50th Anniversary Review: #47 Myster Of The Whale Tattoo

[tomswift2002]

Mystery Of The Whale Tattoo
Published: 1968 by Grosset & Dunlap
Ghost Writer: Jerry Mundis
Other Hardy Boys books by Jerry Mundis: Only Hardy Boys book.

Plot: Fenton Hardy is on a deep undercover mission to locate a statue and asks Frank and Joe to check out a clue at the Bayport Fairgrounds.  At the same time, Mr. Solo, the owner of a carnival that has setup at the Bayport Fairgrounds asks the boys to work at the carnival for in many of the fair's past stops, numerous guests have been pickpocketed, and he would like it stopped.  Then Prito Construction, which is owned by the father of their friend Tony, and is currently working on expanding the Bayport Mall, unearths a giant blue whale which Tony and another Hardy friend, Biff Hooper, setup as an attraction---until the whale is stolen.  And if that isn't a whale of a tale, the Hardy's discover that a number of carnival workers have strange tattoo's of whale's.  Is there a connection, and if so what is it?   

[MacGyver]

It has been a really long time since I read this book but I liked it pretty well. I particularly recall liking the Armada cover with menacing Blackbeard about to tattoo Joe against his will!
   The Collins cover with Joe walking blindfolded on the Ferris Wheel is pretty awesome too. 

[tomswift2002]

It has been a really long time since I read this book but I liked it pretty well. I particularly recall liking the Armada cover with menacing Blackbeard about to tattoo Joe against his will!
   The Collins cover with Joe walking blindfolded on the Ferris Wheel is pretty awesome too. 

I think you've confused the Collins/Armada cover for The Melted Coins with Mystery Of The Whale Tattoo.http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/gallery/07.php
http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/gallery/04.php   The Collins/Armada covers for Whale are all depictions of the same scene where Joe is tied up on the ferris wheel, while there is no Blackbeard character in Whale Tattoo.

Anyway, I just finished Mystery of The Whale Tattoo and it was an ok story.  Even as a kid I did not find this story to be one of the better stories.  Really the characters were not that interesting.

One thing that I noticed on this read through is that this was the second book to feature a scene set in the basement of Tony Prito's house.  His basement first appeared in #45 Mystery of the Spiral Bridge, which was written by Andrew Svenson, who outlined Mystery Of the Whale Tattoo, so it could be that this is a carry over from Svenson.  It's also interesting how most of the Hardy's friends are in the book, just like in Spiral Bridge.  The only one who was missing was Phil Cohen.  Also, while Callie Shaw was mentioned, she never showed up in the book, whereas Iola did. 

Of course with this book, I remember buying it during the summer of 1994 just after picking strawberries with my mother. 

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

[MacGyver]

Aw man! Yeah, I totally mixed that up! Wow! I can't believe I got that wrong. Yes, I was thinking of The Mystery of the Melted Coins cover with the tattooing scene. Both books involve tattoos, so I guess that's why I mixed them up- I must have been tired. Lol.
(I do like both covers of both books in any case.)

[tomswift2002]

What's also interesting is that when you think of 1968, this was at a time where the Syndicate was starting to scale back on the number of series it had out.  In 68 besides Mystery of the Whale Tattoo, we also saw the publication of the Tom Swift book Tom Swift And His G-Force Inverter, which in 2018 is considered to be one of the harder to find Tom Swift Jr books.  But when I think of the two books, it's interesting how the Mystery Stories, while having some technology in them, were not really technological-related tales, whereas the Tom Swift books were.  In Mystery of the Whale Tattoo Chet's hobby is scrimshaw, which even as a young kid was really weird.  And when I think of what is to come, the Hardy's start to get into the more technological mysteries as the Tom Swift Jr. series is phased out; they still do some non-technological stories, but even with the revised books you start to see more technological mysteries.  You did see some in the past, such as with the original The Shore Road Mystery and the whole automobile thefts storyline, but in the later Mystery Stories, and even into the Wanderer and Minstrel books, you start to see the Hardy's become more interested in technology and science. Like Danger On Vampire Trail from 1971 had its mystery all about stolen credit cards, as prior to about 1968, the idea of a card that could be used anywhere, was just that, an idea and it took many years for it to be brought to fruition, even though in North America people had been using one form or another of a credit card since the early 1900's.