I just HAD to read this for the novelty value. (pun intended) Mickey Spillane, the creator of such tough guys as Mike Hammer, The Deep, & Dog Kelly wrote a YA mystery-thriller! It was a train wreck, but still kind of fun. Hardy Boys by Spillane.

I'm not a real fan of juvenile fiction & this one managed to pull most of the crap I hate the most about them. For instance, he's always relied too much on coincidence & luck as substitutes for a well planned plot. Here, he piled them on thick enough to make a Dagwood. Worse, diesel & gas became interchangeable.

There were no characters, just caricatures, even more so than in his regular writing. Of course, we had to have Commie spies - not necessarily a bad thing - but they didn't have to be such fumbling idiots. The Islanders were... Oh, I can't even go into it. Just pull out a stereotype & plug it in at the right point, then dumb it down until you scream.

I like a lot of Spillane's writing, but he's not really all that good of a writer. He has no versatility, just a hard boiled tone that fit some stories very well, the John Wayne of writers. He proved that here. ( )