39th Anniversary Review: #66 The Vanishing Thieves

[tomswift2002]

Published: 1981
Publisher: Wanderer Books (1981-1986), Minstrel Books (1987-199?), Grosset & Dunlap (2005-2013) (physical & digital)
Author: Richard Deming
Other Hardy Boys by Author: The Clue Of The Broken Blade (Revised Text) (1970)

Plot: When Chet's cousin, Vern, gets his brand-new car stolen, the Hardy's help Vern to locate his stolen car.  Meanwhile Vern is also looking for a valuable coin that was willed to him by an Uncle, and was suppose to be in a safety-deposit box, however, that box has been opened, after having been closed for years since the Uncle placed the coin in it, and the coin is not in that box.  It is up to the Hardy's to find out what happened to the car and the valuable coin.

Review:  So I'm only about 6 chapters in, and it's a lot better than The Stone Idol.  Richard Deming, on the coin story, mentions that the Uncle paid $100,000 dollars for the 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, which Chet's cousin Vern had willed to him.  Deming had probably heard of the 1972 sale of the Olsen specimen of this coin which had sold for $100, 000 dollars to World Wide Coin Investments, plus with a little research, he would've learned that in 1980/81, one of the five known specimen's (of which the Olsen coin is the most famous, having been owned by King Farouk of Egypt and having appeared on a 1973 episode of Hawaii Five-O) was missing and it's location was unknown.  That was the Walton coin, which was purchased by George O. Walton in 1945, and was in his possession until his death in 1962, at which point it was recovered from a car crash he was in, returned to his family, and then the following year, was to go up for auction with other parts of his collection.  However, in 1963, the auction house that was to handle the auction, thought that the coin was not the legitimate coin, and was a reproduction, and it was returned to his family.  And the family stuck it in a box and kept it in that box until 2003, when they took it out and had it appraised and it was discovered to be the missing coin.   So in 1981, Richard Deming would've read that this coin was still missing, and Deming probably invented the plot based on this. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Liberty_Head_nickel

[MacGyver]

I enjoyed The Vanishing Thieves quite well. I particularly love a few things- the scene where Joe gets tied to an anchor and winds up overboard and has to escape drowning Houdini-style. (Spoiler- It wasn't quite Houdini- he had some help. ) The Armada paperback depicted this exciting scene on its cover.
http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/gallery/64.php

And I appreciated the focus on coin collecting as a budding numismatist. 

[tomswift2002]

The other Hardy Boys book that focuses a lot on coin collecting is the 1944 version of The Melted Coins that was written by Leslie McFarlane.

[tomswift2002]

Also, since 2005, The Vanishing Thieves has been the final book in the Grosset & Dunlap portion of the series.  But it's not the last hardcover, as Wanderer issued hardcovers upto #85.

[tomswift2002]

I enjoyed The Vanishing Thieves quite well. I particularly love a few things- the scene where Joe gets tied to an anchor and winds up overboard and has to escape drowning Houdini-style. (Spoiler- It wasn't quite Houdini- he had some help. ) The Armada paperback depicted this exciting scene on its cover.
http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/gallery/64.php

That's not quite an accurate picture.  It looks like, besides the boat, Joe is also falling over a waterfall, whereas Joe fakes overboard while the boat is in the middle of the ocean, nowhere near a waterfall (Chapters 11-12).

[tomswift2002]

Well I finished it.  There were a few instances where the Hardy's seemed to forget to do things (like getting the film developed until the end of the book!!!), so in some ways it felt as if Richard Deming was filling up pages.  The whole Liberty Head Coin plot felt like it might've been added in a rewrite to add more story, as the two cases were very loosely connected, and the majority of the book was about the chop shop ring.  It's funny how just 9 years later the Hardy's would bust another chop shop ring, and I think it worked better in the shorter book that the Casefiles employed.  Of course I'm referring to Running on Empty. 

And of course, just like the original 4 printings of The Sting of the Scorpion contained a plug for Night Of The Werewolf, the G&D version of The Vanishing Thieves contains a plug for The Outlaw's Silver.  So the Original Series still continues in the Wanderer/Minstrel/Aladdin books.

[MacGyver]

I can't tell that the cover looks like a waterfall but okay.
  And yeah- the Grosset & Dunlap series continues with the Digests and I'm glad for that continuity.