#33 Collision Course (31st Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Collision Course
Published: November 1989
Written By: Rick Oliver
Other Hardy's by author: #40 Fright Wave, #45 In Self-Defense, #50 Power Play, #59 Open Season, #69 Mayhem In Motion, #76-77 Ring of Evil Trilogy Books 1 & 2, #85 Winner Take All, #88 Inferno of Fear, #93 Mission Mayhem, #98 Murder By Magic, #100 True Thriller.  Possible author of #78 Ring of Evil #3, #80 Dead of Night.

Plot: Race cars always duel with death.

Bayport is hosting its first Grand Prix race, and former world-champion driver Angus McCoy is on hand. But during his qualifying run, McCoy misses a hairpin turn, and his car plunges into the bay. When Frank and Joe try to help investigate, they are beset by violent"accidents," including the destruction of a vital clue. The brother detectives find themselves trapped in a deadly duel of fast cars and freewheeling danger as they chase down the missing link to a murderer. If the Hardys fail to win the rat race, they'll finish in a dead heat with the grim reaper.

Review: So it's been about 15 years since I last read Collision Course and I remember that it was also one of the first Casefiles that I read.  Unfortunatley, as a kid, I didn't enjoy the book.  The ending I really found was kind of confusing and to this day I still remember Con Riley having a hard time figuring out what to charge the crook with at the end, because it turned out that Angus McCoy had faked his death. 

Anyway, i'm up to Chapter 12, and it's interesting how this book seems to be similar to #20 Witness To Murder in that Frank and Joe are divided over which way to take the case and suspects, and at one point, nearly come to blows with each other.  So you have Frank and Joe going their seperate ways for a while, and Joe even goes to Callie Shaw for help.  And with Callie, it's interesting, but she's still into video and her parent's have allowed her to setup an editing suite in their basement that includes a widescreen (written 'wide-screen') TV in the basement and "professional VCR's".  At one point Joe asks why they couldn't just use the VCR at the Hardy home to watch a tape that Callie got from a suspect, and she points out that the tape is wider than a VHS tape and probably wouldn't fit through the door on the Hardy's VHS or Betamax player.  Sounds like Callie has 3/4-inch U-Matic decks that play tapes like this  http://www.trevorthurlowproductions.ca/umatic.php.  U-Matic's use tape that is 3/4-of-an-inch wide, whereas VHS and Betamax or even the professional S-VHS and Betacam SP used 1/2-inch wide tape (although Betacam you would not want to play on a regular Betamax player, unless you wanted to kill your heads).  So Callie is still using the skills that she acquired at UCLA in #19 Nightmare In Angel City!

Also of interest  but this book takes place about 6 months after Blood Money, as that book ran from January to March, but Collision Course is set in late-summer, somewhere around the late-August to September timeframe.  So this would place the Collision Course before The Last Resort, since I remember The Last Resort was a winter book, and I don't mean that they were in the mountains during summer, at a resort that was really high up where there's snow all year round.   

[MacGyver]

Nice review. I appreciate the technical notes about video editing, as I have a budding interest in VCRs and video in general. (On a side note, I'm currently trying to fix my VCR/DVD combo unit- I might message you about that if that's okay.)
    The main thing I remember about this book is a character called Sandy who has a secret. (If this is the book I'm thinking of here.)

[tomswift2002]

Those VCR/DVD combo's I wouldn't even bother with.  They were built with the cheapest parts and were designed to be thrown out.  Also on the VHS side, most were mono only.  Really the best VCR's were made before-1997, and were designed to be fixed if they broke. 

But so far I haven't read of a Sandy character. 

But it's interesting with Callie that she's into technology, and Phil Cohen is into electronics, along with Frank and all 3 are in this book.

[MacGyver]

I may have remembered wrong. It's been many years since I've read this book- or any Hardy Boys book. I do have some I would like to revisit at some point but I haven't done so yet- so many other books to read too.
   And thanks for the advice about the VHS/DVD combo VCR unit. This one is a Toshiba DVR620 that I bought brand new somewhere around the early 2010s I think. As you may know, it is a recorder and I really want to have it functioning correctly for the purpose of transferring VHS to DVD for preservation purposes, as well as playing the VHS tapes I have still. (There are still many things that have never been released to DVD or Blu-Ray or even digitally and likely never will, due to rights issues. It's those tapes I particularly like to have the VCR working to play.)
   I have watched a few YouTube videos that have been helpful and tried cleaning the heads and such. It keeps taking the tape, playing for a few seconds and then shutting down. When I restart the machine, it rejects the tape
   It seems like I've been able to fix it before. If I can't get it, I'll take it to an electronics repair store in town where I've had it fixed before. (Something very rare to find today.)

[SkyWarp]

There was not a Sandy in #33. 

There was a Sandy in #30:  Sandy Fuller

[MacGyver]

Ah, okay. My mistake then. Thanks for the correction.

[tomswift2002]

I finished the book this morning.  At times I found that Rick Oliver didn't have the characters down pat.  I couldn't quite nail it but Frank, Joe and Callie just felt off.  Also the story itself just felt off as well, as if he was only writing from a partial outline.  Also Angus McCoy's reason for his crime's was never fully explained.  Why did he want to fake his death?  The explanation given was large debts, but it was kind of thrown to the side. And then there was the silly promoter.  His arc felt sort of shoved in.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

[Bigfootman]

Possible author of #78 Ring of Evil #3

Not likely. In this interview (thanks NZone!), he says he didn't write that one:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060318042729/http://www.hardy-boys.com/bg/8/bg_8_5.html
" And I'll take this opportunity to say I didn't plot or write the final book in the trilogy; so don't blame me for that one. "

He also talked about Collision Course:
"I guess I'd have to say that it depends on the subject matter. My first book, Collision Course, was based on a one-page story idea from Bill McCay about Formula One race cars. I knew nothing about race cars! So I spent several weeks just doing research on Formula One racing. Mostly books at that time because the Internet barely existed. In contrast, I didn't really have to do any research for Mayhem in Motion because my background is in comics and animation. "