The House on the Point: A Tribute to Franklin W. Dixon and The Hardy Boys

Rating:
Summary: A Bitter Disappointment
Review: "The House On The Point" is a modern rewrite of the classic Hardy Boys adventure, "The House On The Cliff".
Reading it brings to mind the old axiom: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The original "The House On The Cliff" is one of the best of the Hardy Boys canon and can scarcely be improved on, yet the author tries - vainly.
For no reason at all, he changes the name of some of the major recurring characters in the series and has the Hardy Boys and their friends jive-talking in 40's slang.
The original outline for "The House On The Cliff" is available to any researcher at the NY Public Library. The author should have consulted that instead of attempting to "modernize" this classic story with his rather bizarre ideas.
Your best bet is to stick with the [original version of] "The House On The Cliff".

Rating:
Summary: Hardy Boys fans and newcomers alike will surely be pleased
Review: A classic children's detective story is lovingly and respectfully rewritten and revived.

I must have been about six or seven when I discovered The Mickey Mouse Club. No, not the one on the Disney Channel. There wasn't a Disney Channel then, or cable TV, no Telstar, no Sputnik, even. No, this was the original, with Jimmy Dodd and Roy the Big Mouseketeer, and Tommy and Annette, and Doreen, and a gaggle of other pre-pubescent Mouseketeers. And the Hardy Boys. Yep, for a few precious minutes out of every show, The Mickey Mouse Club serialized "The Tower Treasure," and I was hooked. Nothing stopped me from getting home from school and turning on the television --- no VCRs, you couldn't tape it --- and catching Frank and Joe Hardy and Iola Martin search for that pirate treasure. I could even sing the serial's theme music---I still can, actually, but don't tell anybody --- and I loved every second of it.

Joe and Frank were the teenagers I wanted to grow up to be, and when I hit that mark, I wanted a girl like Iola on my arm. Time passed in due course, the serial ended, and was replaced by "Spin and Marty" or "Clint and Mac" or something, and I was bummed. I was bummed, that is, until I wandered into a neighborhood bookstore --- no Barnes and Nobles chain store at the mall, no Amazon on the computer, no computers in the house --- and found shelf after shelf of Hardy Boy books. I had no idea. I started jumping up and down and generally going bananas in the middle of the store. Those were the first real books I bought.

There's a three-year hole in my comic book collection from that time period as the result of diverting funds from Clark Kent to Frank and Joe Hardy. The first one I bought was THE WAILING SIREN MYSTERY, then THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF, and onward. I still have them all. The series has since been readapted, updated, and now in my opinion, sucks. But the books --- the originals --- were great. For good or for ill, a lot of my personality was forged by Frank, Joe, Chet, and all their chums in Bayport.

So you have to understand how I felt late one afternoon when I received a large manila envelope in the mail, ripped it open, and found myself staring at THE HOUSE ON THE POINT by Benjamin Hoff, with the subtitle "A Tribute to Franklin W. Dixon and The Hardy Boys" on the cover. I'm here to tell you, The Kid got just a little misty-eyed, and when I got to the dedication, well... let's just say that everything else I was doing got put on hold as I sat down and read the bad boy from cover to cover.

Everyone is here, Frank and Joe and Chet, and even some of the folks I had forgotten about, like Aunt Gertrude (how could I have forgotten about Aunt Gertrude) and Tony...and the never-to-be-forgotten Iola. What Hoff has done here is rewrite the classic THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF, and update it to 1948, making it at once new and fresh while retaining the wide-eyed innocence of the original.

Hoff is best known as the author of THE TAO OF POOH, and if he has been accused on occasion of perhaps being too in love with the sound of his own voice, that flaw, whether true or not, can and should be forgiven with the publication of THE HOUSE ON THE POINT. What Hoff has done is to quietly develop and sharpen all of the beloved Hardy Boy principals while keeping them true to their history. At the same time, Hoff keeps the original plot, which too often meandered in the original edition, on a laser sharp course while preserving some of the endearing weaknesses that were part and parcel of the original work. The Hardys and their chums, out for a motorbike ride one day, stumble on a supposedly deserted house overlooking the bay. The house has a reputation of being haunted and, indeed, the lads are scared off by unearthly laughter. Over dinner that night Frank and Joe's father, world famous detective Fenton Hardy, mentions a case which he is working on which involves smuggling and...the boys put it all together!

The house is being used as a base for the smugglers! Frank and Joe decide they're going to solve the case without letting their father know ahead of time, so they're sneaking out of the house, almost getting shipwrecked, and almost getting caught. They, of course, ultimately solve the case while making their dad and the town police chief look like they're asleep at the wheel, while getting a surprising assist from a surprising quarter. Let's just say that readers of the original series can be forgiven for thinking that the savior of the day was only along for comic relief.

The story is nicely bookended by an introduction by a Preface by Hoff at the beginning, and an afterward and an essay at the conclusion. The Afterward consists of an enumeration of changes which Hoff made from the original edition of THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF. The essay, "The Art of Seeing," is an interesting critique of the American education system, approaching the questions of what is wrong with the system and what can be done to make it better as a mystery. It seems at first blush oddly out of place in this volume; but, when one considers that whole generations of youngsters learned a love of reading as a result of encounters with the original series, it fits into this volume quite well. Hoff's Postscript also includes some comments he received in letters from prospective publishers rejecting THE HOUSE ON THE POINT. While some of them are accurate, all of them, ultimately, are wrong. St. Martin's Minotaur deserves a special hurrah, not only for publishing this work, but also for doing it up right.

Do that nine year-old in your house a favor. Thursday night, put a crossface crippler on "Smackdown", box up the X-Box, and give them THE HOUSE ON THE POINT. It's in an interactive format which they might be unacquainted with, but they'll learn how to use it, the same way you and I did.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: A great read for new and old fans
Review: A rewrite of a classic Hardy Boys mystery novel, carefully researched and beautifully written by a devoted fan. Hoff gives personality and flair to the boys - who all too often suffered from factory-style writing. This was a pleasant read; part trip down memory lane, part new adventure.

Rating:
Summary: A superb expansion on the original
Review: For those who read the Hardy Boys in their youth-particularly the editions prior to the 1970s rewritings, and the originals composed in the 1930s-1950s--the sense has always endured that there was something solid and memorable there that is the cause of our enduring memories. Benjamin Hoff validates this hunch in expanding the original 1927 The House on the Cliff to a longer form, casting it as a full-scale genre mystery novel. Hoff demonstrates that in the underlying situations and characters there was indeed an interaction among vital individuals on the page that made the books so worthy. In expanding, but retaining fealty too, the original outline by Edward Stratemeyer, Hoff proves that these stories were more than "juvenile" literature; they were a stepping stone for young readers to such detective classics as A. Conan Doyle and Dorothy Sayers. Only in slightly updating the setting, from the pre-Depression to the immediate post-WWII, might one quibble with Hoff; but the significant fact is that he has retained the essential period nature of the stories, rather than a futile attempt to make them current or, gawd-help-us, hip-as perpetrated by the rewrites since the 1970s. The original premise and characterizations, filled with "chums" and "roadsters," did have a certain mythic quality, and for any devotee of the originals, Hoff's book will allow one to both relive, yet experience for the first time, part of what made them great.



Rating:
Summary: The Hardys as they should have been!
Review: Hoff set out to rewrite a classic Hardy Boys tale (#2 in the series), fleshing out the plot and making the characters more real. He scaled down the plot of the original House on the Cliff to the bare bones and built up from there. He succeeded.

These are the Hardys as you've never seen them - real. These Hardys are not perfect (even Frank!). Joe jokes and teases more, Chet is known by the Bayport police as a prankster, Tony Prito has a NY accent and works in his father's produce business and Callie Shaw and Iola Morton actually help solve the case!

The biggest difference in this version of House on the Cliff is that the Hardys use step-by-step logic and 1940s methods to figure things out and solve problems along the way, just as their father would have taught them. When they dust for prints and pick locks, the reader is right there with them. No sleight of hand glossing over these things, the Hardys' methods are spelled out for the reader.

Callie & Iola are real girls. Iola makes Joe very nervous until she cries, thus making her human in his eyes. She's a smart-aleck. The boys talk over their plans with each other and the girls. The girls volunteer to talk to the house's owner under the guise of working on a project for school. While they're in the house, they figure out where the secret passageways are (because the windows aren't placed correctly inside the house), sketch various things (including a tire track that amazes Frank later in the story) and find an important clue that wasn't in the original book.

The story is infused with 1940s slang and music. The boys like cars and talk about them - Chet's coupe scrapes bottom going over the rutted roads, because he fixed it up as a low rider (lead sled) "to impress girls". Chet and Tony even talk about asking girls out on dates. The biggest change comes at the end of the book, but I won't ruin it for you. :-)

The book includes the re-written version of The House on the Cliff (renamed The House on the Point), an epilogue describing all the changes the author made to the original story, and an essay on the differences in American culture since 1947, the year in which the book was set.

Great attention to detail. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Save Your Money
Review: I have no idea what the author was trying to do here--other than jump on the HB nostalgia bandwagon that began rolling several decades ago when Leslie MacFarlaine wrote his fine book about being the ghostwriter for the HB series ("Ghost of the Hardy Boys"). But I could not get through the first ten pages of "House on the Point." Big deal. The Hardys get a little older. They now dig cars and hot music. Who cares. The original texts are what they are. Take 'em or leave 'em. They do NOT need to be improved, enlightened, brought "up to date" (their old-fashioned charm was what I liked most about them), deconstructed or corrected. Save your money and get one of the Applewood reissues of the original HB texts.

Rating:
Summary: Stick to the originals!
Review: Talk, talk, talk -- and more talk! This is supposed to add depth and characterization to The Hardy Boys, but all it does is suck the life out of them with TALK! The characters are just as one-dimensional as they ever were, only -- a rarity for The Hardy Boys -- their "adventure" is boring. There are endless pages of Frank, Joe and their buddies talking, planning, discussing, TALKING over what they're going to do. The original and stream-lined, updated versions of "The House on the Cliff" were both MUCH better. And as for giving the female characters a little more to do -- I hope this isn't why some female readers give this book a high rating. The gals are just as one-dimensional as the boys, but the book is dull. This is just another "young adult" series book with stick figure characters but without the zesty plotting and entertainment value of say, The Hardy Boys case files. What a disappointment! No wonder the author had such a problem finding a publisher, as he states in the afterword.

Rating:
Summary: delightful reinterpretation of a cherished novel
Review: Their father is a private detective and it's no secret in the northeastern city of Bayport that his sons Frank and Joe want to follow in his footsteps. In 1947, they and their friends take a motorcycle ride ending up at the abandoned Polucca house. They take shelter inside and notice some footprint in the dust and fingerprints on the staircase. They run out screaming when they hear strange noises from upstairs.

Their father is working on a smuggling case and the Hardy Boys think the Polucca house is the smugglers' base of operations. The boys snoop and find a cave near the house only accessible by boat. When Alex Polucca moves in, Frank and Joe sneak into the garage and find a secret door that leads them down in to a catacomb, which eventually takes them to the cave. Before they can report their findings to the police, their father disappears, his hat in Alex's car. The boys think their father is being held by the smugglers in the catacombs but are afraid if the police search the place, he will be killed. They need a plan.

Benjamin Hoff, author of THE TAO OF POOL, has had a love affair with the Hardy Boys books since he was a youngster. He has rewritten the classic THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF making it attractive to older readers as well as the teenage set. The Hardy boys use inductive and deductive reasoning as they follow the clues so the audience really believes these high school students have enough insider knowledge to solve the case. Mr. Hoff deserves Kudos for his delightful reinterpretation of a cherished novel.

Harriet Klausner