#82 Poisoned Paradise

[Bigfootman]

First of all, important news, I'll have a blog up sometime in the next two weeks. Most of my book reviews will be over there. In fact, Poisoned Paradise was going to be the first book reviewed on the blog, but I feel I wasted to much time reading it to do a detailed blog entry on how bad it is. So instead, I do a quick review here.

The book is actually decent for the first few chapters as Frank and Joe head to the rain forest. There's some good cliffhangers, including a well written plane crash scene. Unfortunately, as soon as they get into the rainforest, the book falls apart.

The back cover mentions "ruthless cattle barons and violent revolutionaries". The cattle barons are nowhere to be found, and the revolutionaries are indeed violent, but  are actually the second worst part of the book. You see, the Hardys don't go into the forest alone, they go in with a group of Native Americans. The Native Americans have an ally named Maddie, who has made a deal with the leader of the revolutionaries named Carlos. Now Carlos is the main suspect for half the book, so Maddie is all the group ends up talking about for most of the trek though the forest. Well, that and the importance of the rainforest.

I'm not kidding when I say that 80 percent of the dialogue in the book can be summed up like this:
"Maddie isn't a traitor"
"Maddie is a traitor"
"The rain forest is important"
"We must save the rain forest"

It seems like 80% of the book is padding. At one point a rouge Yanomama called Goldtooth appears and serves as the villain for about three chapters , but all that results out of that is Goldtooth get yelled at by the leader of the Yanomama. Scenes that shouldn't take a page end up taking up 4 pages or sometimes an entire chapter. The cliffhangers during these parts are boring, beside a random attack by Goldtooth.

When Frank and Joe finally get to the main villain, he turns out to be Roger O'Neill, who has built a supervillain lair in the middle of the amazon. He's planning to destroy the Amazon because he wants to. His defeat is extremely anticlimactic and his henchman just gives up when Frank and Joe enter the room he's in. Carlos and his red army are caught "off screen" Oh and the whole Maddie subplot is pointless. She only serves as a deus ex machina to rescue Frank and Joe, then there's another deus ex machina half a chapter later in the form of some of the Frank and Joe's friends and a news crew.

The best I can say about "Poisoned Paradise" is that's slightly better then "Survival of the Fittest", but that's not saying much at all. It's still a terrible book, the second worst Casefile.

Rating
1 out of 10

[goldie3]

I disliked this book so much, I had repressed memories of it. IA totally, the villain came out of nowhere. There was no build up. And that whole Goldtooth portion was so unnecessary.

[MacGyver]

You guys have some really good memories with these books or maybe you've just read them a lot more recently than I have. I remember getting Poisoned Paradise years ago. The book released in 1993 and it was out right around the time environmentalism became a big concern in the early '90s, especially with cartoons like Captain Planet and the Planeteers out right around then too. (Which I also love, by the way.)
So I could see the obvious environmentalism focus and influence in the book. I mainly remember the book opening with Frank and Joe talking about the rainforest, with Joe mentioning rainforest cookies, I do believe, and asking, "Where will it end?" in a joking way. Maybe it's just because I like the aspect of South American culture being explored in the book, but I don't remember it being all that bad. (Of course, I can't really think of any of the Casefiles I've really disliked.)
I guess I'm just not very discriminate in my reading habits- I can generally forgive some things if I enjoyed wholesome entertainment with the book. Oh well- to each their own.
        And hey- cool news about the blog, Bigfootman! Post the link when you get up and going, for sure.

[Bigfootman]

You guys have some really good memories with these books or maybe you've just read them a lot more recently than I have. I remember getting Poisoned Paradise years ago. The book released in 1993 and it was out right around the time environmentalism became a big concern in the early '90s, especially with cartoons like Captain Planet and the Planeteers out right around then too. (Which I also love, by the way.)
So I could see the obvious environmentalism focus and influence in the book. I mainly remember the book opening with Frank and Joe talking about the rainforest, with Joe mentioning rainforest cookies, I do believe, and asking, "Where will it end?" in a joking way. Maybe it's just because I like the aspect of South American culture being explored in the book, but I don't remember it being all that bad. (Of course, I can't really think of any of the Casefiles I've really disliked.)
I guess I'm just not very discriminate in my reading habits- I can generally forgive some things if I enjoyed wholesome entertainment with the book. Oh well- to each their own.
        And hey- cool news about the blog, Bigfootman! Post the link when you get up and going, for sure.

I just finished reading Poisoned Paradise about an hour before I posted the topic. The book actually took me months to finish.

[MacGyver]

Oh, okay- so it was very fresh on the mind.
Months? Really? lol- I can understand that though. I've had that issue with other books- just not the Hardy Boys. (There's a particular Indiana Jones book I had a lot of trouble getting through.... mainly due to my misgivings with the plot and theme.)

[tomswift2002]

I remember getting this book in 1999, and even back then I was not impressed with the book.  And it only made it to #96 on my list, so I don't consider it the worst book or even the second worst Casefiles (those go to Cave Trap/Survival of The Fittest).