Hardy Boys Secret Files 05 – A Monster of a Mystery

Franklin W Dixon's A Monster of a Mystery is a Hardy Boys Secret Files case for 7 year olds about a famous movie prop that goes missing at a comic shop.

What happens

The Hardy brothers are nine and eight, Frank the older. Everyone in Bayport is obsessed with Morpho the Morph Monster, a comic and film baddie who eats brains with a giant spork. (It's all very silly, don't worry.)

Their friend Chet is the biggest fan of all. He owns the limited-edition Morpho mask with purple ooze on the nose, and he's not lending it to anybody.

So when the actor and the comic artist come to Bayport Comix on Saturday, bringing the real Spork from the film, the whole gang queues up early. Even Adam Ackerman, the town bully, turns out to be a massive fan.

Then the Spork disappears from the back room. The shop owner says the rest of the day is cancelled unless it's returned by three o'clock.

Joe is instantly sure it's Adam. Frank keeps reminding him that Dad says never to jump to conclusions. That brotherly back-and-forth runs right through the book, and it's a big part of the fun.

The shop is packed and chaotic. Chet's four-year-old sister Mimi is terrified of the costumes and keeps wanting to go home. There are Morpho masks on half the heads in the queue. And for a while it looks horribly like one of their own friends might be the thief.

Is it Adam? A superfan? Someone they'd never suspect? The clue that cracks it is sitting on an earlier page, so an eagle-eyed reader has a real chance of getting there first.

What's lovely is how it ends. The facts point one way, but Joe's gut tells him his friend didn't do it, and he's right to think harder. It's a nice little lesson in trusting people without it ever feeling preachy.

It finishes back in the brothers' secret tree house, writing the case up on their whiteboard.

What to read next

This is book five of the Secret Files. If they want to go back to where it started, Trouble at the Arcade has a video game tournament at the grand reopening of Bayport Fun World, and a ladder into that tree house that Joe keeps forgetting to pull up.