#123 The Robot’s Revenge (28th Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published: December 1993
Publisher: Minstrel Books (1993-1997?)
Author: Unknown as of September 2022

Plot: Danger is unleashed -- and the Hardys are targeted for attack!

Frank and Joe face a new and unknown nemesis -- a master of crime by remote control!

Chicago is the site of the Teen Inventors Club competition -- the winner to receive a college scholarship and a lucrative manufacturing contract. The Hardys and their friend Phil Cohen have high hopes for Roger the Lobber, an automatic tennis ball retrieval and return unit. But someone is playing a more serious game ... a game called sabotage!

Numerous inventions have been stolen, including Roger the Lobber. But the strangest of all, they reappear without warning in modified form -- the teen creations transformed into devices of danger. In their search for the high-tech saboteur, Frank and Joe will have to watch every step. For there's no telling what the next invention in terror will be!

Review:  This is rare for me, but this is one Hardy Boys Mystery Stories that I have never read.  So this is a first for this book that is 28 years old!  Hopefully it's better than the previous two books, although when I read the back cover it sounds more like a Tom Swift plot that's been recycled, than a Hardy Boys plot.  But the Hardy's have been shown to dabble in technology plots before, like The Disappearing Floor from the 77 TV series, or The Short-Wave Mystery.

[tomswift2002]

So it seems that the author was also trying to make a Tom Swift joke in this book with a real life comet.  In Chapter 4 the Swift-Tuttle comet was mentioned as having approached Earth in 1992.  I had to look it up, because the author had the character saying it also confuse other outer space knowledge, like the Oort Cloud being called the Ert Cloud, and the Cloud orbited near Mercury when it's actually Pluto that it's near (at least in theory, last I heard scientists still had not been able to confirm the Oort Cloud's actual existence and Voyager 1 still has 300 years of travelling to do before reaching the theoretical start of the cloud—-of course Voyager 1 will loose power for its scientific instruments in the next 10 years). 

But Swift-Tuttle is a real comet that did approach Earth in 1992.  It's next close approach won't be until August 5, 2126.

But in 1993/94, unless someone looked up the comet in an Encyclopaedia, they might've thought it was a joke, especially since first printing covers of The Robot's Revenge (which I have) contained on the inside front cover an ad for the recently finished Tom Swift series (Quantum Force was released in April 1993 & The Alien Factor was released in June 1993) while the inside back cover advertised the new releases of the Star Trek The Next Generation Starfleet Academy: Word's First Adventure from August 1993 and the following 2 books from October & December 1993, respectively. 

[tomswift2002]

So I'm finding that The Robot's Revenge is really violent.  In a way it feels more like a Casefile than a Mystery Story.  I just read through a scene where someone blew open a safe, and the bomb caused the hotel to catch on fire and blew out all the lower level windows.  Sure Carnival of Crime had an explosion scene, and a few Roman candles, but The Robot's Revenge is more violent. 

[MacGyver]

Whoa! Nice to have a new-to-you Hardy Boys Digest to read!   
I finished my collection of The Hardy Boys originals (first 58 revised), Digests and Casefiles some years ago and finally finishing reading all of them. (Bear in mind I started reading and collecting these books as a child.) I don't recall much on The Robot's Revenge bur the description jarred a few things loose. I do recall Phil inventing the tennis  retriever Roger the Lobber now.
    As I've said before, one of these days I'd like to reread all the books in order.