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The Hardy Boys #51
The Masked Monkey
Book 51 of Hardy Boys Mysteries Series.
178 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1972
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724 people want to read
About the author
Franklin W. Dixon
751 books994 followersFranklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who were part of a team that wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate (now owned by Simon & Schuster). Dixon was also the writer attributed for the Ted Scott Flying Stories series, published by Grosset & Dunlap.
Canadian author Leslie McFarlane is believed to have written the first sixteen Hardy Boys books, but worked to a detailed plot and character outline for each story. The outlines are believed to have originated with Edward Stratemeyer, with later books outlined by his daughters Edna C. Squier and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. Edward and Harriet also edited all books in the series through the mid-1960s. Other writers of the original books include MacFarlane's wife Amy, John Button, Andrew E. Svenson, and Adams herself; most of the outlines were done by Adams and Svenson. A number of other writers and editors were recruited to revise the outlines and update the texts in line with a more modern sensibility, starting in the late 1950s.
The principal author for the Ted Scott books was John W. Duffield.
Canadian author Leslie McFarlane is believed to have written the first sixteen Hardy Boys books, but worked to a detailed plot and character outline for each story. The outlines are believed to have originated with Edward Stratemeyer, with later books outlined by his daughters Edna C. Squier and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. Edward and Harriet also edited all books in the series through the mid-1960s. Other writers of the original books include MacFarlane's wife Amy, John Button, Andrew E. Svenson, and Adams herself; most of the outlines were done by Adams and Svenson. A number of other writers and editors were recruited to revise the outlines and update the texts in line with a more modern sensibility, starting in the late 1950s.
The principal author for the Ted Scott books was John W. Duffield.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
January 10, 2026
The Masked Monkey is the 51st of the original 58 Hardy Boys mysteries published by Grosset & Dunlap. It appeared in 1972, 45 years after the debut of the series, and was produced by the Stratemeyer syndicate. It's an okay story, average for the books of the time. The outline was written by Andrew E. Svenson, and the part of Franklin W. Dixon was played this time by Vincent Buranelli. The books from the 70s were shorter and simpler than the early stories, with an emphasis on action and adventure and a lack of subtlety or characterization. This one is no exception; for example, the Boys start investigating the disappearance of the son of a wealthy man and then hare off to Brazil even though it's apparent there is no real reason to do so. After some adventures there involving a mask-wearing ape they come home and resolve the problem. Aunt Gertrude only has a cameo, but she gets one of the best lines on page 12 when she observes that she's read enough mysteries to know that the butler is always accused. On page 13 she flounces out of the room after getting the last word in the conversation, which I thought a little out of character; I never pictured Gertrude as a flouncer. On page 106, Frank volunteers the Boys to assist in the capture of an escaped cobra, saying that they had prior experience with them. When and where did that happen? My favorite part in the book is the new hobby taken up by Chet, who adopts a different pastime in each of the latter volumes. With the assistance of Phil and Tony, he travels to various country club golf courses with a suction machine he has constructed, and vacuums stray golf balls out of the water hazards which he sells for hundreds of dollars. The first time I read this book, which would have been October of 1972, I clearly remember thinking that this would be a great way to make a living. I spent a couple of days planning how I would run this enterprise and gain vast wealth once I was old enough. (Spoiler: sadly, it never worked out.)
October 12, 2017
Like usual, I'm short on time today, so, this will be brief: This was another great whodunit in this series.
December 1, 2023
2023 reads, #91-95. I recently discovered that the first three Hardy Boys books, all of them published in 1927, have passed into the public domain, so I thought as a nostalgic treat I would go ahead and read them, since they can now be legally downloaded for free. I'm sure I don't have to tell any of my fellow middle-aged Generation Xers how large this book series loomed over my life as a kid in the 1970s; it was essentially the de facto gift that boys always gave other boys whenever they'd get invited to a birthday party at the rollerskating rink or Showbiz Pizza, because it was one of the few book series in those years still being released as hardbacks, so was deemed a "more substantial present" than the Judy Blume paperbacks we were all actually reading in those days, instead of these badly dated snoozers (or so they were perceived by us at the time). That makes it an ironic situation, that I owned something like 20 or 25 Hardy Boys books at the height of my childhood, but I don't think I ever read even a single one of them all the way from the front cover to the back; so this was another thing that made me curious about reapproaching the series, to see if I had avoided them back then simply because I wasn't a fan of these kinds of action-adventure stories (a genre I still don't like very much, even now in my mid-fifties), or if they're perhaps terribly written and we've all collectively built up this false memory of them being good.
That turned out to be difficult to determine in the case of the first three, which I read almost a hundred years after they were first published, because they can't help but be artifacts of their times by now, and so in many ways are so outdated that it appears ludicrous that the publishing industry was still trying to present these as "contemporary stories" back when I was a kid in the '70s. For those who don't know, the series is centered around two brothers in their late teens named Frank and Joe Hardy who live in the small Atlantic Seaboard town of Bayport; inspired by their father, a retired New York City detective who's now a renowned private investigator, the two are fascinated by the act of solving mysteries, especially easy to do in their case since the local police force are the most incompetent group of boobs this side of the Keystone Cops. (Leslie McFarlane, who bitterly ghostwrote the first 25 titles of the series, made it clear in his correspondence with friends that part of his aim with these books was to make an entire generation of youth suspicious of authority figures, since he otherwise hated writing these kinds of children's books and wanted to do something in them to please just himself.)
The first three books of the series are essentially cookiecutter stories with the same exact plot; namely, some ne'er-do-wells slink into Bayport and set up a criminal operation in an abandoned building "on the edge of town" (shuttered mansions in the first two books, a shuttered mill in the third), which the Hardy brothers accidentally stumble across during their motorcycling adventures in the country with their chums (get ready for a lot of references to "chums" and "pals" and "lads" in these novels), which they're then forced to solve themselves because of the local police force not believing them and Dad off on his own adventure, which invariably leads to the Scooby-Doo-like capture of the criminals ("I would've gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids!") and a huge reward from the wealthy industrialist the criminals had been planning on targeting (all in all, around a quarter-million dollars in today's money when you add up the rewards of the first three books, leading to one of the common complaints this series has received over the decades, that the Hardy Boys can essentially drop everything and travel halfway across the world whenever they want, because of being basically millionaires before they've even graduated high school).
That makes the books okay for what they are, and certainly prototypes for the "kids have actual agency" school of thought about children's literature that didn't become the mainstream norm until the 1950s, easily explaining why they were so explosively popular from the moment they began being released (when these were first published, most kids' books were still being written in the Victorian style, in which it was the adults who actually saved the day and children were presented as silent admirers who always deferred to the superior wisdom of "dear Papa"); but they're still a product of their times, including badly outdated slang and technology, a focus on activities no actual teens have been into since your grandparents' times (get ready for a lot of talk about speedboats and ham radios), and clues that by today's standards would be considered cartoonishly obvious (an entire major plot point in the first book, for example, revolves around all of these people being too stupid to understand that a criminal might wear a wig when committing a crime, leading to dozens of pages of teens standing around saying, "But he can't be the robber! HE HAS BLACK HAIR!!!!!!1!!"), making these interesting historical documents but in no way at all fun reading experiences that can be enjoyed in a contemporary way.
However, this still didn't answer my question about why I in particular didn't seem to connect with the Hardy Boys books back in my '70s youth, when the latest titles were being written in the contemporary culture; so after finishing these three, I went to the Chicago Public Library and checked out two of the titles written during my own childhood and that I in fact personally owned back in the day, 1972's The Masked Monkey (ghostwritten by Vincent Buranelli) and 1975's The Mysterious Caravan (ghostwritten by Andrew Svenson). They weren't exactly bad, which means that I definitively rejected them at the time mostly because I simply didn't like the action-adventure genre in general (interestingly, both of these titles are from the Hardy Boys' proto-Indiana-Jones "globetrotting years," in which the stories start in Bayport but before they're over take the brothers to such exotic locations as the South American rainforest and the Moroccan desert); but the pre-read assumption I did confirm is that a big part of why I rejected them at the time was simply because in the '70s they were still being written in the stilted, awkward prose of 1950s Mid-Century Modernism (and being illustrated in this outdated style as well), and all of us back then had gotten used by that point* to adults trying to feed us old 1950s crap and telling us it's still great for contemporary times, and us summarily ignoring all this old 1950s crap without ever going back and giving it even a second thought.
[*It's surreal and hilarious to me now to think back to my childhood in the 1970s and remember just how incredibly much of it still revolved around popular culture from the 1950s; keep in mind that "children's entertainment" hadn't yet become the trillion-dollar industry it now is, and that at that point the '50s were only twenty years old, so back then we didn't think twice about the idea that the only thing on television on weekday afternoons were reruns of things like The Lone Ranger and George Reeves' Superman and ancient old Three Stooges and Little Rascals shorts. Watching those now, another entire 50 years after the fact, it's hard to believe that these kinds of shows were being presented to us as perfectly fine and normal contemporary entertainment, stuff we actual kids just essentially ignored altogether, one of the major reasons Generation X became so obsessed with producing quality children's entertainment once we became adults ourselves.]
So all in all, my mini-dive into the world of the Hardy Boys this month was the kind of mixed bag these experiments always tend to be; illuminating from a historical standpoint, sort of nominally worth my time from an entertainment aspect, but not even close to being anymore the actual contemporary stories appropriate for contemporary kids that Simon & Schuster still desperately want to convince you they are. Have fun if you're an oldie like me, reapproaching them for nostalgic reasons; but for God's sake, don't force these badly dated relics anymore on any actual ten-year-old boys in your life.
That turned out to be difficult to determine in the case of the first three, which I read almost a hundred years after they were first published, because they can't help but be artifacts of their times by now, and so in many ways are so outdated that it appears ludicrous that the publishing industry was still trying to present these as "contemporary stories" back when I was a kid in the '70s. For those who don't know, the series is centered around two brothers in their late teens named Frank and Joe Hardy who live in the small Atlantic Seaboard town of Bayport; inspired by their father, a retired New York City detective who's now a renowned private investigator, the two are fascinated by the act of solving mysteries, especially easy to do in their case since the local police force are the most incompetent group of boobs this side of the Keystone Cops. (Leslie McFarlane, who bitterly ghostwrote the first 25 titles of the series, made it clear in his correspondence with friends that part of his aim with these books was to make an entire generation of youth suspicious of authority figures, since he otherwise hated writing these kinds of children's books and wanted to do something in them to please just himself.)
The first three books of the series are essentially cookiecutter stories with the same exact plot; namely, some ne'er-do-wells slink into Bayport and set up a criminal operation in an abandoned building "on the edge of town" (shuttered mansions in the first two books, a shuttered mill in the third), which the Hardy brothers accidentally stumble across during their motorcycling adventures in the country with their chums (get ready for a lot of references to "chums" and "pals" and "lads" in these novels), which they're then forced to solve themselves because of the local police force not believing them and Dad off on his own adventure, which invariably leads to the Scooby-Doo-like capture of the criminals ("I would've gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids!") and a huge reward from the wealthy industrialist the criminals had been planning on targeting (all in all, around a quarter-million dollars in today's money when you add up the rewards of the first three books, leading to one of the common complaints this series has received over the decades, that the Hardy Boys can essentially drop everything and travel halfway across the world whenever they want, because of being basically millionaires before they've even graduated high school).
That makes the books okay for what they are, and certainly prototypes for the "kids have actual agency" school of thought about children's literature that didn't become the mainstream norm until the 1950s, easily explaining why they were so explosively popular from the moment they began being released (when these were first published, most kids' books were still being written in the Victorian style, in which it was the adults who actually saved the day and children were presented as silent admirers who always deferred to the superior wisdom of "dear Papa"); but they're still a product of their times, including badly outdated slang and technology, a focus on activities no actual teens have been into since your grandparents' times (get ready for a lot of talk about speedboats and ham radios), and clues that by today's standards would be considered cartoonishly obvious (an entire major plot point in the first book, for example, revolves around all of these people being too stupid to understand that a criminal might wear a wig when committing a crime, leading to dozens of pages of teens standing around saying, "But he can't be the robber! HE HAS BLACK HAIR!!!!!!1!!"), making these interesting historical documents but in no way at all fun reading experiences that can be enjoyed in a contemporary way.
However, this still didn't answer my question about why I in particular didn't seem to connect with the Hardy Boys books back in my '70s youth, when the latest titles were being written in the contemporary culture; so after finishing these three, I went to the Chicago Public Library and checked out two of the titles written during my own childhood and that I in fact personally owned back in the day, 1972's The Masked Monkey (ghostwritten by Vincent Buranelli) and 1975's The Mysterious Caravan (ghostwritten by Andrew Svenson). They weren't exactly bad, which means that I definitively rejected them at the time mostly because I simply didn't like the action-adventure genre in general (interestingly, both of these titles are from the Hardy Boys' proto-Indiana-Jones "globetrotting years," in which the stories start in Bayport but before they're over take the brothers to such exotic locations as the South American rainforest and the Moroccan desert); but the pre-read assumption I did confirm is that a big part of why I rejected them at the time was simply because in the '70s they were still being written in the stilted, awkward prose of 1950s Mid-Century Modernism (and being illustrated in this outdated style as well), and all of us back then had gotten used by that point* to adults trying to feed us old 1950s crap and telling us it's still great for contemporary times, and us summarily ignoring all this old 1950s crap without ever going back and giving it even a second thought.
[*It's surreal and hilarious to me now to think back to my childhood in the 1970s and remember just how incredibly much of it still revolved around popular culture from the 1950s; keep in mind that "children's entertainment" hadn't yet become the trillion-dollar industry it now is, and that at that point the '50s were only twenty years old, so back then we didn't think twice about the idea that the only thing on television on weekday afternoons were reruns of things like The Lone Ranger and George Reeves' Superman and ancient old Three Stooges and Little Rascals shorts. Watching those now, another entire 50 years after the fact, it's hard to believe that these kinds of shows were being presented to us as perfectly fine and normal contemporary entertainment, stuff we actual kids just essentially ignored altogether, one of the major reasons Generation X became so obsessed with producing quality children's entertainment once we became adults ourselves.]
So all in all, my mini-dive into the world of the Hardy Boys this month was the kind of mixed bag these experiments always tend to be; illuminating from a historical standpoint, sort of nominally worth my time from an entertainment aspect, but not even close to being anymore the actual contemporary stories appropriate for contemporary kids that Simon & Schuster still desperately want to convince you they are. Have fun if you're an oldie like me, reapproaching them for nostalgic reasons; but for God's sake, don't force these badly dated relics anymore on any actual ten-year-old boys in your life.
December 28, 2025
This one was a hot mess of a book! It was like the author was just throwing bizarre circumstances at the Hardy's with no rhyme or reason. Aunt Gertrude and Laura Hardy also had very different voices from previous books. Despite this, it was still fun to read and It did hold my interest enough to want to know how it ended.
March 31, 2022
First off, The Hardy Boys is a really good series for those of you that like to be on the edge of your seats, who like mystery, thrills, and action. The two Hardy Boy twins, Frank (18), and Joe (17), are the sons of world famous detective, Fenton Hardy, but they are also really talented detectives that have been on a lot of cases. It all starts when someone kidnapped a richmans son, Graham Retson. He is 18 years old, like Frank Hardy. He and his dad had gotten in fights in the past. They had been searching for clues. Finally, they found something that talked about running away, and it was Grahams handwriting. They were finding clues all over the place. Graham, or someone faking to be Graham, sent a cable that said he was at a hotel in Hong Kong and that he needed help right away. The Hardy boys went, but they were just lured into a trap by a monkey wearing a vicious mask, and some thugs. They figured it out and went back to the states, where they located Graham.
Read
January 11, 2012I thought it was really good. I like the part with the monkey part in it.
October 24, 2023
The Hardy's being pranked by a monkey for 178 pages.
October 29, 2021
The Hardy boys are hired to look for a missing youth by his father. But things are weird right from the beginning. Chet starts a golf ball salvage business and Tony and Phil are helping him. They also help Joe and Frank as a country club seems to tie into the investigation. The boys end up in a wild goose chase....or a wild monkey chase in South America but that doesn't lead them to finding the lost youth. Graham Retson might have actually run away from home. There's some talk of him not being happy there and feuding with his father. Even if Graham did leave on his own the Hardy's need to know so they continue investigating even when they're threatened to quit. Not knowing who to trust they follow the clues hoping to solve the mystery.
April 27, 2024
The tirade through Brazil was interesting, rigged with dangers in Amazonian forests. The trademark journeys of Hardy boys outside the States always turn out to be fun reads, with their adventures and sleuthing wrapped in a neat package of villains and dangers left loose after them! This book was no different.
The Olympic health club angle was a repeat from one of the previous books in the series, where a similar high-class establishment was being used for plastic surgeries. Diabo was a nice touch, though I'm not sure you can really train a monkey that well! The whole connection with golf balls and monkey masks, and plastic surgeries seemed a bit forced at places.
Usually, Chet falls into the mystery naturally, here it is a bit forced..
The Olympic health club angle was a repeat from one of the previous books in the series, where a similar high-class establishment was being used for plastic surgeries. Diabo was a nice touch, though I'm not sure you can really train a monkey that well! The whole connection with golf balls and monkey masks, and plastic surgeries seemed a bit forced at places.
Usually, Chet falls into the mystery naturally, here it is a bit forced..
March 28, 2018
The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the first series that I remember reading. I was still in elementary school, but I remember thinking I was reading more grown up books because these were long (more than 20 pages, lol) and there was more than one book you could read with the same main characters! The innocence of these mysteries and recalling my own innocence just makes me happy. All parents should give their kids Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew when they're young - only good things can come of it.
May 31, 2022
The Hardy Boys were given a great deal of freedom, more than kids right now. They get to run off to Brazil unsupervised. However, I think there is still an audience for this book. Kids who don't have cell phones yet might not question the lack of cell phones and it is a good, short escape into another time. The monkey in this book doesn't quite seem realistic. Chet was great comic relief whenever the boys got into trouble.
September 17, 2022
I first read this book over 40 years ago, in the late 1970s.
I was a huge Hardy Boys fan, thanks to the TV show at the time. I had most of the books, and this was one of my favorites in the series.
Frank and Joe are looking for a missing young man, their age.
The search takes them to Brazil, and back again.
It's non stop action.
Unbelievable at times, but to the 10 year old me, it was fantastic. And I must admit I enjoyed this re-reading of it...
I was a huge Hardy Boys fan, thanks to the TV show at the time. I had most of the books, and this was one of my favorites in the series.
Frank and Joe are looking for a missing young man, their age.
The search takes them to Brazil, and back again.
It's non stop action.
Unbelievable at times, but to the 10 year old me, it was fantastic. And I must admit I enjoyed this re-reading of it...
February 11, 2025
A rare miss with an okay storyline and a clearly false trail to Brazil that was completely unnecessary except to introduce the title simian. The Hardys could have been led 20 miles outside of Bayport and achieve the same effect.
The person they sought was perhaps the dumbest hostage in the history of this series. This is definitely one for younger readers, as even teen readers are going to roll their eyes.
At least Chet showed up.
Find it. Check it out of the library. Read it.
The person they sought was perhaps the dumbest hostage in the history of this series. This is definitely one for younger readers, as even teen readers are going to roll their eyes.
At least Chet showed up.
Find it. Check it out of the library. Read it.
December 8, 2020
I got this book from a friend. He gave it for free! And because I love these and Nancy Drew, I have been looking for books like these but couldn't find any even in thrift shops.
But after reading this one, it gave me goosebumps because of young boys doing risky things because they love it. And their parents are go for it! Asians couldn't relate.
But after reading this one, it gave me goosebumps because of young boys doing risky things because they love it. And their parents are go for it! Asians couldn't relate.
July 2, 2023
My book was published in 1972 with 178 pages, but I couldn't find that edition.
This book was a bit far-fetched, as it has the boys travelling to the Amazon River on their own.
Aunt Gertrude's advice saves Joe's life, which was an interesting take. I first read this book back in the 1970s and I still recall parts of this one.
Young children may find the story an interesting read.
This book was a bit far-fetched, as it has the boys travelling to the Amazon River on their own.
Aunt Gertrude's advice saves Joe's life, which was an interesting take. I first read this book back in the 1970s and I still recall parts of this one.
Young children may find the story an interesting read.
November 29, 2018
Whenever it's a book that depends on the villains failing to be efficient, it's just an okay Hardy Boys story. In this one they get saved by their father's friend, and got toyed with, so I wouldn't say this was among their better exploits.
May 31, 2019
Not a bad story for the Hardy's, but just as unlikely as the rest of them. The monkey notion seemed to come out of nowhere, and once again Chet's hobby of collecting golf balls to sell neatly fits in with the mystery of the week.
August 21, 2021
In terms of chaos you have it here in droves. Why even include extraneous friends if they have nothing to do or say (I'm referring to Tony and Phil) and just disappear from consideration? Probably one of the worst of these books.
January 9, 2026
3.5 stars
We've had a streak of good Hardy Boys lately! Definitely enjoyed this one, the missing person search was interesting. I just wish they'd found Graham earlier because he seems like a nice little hippie. 😂
.5 star removed for scenes with voodoo. 🤢
We've had a streak of good Hardy Boys lately! Definitely enjoyed this one, the missing person search was interesting. I just wish they'd found Graham earlier because he seems like a nice little hippie. 😂
.5 star removed for scenes with voodoo. 🤢
November 7, 2016
This book was good, it didn't get to the mystery very quickly and there weren't any clues to how they found Graham.
July 19, 2017
This book was alright. I had a few of those Dora the Explorer moments where the answer is super obvious.
February 16, 2018
This one was good... if a little weird. It was certainly quite an adventure, far-flung and away from most of their past adventures. Good mystery overall.
April 3, 2018
Great fun!
October 10, 2018
holy cow that was a great book
January 24, 2019
Very exciting.
July 14, 2020
Extremely exciting
January 22, 2021
A fun quick read, however it is very easy to guess what is going to happen next.
April 21, 2024
This is the most racist of these books. Do not recommend.
November 13, 2024
Awesome mystery
Awesome characters
And love the monkeys
Awesome characters
And love the monkeys
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews