#54 Deep Trouble (31st Anniversary Review)

[tomswift2002]

Published:August 1991
Publisher: Archway Paperbacks (1991-2000)
Author: Unknown as of December 2022

Plot:
In a world of mystery and silence, terror always strikes without warning!

SHOCK WAVES!

Long-lost treasure beckons Frank and Joe to a deep-sea adventure in the Bahamas. The Hardys join a crew of divers seeking to unlock the gold-laden vaults of a long-ago shipwreck. But promise soon turns to peril as the treasure hunters become the hunted -- and the Hardy boys become the targets of sabotage!

Frank and Joe discover that beneath the ocean's surface lurk the deepest dangers. They plunge into a world of supercharged speedboat chases and underwater combat and are drawn into a deadly game in which the winners go for the gold and the losers go to the sharks!

Review:  I remember first reading this book around 1997-1998.  I bought it new with a bunch of other Casefiles that I ordered in at the time.  Looking at my copy, it's a third printing from January 1994.  You can kind of see how the series sales were dropping then, since in the first 2.5 years of the book being out it had gone through three printings, but it was struggling 3-4 years later to move stock. 

I also remember back then that, while the cover looked interesting, I didn't like the story and I don't recall reading it since then.

[MacGyver]

I also like the cover but I don't remember much of anything about the plot of Deep Trouble, so I'll be interested to hear the review.

[tomswift2002]

I just checked, and on the "Top Ten Casefiles" topic from 2008 I put Deep Trouble at #83, and originally I had it double listed at #114 as well.

[tomswift2002]

So far I'm finding that Deep Trouble seems to be an updating of The Secret Warning (1938).

[tomswift2002]

I just finished Deep Trouble.  The author had a really hard time keeping the action up, and a lot of times I was wondering why the crooks were doing what they were doing.  I even stopped reading the book for a few days so that I could read the Nancy Drew Files #102: Counterfeit Christmas book for Christmas.

Also, in the end they never did fully clear up whether Peter Duvall was dead.  All the characters seemed to accept that he had been murdered and thrown in a channel, however the crooks only said that he was floating in the channel, and never said whether by floating if he was in a boat or if his body was actually in the water.  And the police never said whether they had sent a boat to that channel to see if they could locate the body or a boat with the guy in it. 

Overall, it was a pretty boring and forgettable story, and I see now why I ranked it at both #83 and #114 in 2008.  It's a terrible story.

Rating: 2.5/10 

[MacGyver]

Wow- that review makes it sound like a bit of a mess. Since it's set in the Bahamas, hopefully the author was at least able to get some factual things about the country in there.