A Game Called Chaos (The Hardy Boys #160)

As an adolescent, I devoured the Hardy Boys books and now that I am older, I read one occasionally to contrast how the stories have changed over the years. This one certainly reflects the rise of technology in the lives of young people. In this story, Frank and Joe's friend Phil Cohen is a computer expert and his cousin Chelsea has a problem. Chelsea works for a company that makes computer games and their lead hotshot programmer named Steven Royal is missing. Without him, their latest game will not be completed and Chelsea's company will probably go bankrupt. This leads the Hardy Boys on a journey where they use computers and their innate skills to track down a kidnapper. While on the trail, they battle a mechanical spider, a mechanical snake and a giant mechanical ape. They also enter a cave and a maintenance tunnel, both of which are aspects of a computer game. While the mechanical devices and their accoutrements were a bit over the top, I enjoyed the computer aspects, as they stayed close to what could actually be done. As a college teacher of computer science, it is my hope that stories like this will get young people excited about working with computers. It was also refreshing to have the main villain be female, something lacking in the earlier books in the series. This is a good story, one of the best Hardy Boys books that I have ever read.