#19 Nightmare in Angel City (30th Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published: September 1988
Author: Steven Grant
Other Books by Ghost: Casefiles #3 Cult Of Crime, #6 The Crowning Terror, #14 Too Many Traitors, #29 Thick As Thieves, #62 Final Gambit

Plot: Frank receives a desperate phone call from Callie, who is attending UCLA's broadcast journalism school, asking him and Joe to fly out to California.  Unfortunately Callie doesn't get a chance to say why, as she drops the phone in mid-call and someone else hangs up on Frank.  The Hardy's hop a jet and are bound for California to find out what has happened to Callie Shaw!

Review: First off, this book felt like a mini-Nancy Drew & Hardy Boys SuperMystery'88---but without Nancy Drew!  Rather Callie Shaw is put in the Nancy Drew role, so I'm not sure if this was a concept book or backdoor pilot for a possible Callie Shaw series, however, for 50% of the book, you are with Callie, and there are even 2 extended scenes where the Hardy's go off on their own thing, and we the reader are left with Callie!   Plus her physical entrance was very dramatic.  So it's really interesting how in the first part of the Casefiles, it seems that there was some sort of order saying to bring Callie to the front as one of the Hardy's friends, while Chet and the other male Hardy friends are occasionally seen, whereas in the Mystery Stories Series, Chet is the most frequently used Hardy friend, followed by Tony Prito and Biff Hooper, whereas Callie and Iola were more or less just the "girlfriends" with the occasional "let's get the Hardy's on a picnic" scene (although Callie and Iola do appear more in the Simon & Schuster books from the 80's and 90's where they tried to even out the playing field and make Callie and Iola not so much 1920's and 1950's era girls, but 80's and 90's girls).


As far as the story goes, it was a so-so story.  Out of Steven Grant's 6 Casefiles, this is probably at the bottom of the list, with [The Crowning Terror, as I really didn't think the whole crime part of the story was worked out and the criminals were kind of boring. 


Rating: 6.5/10

[MacGyver]

I don't remember much about this story but I will say this- the ghostwriter for this one wrote a number of my favourites (#3 and #14 particularly).

[CalvinKnox]

As far as the story goes, it was a so-so story.  Out of Steven Grant's 6 Casefiles, this is probably at the bottom of the list, with [The Crowning Terror, as I really didn't think the whole crime part of the story was worked out and the criminals were kind of boring.

I agree, but also looking at Steve Grant's other Casefiles that I've read Cult of Crime, The Crowning Terror, and Thick as Thieves, it seems like his crime part of most his stories might be a little less than 100% (i.e, the criminal's goal in #3 seemed to be primarily to get the banker's daughter to kill her father, a plan which he spent a years of work on by starting up his own religious cult upstate, and the daughter just happened to join the cult.)  Over all I would say that #3 is my favorite Grant story, followed by #5.  I enjoyed the Upstate NY and Bayport setting of the story, and I really got the feeling of decaying Rustbelt cities from Grant's descriptions in the book.