Double Exposure
Published: December 1988
Author: Unknown as of March 2019
Plot: Frank and Joe discover that they have a long-lost brother, and somehow that brother is involved with international affairs concerning Czechoslovakia.
Review: It's funny, however, December 1988 seemed to have been a very big month for both Nancy Drew and the Hardy boys, since as I mentioned in my review of the Nancy Drew Files #30 Death By Design https://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/forums/index.php?topic=2921.0 (https://www.hardyboyscasefiles.com/forums/index.php?topic=2921.0), Nancy was close to death in that book, and here in The Hardy Boys Casefiles #22 Double Exposure, the Hardy's meet their long-lost brother, Chris Hardy! Unfortunately, this is the only book in which Chris appears, but still, this book really gives us a lot of back story on Fenton and Laura Hardy and their early years as a married couple. Another funny thing is that in both books, Carson Drew, Fenton Hardy & Laura Hardy are on fishing trips in Canada and are so far in the woods that they cannot access any phones.
I am currently up to Chapter 5 on my re-read, however, so far we've learnt that Fenton and Laura are listed on Chris's birth certificate (which Frank gets from the Bayport City Hall) as Chris's parent's, and that Chris went to Bayport Elementary, the same school that Frank and Joe would go to, until Chris was 6.5 years old. At that point he disappears, and apparently it was around the same time that Frank was born. (Chris is 26 in the book, so he would've been 6.5 years old 19.5 years prior, so Frank is at least 19 years old in this book!)
Of course this book is very easily a Cold War Thriller, since Czechoslovakia is mentioned, which Czechoslovakia hasn't existed since 1993 and the Eastern Bloc is also mentioned.
So I finished Double Exposure a few days ago. It was a really good book. It was also funny that while I was reading the book, there was a lot on the news about Russia, as Double Exposure is a Cold War story, so most of the plot deals with agents from the Iron Curtain and the Russian Communist regime of the 1980's.
Of course, this is one Hardy Boys story that I would not expect to see written nowadays, when you look at how the Hardy Boys Adventures are written.
Rating: 8/10
I love the long-lost brother angle with "Chris Hardy". I also mainly recall this book introducing me to the concept of a bacon cheeseburger as a kid. :) 8)
It has been a long time since I read this book but I remember liking it.
Plus it shed light on the early years of Fenton and Laura's marriage before Frank and Joe were born.