The Secret Of Pirates' Hill (1957) - Plot & Excerpts
The Secret of Pirates Hill is your typical rollicking Hardy Boys adventure novel, with one notable and fantastic addition - a scene where Aunt Gertrude steps in and saves her nephews by repeatedly whacking the villain with an antique cutlass! Prim and disapproving Aunt Gertrude is usually relegated to the Hardy home, where she habitually bakes pies and plies Frank, Joe and their friends with hearty sandwiches for lunch and roasts for dinner. She is always saving a few extra slices of pie or pieces of cobbler for their overweight buddy Chet, who is consequently her biggest fan. But in this novel, Gertrude Hardy is given a shocking amount of personal identity!Ms. Hardy has recently been elected as President of the Bayport Historical Society, so apparently she does get out of the house more often than just for afternoon tea with the other "maiden ladies" in the neighborhood. When Frank and Joe get brained by a thief with a tire iron, knocked unconscious and go tumbling down the basement stairs of the Bayport Historical Society, Aunt Gertrude comes rushing in to see what has caused such a ruckus. Then, despite having no weapons training (of which we are aware), she proceeds to pick up the cutlass and really give it to the hardened motorcycle-driving badass ex-con who has broken in to steal their ancient weapons collection. She manages to force the thief to ditch the loot, perform first aid on her nephews and take the lead when the police show up on the scene to question witnesses. The final triumph for Gertrude is that her bravery is honored by the Historical Society, whose members vote to present her with the cutlass as a trophy.In the typical fashion of the fast-paced Hardy Boys novels, all these events take place within one or two short chapters. Yet that is one or two more chapters than female characters are usually given in the Hardy Boys novels, so I think it's a pretty notable instance. Not to mention hilarious.
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