''The Flickering Torch Mystery'' is Volume 22 in the original

The Hardy Boys The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterp ...

Mystery Stories published by

Grosset & Dunlap Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898. The company was purchased by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982 and today is part of Penguin Random House through its subsidiary Penguin Group. Today, through the Penguin Gro ...

. The book was written for the

Stratemeyer Syndicate The Stratemeyer Syndicate was a publishing company that produced a number of mystery book series for children, including Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others. They published and ...

Leslie McFarlane Charles Leslie McFarlane (October 25, 1902 – September 6, 1977) was a Canadian journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker, who is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful ''Hardy Boys'' series, using the ...

in 1943. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of the series were systematically revised as part of a project directed by Harriet Adams, Edward Stratemeyer's daughter. The original version of the book was rewritten in 1971 by Vincent Buranelli resulting in two different stories with the same title.

Plot

Original edition

The boys investigate the mysterious disappearance of rare

silkworms The domestic silk moth (''Bombyx mori''), is an insect from the moth family Bombycidae. It is the closest relative of ''Bombyx mandarina'', the wild silk moth. The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of a silk moth. It is an economically im ...

at a scientific research facility while working at an experimental farm during their summer vacation. The mystery deepens to include the theft of government building materials — a case being investigated by their famous father, Fenton.

Revised edition

When two suspicious plane accidents occur near Marlin Crag Airport, the two Hardy brothers investigate the case and find themselves in greater danger than they anticipated. Frank and Joe suspect an oil beacon near the airport caught the pilots off track. The boys go to fictional Pittville and visit Martin Weiss's parents. They get a clue about a dance place called The Flickering Torch. This involves investigating the ''Flickering Torch'' where a band seems to be involved in something shady. Their friend

Chet Morton Many characters have appeared in the fictional series of books about The Hardy Boys. Character history Original series At the beginning of the original Hardy Boys series, Frank is only 16 years old (as opposed to 18 after the revisions betwee ...

develops a new hobby of building airplanes; however, when he buys a used

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

from an airplane junkyard it gets stolen from his farm. Ultimately the Hardys smash an illegal plot to make industrial

diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

s using

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

isotopes Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers (mass numbers) ...

from

smuggled Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations. There are various ...

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Adaptation

The book was also adapted in 1977 as the episode "The Flickering Torch Mystery" for the 1977 '' Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries'' TV series. The story, again, was completely re-written, involving the Hardy Brothers looking for a missing sound engineer in an investigation that uncovers a plot to kill rock star Tony Eagle (played by

Ricky Nelson Eric Hilliard Nelson (May 8, 1940 – December 31, 1985) was an American musician, songwriter and actor. From age eight he starred alongside his family in the radio and television series ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. In 1957, he bega ...

). Unfortunately, they wrongly conclude it was to be attempted through a bomb placed on stage during a concert, and their desperate interruption of it to destructively search for the bomb turns out be an embarrassing fiasco that finds nothing. Later, they uncover the true method of the murder attempt, but no one believes them until they are forced to trust their instincts and stop Eagle's departure on his private plane. Once accomplished, they convince Eagle to allow a search of the plane and they discover not only the missing sound engineer tied up and hidden inside, but also a hidden radio transmitter designed to interfere with the plane's navigational equipment so the plane would go hopelessly off course and crash in the ocean when its fuel is exhausted. Some aspects of the book remained (the Hardys investigating the disappearance of a pilot), but one of the subplots, Frank & Joe having their own rock band and about to make their debut performance, was moved to another episode, "Mystery of the Flying Courier".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flickering Torch Mystery, The The Hardy Boys books 1943 American novels 1943 children's books 1971 American novels 1971 children's books Grosset & Dunlap books American novels adapted into television shows