#117 The Baseball Card Conspiracy (29th Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published: December 1992
Publisher: Minstrel Books (1992-1997?)
Author: Unknown as of June 2022

Plot: When crime takes the lead, Frank and Joe come out swinging!

The Hardys go to bat against a major league team of counterfeiters!

There's trouble in the cards when Frank and Joe, and their friend Biff visit a baseball memorabilia convention in New York City. Biff buys a hard-to-find card only to learn that it's a counterfeit and that more than a few bucks are at stake. The Card may be fake, but the danger to Biff and to the Hardys is as real as it gets.

Frank and Joe discover that the baseball card scam is just the beginning -- a very small slice of a very criminal pie. And when that much is on the line, the Hardys know they'd better be ready to play some serious hardball!

Review:  I remember reading this back in the late-90's and remember hating how the book ended, since as I recall the crook was someone that the Hardy's met early on in the book, and turned out to be the leader of a small "gang" of like 2 or 3 people.  And yet as I write this I think of the Undercover Brothers "gang of 1" syndrome, or The Masked Monkey & The Stone Idol where the author took a shortcut and couldn't be bothered to plot the book out good and just did a circular plot.  And I also remember finding that the book reminded me of Danger On The Diamond. (The Bayport Blues baseball team gets mentioned in The Baseball Card Conspiracy.)

I'm only up to Chapter 5 right now, and while it's interesting, it's not as interesting as I found it started 25 years ago. 

But it's interesting but this is another Hardy tech book, and a rare post-Stratemeyer Syndicate Hardy Boys book where Frank and Joe are working with Fenton Hardy on a case.  In the book Fenton is investigating the theft of a new "high resolution printer".  And it ties into the counterfeit baseball card plot.

[MacGyver]

I don't remember much about this book other than it having to do with counterfeit baseball cards. I seem to recall liking this one fairly well but I think that's just because I particularly enjoy the sports-themed books.
    I do love that the book has Frank and Joe's case tying in with their dad's- that's a nice harkening back to the original series.    

[tomswift2002]

Also Biff Hooper plays a big role in the story.

[tomswift2002]

This is interesting, but page 80 seems to indicate that Bayport is not in New York State. 

[tomswift2002]

Con Riley also makes an appearance in this book and he's back to being a plainclothes Detective.  He received the promotion originally in Program For Destruction and for a number of books he was a Detective but then for a few books he dropped back down to a uniformed officer, like he was in the Stratemeyer Syndicate era of the series and the Casefiles, but he's back to Detective.  And in this book, he's described as being in a suit with another uniformed officer next to him. 

So it seems that in the late-80's, early-90's S&S was trying to change Riley's character a little bit.

[tomswift2002]

One thing I forgot about this book was how violent it was.  Frank and Joe got knocked out about six times in the book, and they were all from fists, baseballs being thrown at them and baseball bats.  Plus there were a couple of times when the Hardy's had to avoid gunfire! 

Also another call back to the Stratemeyer Syndicate era was how Fenton Hardy got kidnapped and it was up to Frank and Joe to find him. 

As I mentioned earlier, this book did suffer from the circular plot syndrome, although the author was throwing red herrings toward another character the Hardy's met early on, but it turned out to be someone completely different.

Rating: 6.5/10