The Viking Symbol Mystery

When Fenton Hardy is called in to investigate a series of thefts in Canada, he enlists the help of his sons Frank and Joe, along with several of their friends, to help solve the case.

This is a fun story that sends the Hardy Boys & their pals traveling to the remote reaches of the Canadian wilderness in pursuit of a gang of thieves. Unfortunately, at a lot of places in the story, the Hardy Boys and their entourage come across as a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. At one point, Frank & Joe go undercover in a restaurant, but they can’t even manage to maintain their cover for more than a couple of hours before revealing themselves to the bad guys. While tracking the crooks through the forest, the boys fall for a lame ruse in which a show more recording of their own friends’ voices is played to lure them off the trail of the criminal gang. Even their father Fenton is ‘caught’ after going to the hospital in disguise, in spite of the fact he knows the hospital staff has been warned against strange visitors and suspicious ‘Fenton Hardy’ impersonators. Repeatedly throughout this book the Hardys and Company come across as downright stupid and it gets very exasperating.

However, the one thing that makes this installment of the Hardy Boys series unbearable is the presence of Pierre ‘Caribou’ Caron, a French-Canadian trapper who joins the Hardy Boys on their adventure. That character does nothing but say “Bon Tonnerre! Bon Tonnerre! Bon Tonnerre! Bon Tonnerre!...Bon Tonnerre, Sacrebleu!” He says that over and over and over and over again, until I thought I was going to lose my mind. It makes this otherwise innocuous book an absolute agony to try and get through.

Unless you are eager to fall into an endless loop of “Bon Tonnerres” you need to avoid this installment of the Hardy Boys. show less

Frank and Joe Hardy, and their friends Chet, Biff and Tony, are recruited by the Hardys' father, Fenton, to help out on a case that takes them to the Northwest Territories. They're on the trail of a stolen Viking rune stone that purports to tell the location of great treasure. The thieves, of course, are after the treasure, while the Hardys et al. are tasked with recovering both the treasure and the stone for transport to a museum.

This is a particularly fast-paced Hardy Boys adventure. They're constantly getting on planes, flying up north, flying back to Alberta to talk to the police, flying up north again... I found it a bit difficult to figure out where they were! And as a Canadian I found this story hilarious for the sheer show more ridiculousness of it. For example, Joe claims that Edmonton, Alberta, is "on the edge" of the Northwest Territories. Look at a map -- Edmonton is in pretty much the centre of the province and is a staggering 1500 km away from Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. (Later on, Fenton gets out an atlas and shows the boys where Yellowknife and Edmonton are. To which I commented, "And Joe realized how horribly wrong he was.") I also found the depiction of the Hudson's Bay Company store felt a bit 1700s, probably because they still referred to the head of the store as the "factor". I thought this was supposed to be modern-day, which for this book would be the early 1960s. And then there was the French-Canadian trapper, whose every other line was either "Bon tonnerre!" or "Sacrebleu!"

This book also felt quite a bit more like a wish-fulfillment story (as I imagine all Hardy Boys books are; this one just felt more obvious about it). I have a hard time believing that the FAA would certify an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old as fully qualified to add seaplane ratings to their pilots' licences after a mere two days of practice. (Pilot: "You should be able to pass the FAA proficiency test now!" Me: "Wow, that must be a sh*t test then.") And Fenton being totally cool with outsourcing some of his detective work to his assistant and a motley selection of his sons' friends? Right.

This book did not contain any screechingly obvious examples of racism, or sexism beyond the usual fact of the Hardys' mom and aunt showing up only briefly at the beginning and being more preoccupied with domestic matters than crime, so for an original Hardy Boys book it is doing fairly well. I did, however, notice that there was a lot of fat-shaming of Chet, constantly referring to him as "chubby" or "chunky", and a key plot point involves the fact that he's hungry. Given that he is able to keep up perfectly well with the Hardys in the wilderness, I can't believe he is actually fat. Standards of body weight were different back then -- I think Chet probably just doesn't work out as much!

This isn't a terrible book, but I wouldn't give it to a child without some sort of disclaimer about the style and the general silliness. Maybe better for ageing children such as me, who grew up with the Hardy Boys and are trying to recover that magic. show less

I feel kind of bad giving this 2 stars because I'm so far outside the age range for this one but I do think the best kids books can be enjoyed by anyone. This book was just so boring to me. When I was a kid, I wanted to read more Hardy Boys books because I thought they were more interesting compared to Nancy Drew. Reading it now, I find Frank and Joe to be so boring. They had no personality outside of being people who solve mysteries and none of their friends are really that interesting either.

The plot was all over the place in this book. Frank and Joe would be sent all over the place for seemingly exciting reasons and then it would end up being completely irrelevant to the mystery. this whole book is just full of wild goose chases show more that were so repetitive. I wish this plot was just a little more streamline, I think the book would have been so much better that way.

this was an interesting return to a book series that I loved as a child and I am glad I read this to see what sort of things I read as a kid but I doubt I'll be reading any more books in this series. Maybe I'll re-read a Nancy Drew book next. show less

Adventure

I absolutely loved Nancy Drew growing up. This was a series I latched on to for dear life and never let go. So after my obsession with Nancy Drew started to dwindle (mostly because I had read all the ones I could get my hands on), I moved on to The Hardy Boys because that was the natural next step, duh. Love the Hardy Boys (though they weren't quite as amazing and Nancy Drew and her friends).