''The Melted Coins'' is Volume 23 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 counterpa ...

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 ...

. This 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 1944. Between 1959 and 1973 the first 38 volumes of this series were systematically revised as part of a project directed by Harriet Adams, Edward Stratemeyer's daughter. The original version of this book was rewritten in 1970 by Andrew E. Svenson resulting in two different stories with the same title.

Plot

Revised edition

Frank and Joe Hardy become suspicious when 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 ...

enrolls in a summer school that sounds too good to be true. While investigating a burglary at the Seneca Indian Reservation in New York State, they also investigate the nearby Zoar College. Their sleuthing leads them to believe that there is a connection between the professors of this fictional college and the theft of a tribal mask titled ''Spoon Mouth''. This mask was created when some melted coins happened to look like a sacred Indian image. Now it is missing and the boys' investigation proves to be dangerous; however, they successfully recover the mask and capture the thieves.

Original edition

A case involving

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

money, buried treasure, and the Curse of the Caribees, Frank and Joe solve the mystery of the Melted Coins and help shut down both a local counterfeiting ring and a much larger operation dealing in stolen gold.

References

The Hardy Boys books 1944 American novels 1944 children's books 1970 children's books 1970 American novels Novels set in New York (state) Grosset & Dunlap books {{1940s-ya-novel-stub