#76 Game Plan For Disaster

[tomswift2002]

Published: 1982
Publisher: Wanderer Books (1982-1988), Minstrel Books (1988-1998?)
Author: Laurence Swinburne
Other Hardy Boys by Author: #73 The Billion Dollar Ransom

Plot: The Hardy's are assigned to protect the top football player at State University, to make sure that he is alive for the upcoming high profile game against a rival university.  However, the player is in the middle of a gambling gang war!  There are high stakes on this game, and the two different gangs want both teams to win!  But at the same time, another gang seems to be after the kid of State's chief librarian.  What for?  That's up for Frank and Joe to find out.

Review: Okay, first off, there was a similar title in the third season of the 1977-1979 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries called Game Plan.  However the two stories are completely different. 

With Game Plan For Disaster, I found that it felt more like it was 4 individual stories that had been stitched together, and I was finding that after every couple of chapters, that would be the end of one story, and then the boys would be on to the next one, with only the thin thread of the football player tying all the stories together.  And with the fourth story, that was an EXTREMELY thin connection, as it was really only because the boys were at State protecting the player.  I'm just glad that this was the second and last book by Laurence Swinburne, since I recently re-read The Billion Dollar Ransom, which Swinburne also wrote, but that one I found a mess, and not really being able to follow what exactly was going on and why the criminal magician wanted to kidnap the President of the United States (aside from asking for a giant ransom). 

Now then another thing that I found interesting in Game Plan For Disaster was that it was the first Stratemeyer Syndicate Hardy Boys, since the 1940's, (in the original printings of Hunting for Hidden Gold, The Secret of the Caves, The Mystery of Cabin Island, What Happened At Midnight, While the Clock Ticked, Footprints Under the Window, The Hidden Harbor Mystery, The Sinister Signpost, A Figure In Hiding, The Secret Warning & The Twisted Claw were originally released with no plugs, but then between 1940 and 1944 their texts were modified to include the title of the next book; also The Sting of the Scorpion was originally issued with a plug for Night Of the Werewolf, but was that plug was removed with the 5th printing of the book) to not feature a plug for the next book in the series.  In this case, there was no plug in the Wanderer edition that I was reading for The Crimson Flame.  I wonder if that's maybe due to Harriet Stratemeyer's death in March 1982.  Game Plan For Disaster was the 6 of 6 Hardy Boys book released in 1982.  1983, 84 and 85 would only see 3 books each year, until the series was put on hold in 86.  So I wonder if the reason there was no title was because this was the last Hardy Boys book that Harriet Stratemeyer had worked on, and when she passed, no title had yet been picked or assigned to the next book, and while the junior partners at the Syndicate were trying to figure out what to do without her there, it was decided to issue the book without a plug with the idea that it would later be modified to include the next book (I don't own a Minstrel edition, so I can't check it out to see if the title was added later).  As you will remember, 1985 would see the last Hardy Boys book to feature a plug for the next book, since Revenge of the Desert Phantom/i] contained a plug for The Skyfire Puzzle.

Rating: 6 out 10 

[MacGyver]

I don't remember much on this one other than the plot about Frank and Joe trying to protect an American football player from being kidnapped and/or hurt. And I remember one of the villains being called Scrabby.
   I did not know about the Wanderer edition not having the plug for the next book in the series. I can confirm though that the Minstrel book does indeed reveal The Crimson Flame as the name of the Hardy Boys' next case within the text.
   What's interesting to me with the Minstrel printings on this topic (I don't know if it's any different for the Wanderer printings), is that The Swamp Monster does not have a line stating Revenge of the Desert Phantom as Frank and Joe's next case- yet Revenge of the Desert Phantom does have a plug for The Skyfire Puzzle.
   Though I know it's basically just a marketing ploy, I do appreciate that the Casefiles, Undercover Brothers and Adventures books kept up this tradition in some form or another.