January 2014 Bookclub: Hardy Boys Casefiles #8 See No Evil

[tomswift2002]

The Hardy Boys Casefiles #8 See No Evil
Published September 1987

Post your reviews and comments about See No Evil, book #8 in the Hardy Boys Casefiles, and book #1 in the unofficial Bayport Corruption storyline.

[MacGyver]

Glad to see someone decided to get this going again. I'm still game to participate- hope to see everyone else join in too.

It's been a while since I read See No Evil, but from what I remember, I will comment on a few things. For one, this is one of the early books in The Hardy Boys Casefiles where Callie Shaw played more of a major (or at least regular) role. I think it was this book where Callie talks to Frank and Joe about joining their detective team and they agree to think of her like a junior partner of sorts. (I'm thinking like Sally Brown is called the junior partner with Encyclopedia Brown in that book series.)
     So that was an interesting phenomenon since I don't recall Callie having nearly that big of a presence in the original 58 books or even so much in the Digests. I wonder if this was part of an effort to boost the status and preeminence of women in The Hardy Boys series as the whole "girl power" movement was particularly strong around that time. (Of course, now it's to the point that it almost feels like we need a "boy power" movement as well.)
     Anyway- I like seeing The Hardy Boys' chums having more of a presence in the books and it's nice to see Callie involved. But even as much as Chet helped The Hardy Boys in the first 58 books (the revised ones at least), I don't think I really considered him a partner in the Hardy Boys team so much. (But I didn't and don't really think of any of the chums that way- I don't even really think of Frank and Joe as being all that organized to have a "team" in the formal sense and such- it's more like they work together and hang out together since they're brothers and yeah, they're a team- but they also have a number of chums and acquaintances that they call on for help at times- and their chums also offer help at times as well.)
       One other thing- I had never heard of this term of the "Bayport Corruption" trilogy storyline before, although obviously it's unofficial as tomswift2002 pointed out. But it does make sense when I think about it, since at least 3 books in the series dealt with corruption in the Bayport local government and that was an interesting tack.
(To clarify, the books I'm thinking of for this storyline are: See No Evil, Line of Fire and Beyond The Law- is that all of them?)

[tomswift2002]

Overall, Callie Shaw was featured more in the Casefiles than any other Hardy Boys series.  With the Original series, you have to remember that the Grosset & Dunlap books were written at a time when women and female characters, aside from Nancy Drew and a few others, most were treated as housewives and love interests for the male characters, and there was still the stigma of women being "weak femme fatale".  Even with the Simon & Schuster era of the Original series, the authors had to still keep Callie in tune with what had been established in the earlier books, while trying to make her as an 80's/90's/2000's teeage/young woman.

Then you had the Casefiles that had the distinct advantage of not having to keep Callie's character in line with the earlier Callie Shaw, plus the books were written for a higher age group, so we really got a Callie Shaw that was more modelled after the girl's of "Charlie's Angels" and "Dynasty".

Of course, since 2005, with the Undercover Brothers, aside from one very brief cameo in #5 "Rocky Road", Callie Shaw has only appeared in the graphic novels and has all but disappeared from the main novel line.

But, when you think about, we really saw Callie's major change way back in Dead On Target.

[MacGyver]

Of course, since 2005, with the Undercover Brothers, aside from one very brief cameo in #5 "Rocky Road", Callie Shaw has only appeared in the graphic novels and has all but disappeared from the main novel line.

But, when you think about, we really saw Callie's major change way back in Dead On Target.

Really? Callie only got one appearance in the UB world? And a quick cameo at that? Thankfully, she did show up some in the graphic novels... but yeah- that was another trend I didn't like with the Undercover Brothers books- the chums seemed to just disappear. True, they weren't there for every book in the Casefiles (or even in the original/revised books for that matter), but it seems they were around a lot more often in general.

And yeah- I guess Callie did change a good bit in Dead on Target- I think Iola's death shook everyone up and changed a lot of people besides just Joe. (Dead of Night gives us some details on how it changed Chet and his friendship with Joe.)

[tomswift2002]

In the main UB books Callie only appeared in #5 "Rocky Road" and that's it.  She doesn't even warrant a mention in the other books (just like the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys'88 series where she was mentioned, but not seen).

[MacGyver]

That's kinda messed up with the Supermysteries- especially since Ned actually made at least one appearance in the books (that I recall right now.) But then, that whole series was pretty skewed towards Nancy Drew to begin with- but that's okay- I still love it.