Franklin W Dixon Didn't Exist?

May 29, 2015 12:42 PM

OK, I actually knew that, although I didn't realize that anonymous authors were still cranking out Hardy Boys (and Nancy Drew) books.
posted by COD (44 comments total)

I knew, briefly, the daughter of one of the Franklin W. Dixons. We made out after a party. She gaved me an autographed copy of one of the books. Paperback.
posted by entropone at 12:44 PM on May 29, 2015 [9 favorites]

This was a major revelation to me. I finally did the math when I saw the copyright on The Mystery of the Old Mill was ca. 1934 and the Waldenbooks in the mall had all new casefiles! books that were new in 1987.
posted by mbd1mbd1 at 12:47 PM on May 29, 2015

They may not be fine literature, but I can still summarize the plots of Hardy Boys books that I read in the 1970s, which is the era of the photo in the article. I had almost all of them.
posted by COD at 12:51 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just went to a touristy gift shop, and only the first six original books ("Secret of the Old Clock," etc.) were for sale. I guess these new books sell well online, like everything else.
posted by Melismata at 12:53 PM on May 29, 2015

In which boys and girls and their chums solve exiting mysteries. My recollection of the style of language in Nancy Drew is all mixed up with P.G. Wodehouse. What ho!
posted by theora55 at 12:53 PM on May 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

My father had a date with Betty Crocker, or rather, he had a date with one of the half dozen young women who answered Betty Crocker's mail.
posted by SemiSalt at 1:03 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Obligatory Achewood.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:06 PM on May 29, 2015 [13 favorites]

This is literally my nightmare as a writer.

Or, rather, more specifically, I had a recurring dream in my twenties that I had a job updating old Archie storylines for "today's kids."
posted by 256 at 1:07 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

I thought that there was one person with two pseudonyms, and that s/he had died a long time ago. I had no idea the entire shebang was ghostwritten.

I read all the Hardy Boys books in 5th grade. I loved them.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:08 PM on May 29, 2015

Hardy Boys No. 199
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:08 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ghost of the Hardy Boys by Leslie McFarlane (one of the ghost riders mentioned in the article) is a hoot.
posted by marxchivist at 1:08 PM on May 29, 2015

Similarly and (shockingly!) Gertrude Chandler Warner hasn't written a single one of the 120 Boxcar Children books that have been published in the 36 years since she died.

I guess it's more or less a trade secret who has been writing them, but I know at least one of them is by one of MeFi's own.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:09 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

And, what the heck, four obligatory Hark a Vagrant strips: 1 2 3 4.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:09 PM on May 29, 2015 [12 favorites]

It heartens me to know Chet's still out there, rollin' in his jalopy...
posted by persona au gratin at 1:10 PM on May 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

"Shame to waste some Chucks."
posted by brennen at 1:13 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

This was an excellent read on the topic.
posted by dr_dank at 1:16 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

When John Bellairs died in 1991, the first few books after that said "by John Bellairs, completed by Brad Strickland." Which was actually hooey, because John didn't leave any works behind. The newer books now say "John Bellairs' [well-known character] in [Title], by Brad Strickland." That works.
posted by Melismata at 1:19 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hardy Boys No. 199

As well as: 1, 2.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:22 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

I sadly got my start reading The Hardy Boys Casefiles, which were darker and grittier for the more sophisticated 8-year-olds of the 80s. Joe's girlfriend Iola Morton was killed in a bomb blast set by terrorists who had cyanide capsules implanted in their teeth, etc.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:23 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

The 90s Tom Swift stories were darker too. Tom Swift: Cyborg Kickboxer, for example, is a harrowing steroids allegory.
posted by Iridic at 1:27 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

From 2002, (Toledo) Blade columnist, Nancy Drew author Millie Benson dies at age 96.
posted by plastic_animals at 1:30 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I was in elementary school, I had all of the Hardy Boys books. I remember going to the school library and doing a little investigative work myself, looking up Franklin W. Dixon in Who's Who. He wasn't there. That's how I figured out the name was a pseudonym. There's also a place where the name of the police chief changes, something no single author would likely do.
posted by Xoc at 1:31 PM on May 29, 2015

Ace Atkins is actually doing a pretty decent job at being Robert B. Parker.
posted by box at 1:32 PM on May 29, 2015

Ace Atkins is actually doing a pretty decent job at being Robert B. Parker.

Based on the one I've read, and the Robert Knott Virgil Cole / Everett Hitch books, whoever picked the not-quite-ghostwriters for Parker did a pretty solid job.
posted by brennen at 1:34 PM on May 29, 2015

Biff Quirdley is doing a great job as Chaucer in the New Canterbury Tales. I particularly enjoyed The Ebay Seller's Tale.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:38 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Thomas Hardy Boys
posted by kmz at 1:38 PM on May 29, 2015

Huh, so...adventure stories about heroes who always remain the same age with time shifting to match them, defined by a few consistent traits and then with plot and deeper characterization by an ever-changing group of writers, with occasional crossovers--

(scribbles out plans for the Stratemeyer Cinematic Universe on a stained napkin)
posted by kagredon at 1:39 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

So wait, did Alfred Hitchock not write any of the Three Investigators books, either? Oh, Jupiter, say it ain't so!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:40 PM on May 29, 2015 [8 favorites]

Spoiler alert, please (mods) for the latest Hardy Boys adventure!
posted by TreeRooster at 1:41 PM on May 29, 2015

Believe it or not, VC Andrews didn't write any of the 70 books that came out after she died.

“If I had found out that Francine Pascal didn't write the Sweet Valley High books back in the day, I would have been devastated,” Heller says.
She didn't. (Previously on the blue)
posted by SisterHavana at 1:53 PM on May 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Cleo Virginia "V.C." Andrews wrote maybe 8 books, starting with Flowers in the Attic. "V.C. Andrews" has written more than 80. I think there's a large band of anonymous authors nowadays (i.e., less famous than Terry Pratchett or Steven King) who are now actual human beings but whose names will be on books written for centuries to come.
posted by Etrigan at 1:53 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

JINX.
posted by Etrigan at 1:53 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

I read the McFarlane book years ago and the only thing I remember is that he tried to inject some personality into the cardboard characters and descriptions and he was dismayed to see that when the series was reprinted years later, all that was buffed away.

OTOH, my library had a copy of one of the early Nancy Drew's, published in the 30s and the unabashed racism and prejudice was shocking.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:38 PM on May 29, 2015

My grandmother was a janitress (in a grey skirted uniform with her name embroidered on her chest) in Chicago Public Schools when my older sister and I were young readers. These were the days when the school libraries were so well stocked that they had bags of discards every year and we gobbled up all the original Nancy Drews full of roadsters, racism and rascals. The librarian had bags ready to go at the end of the school year and for us it meant A PERFECT SUMMER. I still have a bag of them. Can't throw them out because they were important to me as a child, can't pass them on because...it was a different world pre-1960.
posted by readery at 2:51 PM on May 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

I sadly got my start reading The Hardy Boys Casefiles, which were darker and grittier for the more sophisticated 8-year-olds of the 80s. Joe's girlfriend Iola Morton was killed in a bomb blast set by terrorists who had cyanide capsules implanted in their teeth, etc.

IIRC, Frank (who had a brown belt in karate, as every book was careful to point out) would also regularly take out baddies by karate-chopping them in the neck. Nobody ever got killed other than Iola, though.

Never had any clue about the ghostwriting thing as a kid. I had some (old! boring!) copies of the original Hardy Boys books from the 50s, so I figured that's when they started, and Mr. Dixon was just some old hack...
posted by neckro23 at 2:52 PM on May 29, 2015

Reading the Hardy Boys books -- and I read at least 50 of them -- when I was younger, helped me to realize that I was gay. So many descriptions of them stripping to their underwear and diving in the water. So many descriptions of masculine hotness.

So wanted to cuddle those boys. And by cuddle, you know what I mean. Turns out, I'm physically a Chet.
posted by yesster at 3:09 PM on May 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

I knew about the Stratemeyers as a franchise-devouring kid, and it didn't bother me a bit that Laura Lee Hope et al. didn't exist.

I was a Bobbsey Twins fan. They always seem to get left out of these articles, but the characters and stories in those books were even more fabulously improbable than in the Drew/Hardy books. And they predated those by decades.

(Don't ever read the Bobbsey Twins books available on Project Gutenberg. Just don't. The 1960s-era rewrites of the earliest books were much better, and if you've got good memories of them it's probably best not to do that to yourself.)
posted by asperity at 3:14 PM on May 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oddly, light googling tells me that the Chip Hilton Sports Series, contemporaneous to the early Hardy Boys, was actually completely written by basketball HOFr and former coach Clair Bee. Clean and slightly evangelical in that offhand 50s way, I enjoyed the brutally simple moral lessons and the sometimes surprisingly complicated class and race issues. I am impressed, Mr. Bee.
posted by umberto at 3:37 PM on May 29, 2015

Et tu, Trixie?
posted by gingerest at 4:53 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

I remember reading the Hardy Boys mysteries when I was eight and thinking "I can write better than this." It's a good thing Franklin W. Dixon didn't exist; otherwise he'd be a hack writer who eight year-olds regarded with scorn.
posted by siberian khatru at 6:14 PM on May 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

I knew Millie Benson, the original Carolyn Keene. Millie was a treasure, and we sorely miss her around here. She had to keep quiet about her secret identity for so long, and it was wonderful when she was finally able to reveal it.

Learning that my friend and customer had written some of my favorite books...I cherish that memory.
posted by MissySedai at 9:27 PM on May 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

A related previous post is this essay on ghostwriting sweet valley high.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:55 PM on May 29, 2015

I remember discovering the different versions of the same title in the Hardy Boys series, and going to the library to pull the 2-4 different version from over the years (this was in the 80s). The blatant racism and classism, horrible science and leaps of faith, and so on of the earliest books was easily offset by the more exciting action and danger. In one version of a story, the Boys take up ice yachting and get semi-tatoo'd (they got the needles, but no ink, which ignores the actual tattooing process since antiquity, but whatever) by the villian with a critically important map. In the modern version, well, nothing that exciting happened.
posted by Blackanvil at 10:59 AM on June 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Bobbseys (well, I think it was just Bert) got to go ice yachting, too! I wonder if the same writer was responsible for those two stories. I think it was in The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge (The Bobbsey Twins' Wonderful Winter Secret was the one where they constructed an improbably large and elaborate snow castle, pretty sure no ice yachting in that one).
posted by asperity at 9:00 AM on June 2, 2015