#5 Hunting For Hidden Gold (Revisd)

[tomswift2002]

I'm just re-reading "Hunting For Hidden Gold", the 1963 book. 

I'm surprised at how many times the boys get shot at in this book.  I'm upto Chapter 8 and they've already dodged 6 bullets.  That's something that you didn't see in the Undcover Brothers series.

[MacGyver]

Interesting to note. It's been a long time since I've read Hunting for Hidden Gold, but I remember this one as being a favorite. Probably mainly because of the treasure hunt theme and the player piano scene.

[Hardy Sleuth]

I love Hunting for Hidden Gold! They had to keep ahead of those bullets coming at them that you mentioned, tomswift2002, a lot of danger in this mystery! The excitement in the ghost town with the piano and everything is great! This is one of my favorite Hardy Boys books, too, MacGyver!

[tomswift2002]

And it's hard to believe, but "Hunting For Hidden Gold", the revised text, is celebrating it's 50th anniversary this year (1963-2013).  The revised text has been in continuous print since 1963, compared to the original version that was only in print from Grosset & Dunlap for 34 years (1928 - 1962) and Applewood's reprinting of about 12 years (1996-2008), which only equals 46 years.

But if the 63 version was written today, I could see it being a lot tamer, since the publisher's wouldn't "want to offend", or even now with all the school shootings, want to show bad guys shooting at teens, even if the teens were detectives.  This is where I think Frank and Jo's more mature style and attitude in the Orignal Continuity and the Casefiles Continuity play a big role in the stories.  The boys are still teens, but they are treated like adults.  Plus, I think that without realizing it, when I first got into the Hardy Boys, the portrayal of the boys by Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy was still being felt by the writers of the new books.  The authors were writing the boys based on the way they had been written in the past, but also upon how they had been portrayed on TV, as the older, maybe 19/20 year olds that Stevenson/Cassidy played them as, instead of the 15-18 year olds that had been described in the books.