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I first came across Benjamin Hoff’s book, THE HOUSE ON THE POINT, a few years back in the local public library. A quick browse through made me add it to the pile I was accumulating for check-out and it was just recently that I decided I wanted a copy for myself. The library copy had a full dust jacket, but the one I found had a cardboard sleeve that fit over the front cover(pictured here with and without that sleeve).

What Hoff has done here was rework the plot for one of the original Hardy Boys titles, rewriting it as a mystery for grown up fans of the old books, i.e. more sophisticated readers.

In the preface, Hoff talks about how it all came about. As a child, he’d contacted an illness that was misdiagnosed and mistreated, causing it to linger on for far to long. Books became his friends, worlds he could escape into and forget for a time his aches and pains. The second book in the series, THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF, was the first one he read, the original 1927 edition with an updated cover. Some years later, while in a bookstore for a signing for his second book, he noticed a new edition of that same book, picking it up and thumbing through, and was ten years old again. He bought it for his son(an excuse to give him a chance to read it again). Later he found the rewritten version of the book and was disappointed that an early sequence with the Hardys on motorcycles, his favorite part of the story, was completely different from the original. A thought then that someone should write a more adult version crossed his mind. The books stood on his shelves for years before he took them down and had that same thought, finally thinking, “Why not me?”

So the first thing he did was strip the plot down to what he figured Edward Stratemeyer may have given his factory writers(the original second Hardy Boys title was written by Leslie McFarlane and completely rewritten by Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet, as part of the updating begun in 1959, resulting in two different stories with the same title). He made further changes in the tale(didn’t need a third book with that same title), set it in 1947, gave the characters a bit more consistency, and actually gave the female characters a little more fleshing out(after all, the originals were a young boy’s series and mustn’t have those “girls” getting in the way except for when they might need saving), and actually had them participating in the sleuthing.

The tale we have now is a much more straight forward mystery with readers of all ages in mind. Likely on rereading it, I would imagine the target audience for the original versions might find this one a bit harder to get into, though not really out of their reach. Those years for me are a tad hazy, but I believe I could have read it without much trouble.

After the novel, Hoff has a section where he details some of the changes he made and inconsistencies he cleared up. For example, over the course of the original books, Aunt Gertrude was either plump or slim, was an occasional visitor(Hoff settled on her being a permanent resident in the Hardy household), the Boys’ girl friends had several hair colors, depending on the writer, that sort of thing. Callie Shaw actually, worried for Frank, kisses him on the mouth(ooh, nasty, young boys back then would likely have thought; just give them a few more years. heh).

After that section comes an essay on mystery and detecting.

One thing I found amusing was Frank and Joe discussing Philip Marlowe, “not the radio or movie version,” and his qualifications, or lack of them, for being a real private eye.

If you haven’t read this one, get thee forth and find it. You will like it.

For more forgotten books, check out PATTINASE on Friday.