What a great classic book it really took me back to my childhood when I loved to read The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I throughly enjoyed it as much now at 44 as I did when I was a kid!!! Loved the adventure and fast pace of the book. I also love that they did not change a thing about the book as far as slang and the way the characters spoke and acted it was charming and a nice change of pace!

Kids, do not try this at home. I cannot believe I used to read these when I was younger. I was more a Trixie Belden and Three Investigators fan, but I also enjoyed The Hardy Boys. Now I'm afraid to revisit any more of them. The Hardy Boys are just kids and the police have them doing detective work, the dad is missing and the boys reassure the mother and aunt by saying that the bad guys will stop at nothing to kill him so he's sure to avoid them, the boys are so reckless... Maybe this was an exception, I don't know.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

And they always come home again.

The Hardy Boys have been going strong for almost 100 years at this point and it’s fair to say that they’ll never go out of style. What threw me with this edition was that it started out completely different than the blue hardcover editions I grew up reading from my own library. I *think* that’s because this edition contains the original opening chapters but I can say for certain. No matter, the story is as fun and adventurous as it always has been and a real treat to revisit.

Thank you NetGalley and Dover Publications for the opportunity to read "The Missing Chums" in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is the 4th book in The Hardy Boys mystery books. It may have been originally written in 1928 but it was not dated at all. It was fresh and relevant to today's reader. Mr. Dixon crafted a timeless mystery that young people have been growing up with for decades.

Brothers Frank and Joe Hardy along with their friends Chet Morton and Biff Hooper are enjoying a day out on the lake on the Hooper's boat the Envoy when they find that another boat is following them too closely and tries to run them down.

Later "The Gang" - Phil Cohen, Tony Prito, Jerry Gilroy and Perry "Slim" Robinson, along with Iola Morton (Chet's sister) and Callie Shaw are all together and talking about the boat trip that Chet and Biff are planning to take. Frank and Joe want to go along as well but they have promised their father Fenton Hardy that they would stay close to home with their mother while he is out of town.

Frank and Joe notice that a car with the same three men that were on the boat that tried to run them down in it is parked near the Morton farm. Coincidence?

The formidable Aunt Gertrude arrives. She has no home of her own, she travels from relative to relative until they have enough of her and she moves on. She has a doom and gloom attitude and an opinion on everything. She only refers to Frank and Joe as "little boys" even though they are said to be 16 and 15 years old in the story.

Frank and Joe take the Sleuth out on the lake an in bid to wish Biff and Chet a good trip. When a sudden storm breaks out over the lake, the boys head back to Bayport, thinking that Chet and Biff are behind them. When they don't return home, they think that perhaps they took shelter from the storm somewhere. Soon the Hardy's, Tony, Jerry, and Phil form a search party and start looking for their friends. Could there have been a mistaken identity which caused the boys to disappear?

This book is exciting with boat chases, kidnappings, dangerous blacksnakes, storms, thunder and lightening - all making the reader want to keep turning those pages to find out what happens to the brothers and their friends.

These books were fun reads for me as a middle grader in the 60's, and I was curious to see how they held up. They are straightforward tales of adventure and derring-do, but perhaps more importantly, in style and content they have aged fairly well. Not exactly progressive mind you, but not cringeworthy either. I don't think I'd offer a young reader a steady diet drawn from the complete series, but a couple of these "boy's own" style tales would sit well on the family shelf.