I can hear you now: ‘WTF is this boomer talking about??”
Fiction was king in the 60’s. No, I’m not talking about fictional tabloid stories about the English monarchy or Hollywood actresses. I mean books. JFK even endorsed Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. There have always been English crime novels, led of course by the prolific Agatha Christie.
We in the US had our detective stories, led by the Marlowe series and my man man Ross D McDonald, aka Kenneth Millar (friend of the late Warren Zevon).
The Hardy Boys stories were fictional stories about two boys who solved mysteries that the bumbling adults just couldn’t seem to crack. It got thousands of us males hooked on fiction. It was an easy step for me to read the Sherlock Holmes stories, then the 13 Bonds, Alistair Maclean, Ludlam, etc. During the 60’s these books were revised to remove racial stereotypes and so, they became ok for us boys.
And, lest we forget, the Hardy Boys always exhibited acceptable behavior, even when adults were bumbling and unable to see what was obvious. They were polite saviors of truth, justice, and the American way. Kind like this guy:
Out sixth grade teacher had the entire set of 38. (Note: he also had a set of Nancy Drew’s) For extra credit, you could read a book, take a small quiz and improve your overall reading grade. Wellllllll, say no more! As my toys moved from daily pastimes to nostalgic trinkets, my reading stepped up (along with the music of course). What the hell else do you do when you’re too young to smoke fatties or get in a girl’s jeans?
So I became enamored of the mystery kids
In college, we would sometimes come up with some stories they didn’t print of Hardy Boys stories. The Mystery of Castrato, The Secret of the White Powder, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine (ahem), or, my favorite, Nancy Drew’s Third Drawer. Or maybe have the boys meet up with other fictional characters, like Brando’s Colonel Kurtz or Hannibal Lechter (ah yes, can’t you see it? “Mrs. Vanderbilt’s Mysterious Lunch.”)
The only thing I remember from all that reading (and I think I read 20 of them) was the Phrase ‘Frank pitched forward and blacked out.’ It was like when you watched the later Avengers eps with Purdie. That girl spent more time, getting chloroformed, fainting, bopped on the head, and drugged than any heroine I ever saw.