39th Anniversary Review: #62 The Apeman's Secret

[tomswift2002]

The Apeman's Secret
Published: 1980
Publisher; Wanderer Books (1980-1986), Minstrel Books (1988-late 1990's), Grosset & Dunlap (2005-2013)
Author: James Lawrence
Other Hardy Boys by author: #16 A Figure In Hiding (1965 Revised), #17 The Secret Warning (1966 Revised), #19 The Disappearing Floor (1964 Revised), #37 The Ghost At Skeleton Rock (1957, Original), #38 Mystery At Devil's Paw (1959, Original), #39 The Mystery of The Chinese Junk (1960), #58 The Sting Of The Scorpion (1979), #59 Night Of The Werewolf (1979), #60 Mystery of The Samurai Sword (1979), #67 The Outlaw's Silver (1981), #74 Tic-Tac-Terror (1982)

Plot: The Hardy's are enjoying a quiet evening at home, when all of a sudden they are interrupted by a loud noise outside.  Turns out that it is Chet Morton demonstrating his costume for the costume party at the disco.  But then something else makes a weird sound, and leaves giant muddy footprints at the Hardy's front door.  Then at the costume party the next night, someone dressed as the Apeman, a comic book character who is also a TV character, crashes and wrecks the party. 

Meanwhile, the Hardy's are asked by their father to help a friend find his 18-year-old daughter, who has apparently run off to join a local religious cult.  Can the boys solve both mysteries?

Review:  I'm only up to Chapter 5 right now, and it's interesting how this story seems to have plots that would turn up later in the Hardy Boys Casefiles in Cult Of Crime and The Last Laugh!  In The Apeman's Secret you have the religious cult story arc, that would turn up 7 years later in Cult of Crime, but instead of the Apeman's Children of Noah cult, Crime's cult is the Cult of the Rajah. 

And then, 10 years later you see The Last Laugh that uses the comic book convention, which is a twist on Apeman's comic book TV show plot.

But it's funny, in The Apeman's Secret, the Apeman seems to be riff on the, in 1980, then current The Incredible Hulk with Jerome Bixby TV series  (which ran from 1978-1982), so this seems to be the first Hardy Boys book written to tie into a current TV show.  Sure The Flickering Torch Mystery (Revised) was written to explain Frank and Joe's interest in music because of The Hardy Boys cartoon, but The Apeman's Secret is the first to really tie-into a current pop culture phenomenon.  Later we would see books that tied into Star Wars, Star Trek and the Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers would tie into, a lot, with the reality TV concept. 

[MacGyver]

It was Bill Bixby who starred on The Incredible Hulk. I LOVE that show! I recently watched the whole series on DVD. It's still one of the best superhero shows ever!

It's been forever since I read The Apeman's Secret but I remember Chet trying to be scaring The Hardys with his costume. And I vaguely recall the cult and comic book plot.

[tomswift2002]

Reading this book in 2019, it is quite dated.  Even back in 2005 when Grosset & Dunlap reissued the book, it was dated, since at one point the Hardy's are driving into New York City And The Author has the Hardy's see the twin towers of the World Trade Center.  Obviously the author, in 1979-80 wasn't thinking that the towers would be destroyed over 20 years later.

Another dated idiosyncrasy is during a business meeting at a restaurant, a waiter brings a phone to the table for the Hardy's and the person they are meeting, to answer.  Nowadays, even business execs would have a cell phone and their office would call their cell.

[tomswift2002]

Another interesting thing with this book is that Laura Hardy helps the boys clarify a clue.  Basically, the Hardy's find a coin-sized medallion with a bird clutching a twig in its beak.  When they show the coin to their mom and Aunt Gertrude, Gertrude identifies it as a dove clutching an olive branch, but Laura pipes up and says that it was actually an olive leaf that the dove brought back to Noah, not an olive branch.  (If you read Genesis 8:11, all the translations say leaf or leaves (the Wycliffe translation says that it was a branch with leaves, The the 1899 Donau-Rhein's Catholic translation says it was a "bough" with leaves).

Anyway I thought it was interesting, especially in light of the "Undercover Brothers" And "Adventures" where Laura is a librarian and is well versed in a lot of literature.  Could this scene from "The Apeman's Secret" have been an inspiration for the Laura Hardy of the UB's and Adventures becoming a librarian?

[MacGyver]

Nice! I definitely love having a Biblical reference in there in any case. (And yay for Laura Hardy and librarians!) I will have to look up this scene in the book again.