The Hardy Boys are two amateur detectives, Frank and Joe, who live in Bayport, New York with their family and friends. The book series was created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and underwent revisions from 1959 to 1973. The franchise has been modernized with spin-offs and collaborations with other characters.
The Hardy Boys are two brothers who are the protagonists of a fictional book series of the same name. Frank Hardy is 18 and dark, while Joe Hardy is a 17-year-old blond and blue-eyed. They are the sons of Fenton Hardy, a famous detective who once worked for the NYPD. They live in Bayport, New York.
Frank and Joe Hardy are both amateur detectives who want to follow in their father’s footsteps. They live at home with their father, mother Laura Hardy and a spinster aunt, Aunt Gertrude. They are also occasionally aided in their crime solving adventures by their friends, Chez Morton and Tony Prito.
The Hardy Boys series was created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the same organization behind other teen adventure novels such as Nancy Drew, the Bobsey Twins and the Rover Boys. All books in the series are credited to Franklin W. Dixon, a name invented by the syndicate. While Edward Stratemeyer conceived the first plot outlines, ghostwriters were employed to write the actual books. Leslie McFarlane was an early writer, authoring books #1-16 and #22-24. Her books are widely considered to be among the best in the Hardy Boys universe.
The Hardy Boys franchise originated in 1927 and was initially published by Grosset and Dunlap. As with most other books created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the first volumes of The Hardy Boys underwent a systematic revision from 1959 to 1973. The syndicate claimed it wanted to simplify the stories by updating the police methods used in the books and eliminating the cases of racial stereotypes. This move angered quite a few fans, who complained that the new versions of the early stories had lost much of the original Hardy Boys appeal.
In 1979, Grosset and Dunlap lost the publishing rights to all future Hardy Boys books to Simon and Schuster. Grosset and Dunlap, however, retained the rights to publish volumes 1-58 in hardback format. They later acquired the rights to publish volumes 59-85 in the same format in 2005. The Hardy Boys series concluded with book #1. 190 that same year.
Simon and Schuster have tried, with some success, to “modernize” the series by creating various spin-offs. The first of these was the Casefiles series, which was a bit of a departure from the saner world of the original volumes. Here, the boys face death when longtime supporting character Iola Morton (Joe Hardy’s girlfriend) is killed by a car bomb in the first volume), use firearms, and partner with shady crime-fighting organizations.
There was also the Clues Brothers series, which was aimed at a much younger audience, and the still current Undercover Brothers, which is written in a first-person context. Other books have involved special collaborations with Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. There were also two television series about boys produced in 1977 and 1995.
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