them, so by the time those gangs are put in jail (by Chapter 11) Ace and the Hardy's are ready to relax and get ready for the big game.  But while the boys were busy putting those gangs away, they kept running into a youngster and another gang that wanted a rare book from the university's library (so that they could sell it; it was an old and rare edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug).  But then a fourth person was trying to kill Ace for unknown reasons.

On page 37 Robbie Stevenson mentions how he was currently reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and its funny how the character's name was Robbie (nickname for Robert) Stevenson, the same as the author of that classic book, and then Joe mentions how its a favorite of his, which made me wonder if, even though Grosset & Dunlap didn't have the rights to any new Hardy Boys books in 1982, if G&D had asked the Stratemeyer Syndicate to maybe try to advertise Treasure Island, which was Volume #1 in the Hardy Boys Favorite Classics series, in a book to maybe sell off whatever copies of that book remained from the 1978 printing of that book.

Edit: You can also tell that this book was printed before cell phones were a common thing, since the Hardy's use CB radios and they are constantly looking around for pay phones.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

[Bigfootman]

My copy of this book has a strange printing error. a few pages appeared twice, and the lettering was off on the duplicate pages. I'll see if I can get a picture soon.

[MacGyver]

On page 37 Robbie Stevenson mentions how he was currently reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and its funny how the character's name was Robbie (nickname for Robert) Stevenson, the same as the author of that classic book, and then Joe mentions how its a favorite of his, which made me wonder if, even though Grosset & Dunlap didn't have the rights to any new Hardy Boys books in 1982, if G&D had asked the Stratemeyer Syndicate to maybe try to advertise Treasure Island, which was Volume #1 in the Hardy Boys Favorite Classics series, in a book to maybe sell off whatever copies of that book remained from the 1978 printing of that book.

Do you have any copies of The Hardy Boys Favorite Classics books? It's a cool idea and definitely a neat marketing trick. Librarians in the olden days that looked with disdain on The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew should be pleased that both for a time were promoting classic literature to children. It would be neat to track down one of these just for collecting purposes, but I can't imagine these books would contain anything other than the actual story- and I've already got a copy of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Great book, by the way. ) Still, I wonder if perhaps The Hardy Boys offer an introduction to the book or something- that would be cool.

[tomswift2002]

I don't have any copies, but the three stories that appeared under the banner were #1 "Treasure Island", #2 "Tom Sawyer" and #3 "Huckleberry Finn".  But I've also been told that each has a preface by Franklin W. Dixon.

[MacGyver]

Okay, well that's something. That's fitting then- sounds like nice collectibles either way, but it doesn't sound like they're worth making a huge effort to track down...I've already got other copies of all three those books anyway. Maybe one day I'll run across this Hardy Boys Favorite Classic version though....