Frank and Callie are having a romantic picnic together, which is interrupted by a frustrated
actor named Edwin Squinder.
Squinder tries to stab himself, so Frank knocks him into a river.
That's not exactly the best way to save someone's life, but it works.
*Arglefumph book review!* *Arglefumph book review!*
While taking Squinder home, they get into a car accident with a woman driving in the
wrong lane.
She's Tessa Carpenter.
She's eighteen, gorgeous, and she inherited millions after the death of her parents.
She's also a total jerk.
As in, she just became the family heir, and the very first thing she's doing is taking
back all the artwork her grandfather gave to a museum.
That's right.
She's walking back on a charitable donation, because she wants money for parties.
Albert Ruppenthal, the curator, tries to stop her.
He says the museum will go out of business if she takes 60% of the exhibits.
Tessa doesn't care, and a huge fight breaks out.
Squinder strangles Tessa and smashes her against a car, multiple times.
Amazingly, she has no injuries whatsoever.
Frank saves Tessa from Squinder.
She falls against him, and it's true love!
She starts flirting with Frank, even though his girlfriend is right there, and his type
is definitely not "jerk who robs museums".
Tessa exlains that Squinder is a disgruntled ex-employee.
She fired him and the rest of the staff a year ago, which makes no sense at all, because
her parents were still alive then.
Also, she was seventeen, so she was too young to inherit.
The rest of the book indicates that she has been living it up on her family funds for
a full year, so I'm going to pretend that Tessa is 19, and the magazine was just reporting
a year-old story about her, for unknown reasons.
Tessa says Squinder is crazy, but harmless.
He fakes suicide every few months, just for attention.
Frank isn't so sure about that, and he puts Squinder at the top of the suspect list.
Tessa thinsk Frank is hot, so she invites Frank and Joe to a party that night.
They meet the other suspects: Harley Welles, her jealous boyfriend, and her elderly aunt,
Dr. Lansdale.
Ruppenthal crashes the party and warns her not to touch the musem's famous Borgia dagger.
It's cursed!
Anyone who touches the dagger will die within four months.
Tessa responds by picking up the dagger and using it to cut a cheese slice.
I kind of wish THAT had been the cover scene.
The lights go out, and Tessa almost dies when someone pushes a statue over.
Not long after that, Frank and Joe see Squinder sneaking around outside, with a gun.
Not long after that, Ruppenthal offers the Hardys a bribe, to return the artwork.
The next day, someone shoots at Tessa, when she is horse riding at the country club.
Callie was there, spying on Tessa.
She found the gun lying in the grass, and the police found her with a gun.
Frank says Callie is with him, and the police let her go.
Who knew the Hardys had THAT much pull with the police?
Actually, I think the police let Callie go, so there could be romance drama.
Tessa asks the Hardys to be her bodyguards, and Callie throws a fit.
The next day, Tessa takes an early morning swim.
The culprit tries to kill her with a live wire in the pool, but she lucks out, because
it's plugged into a dead outlet.
Tessa wraps her arms around Frank, and that's when her boyfriend shows up.
Harley will later try to beat up Frank.
They fight in a car, and the brake comes loose.
Frank stops them from crashing into a truck, and Harley decides he's all right.
Joe proves to be a horrible bodyguard.
He stares at Tessa and asks her how she'd feel about kissing a perfect stranger.
*facepalm* She runs away from him because he's a creepy jerk.
They find her unconscious, with the letter "B" on her forehead, drawn in lipstick.
The group goes to a diner to relax and go over the clues.
They don't discuss the case at all, though.
Blech.
On the way home, they stop for gas.
An angry Ruppenthal is there.
The culprit hired goons to run him out of town.
He squirts gas all over the cars and threatens to blow everything up.
Ruppenthal escapes by car.
Frank starts to chase him, but he's forced to stop, because Tessa is hanging onto the
side of the car.
She doesn't have a reason for this; she just thought it'd be cool to hitch a ride on the
outside of a car.
At the mansion, Tessa tries to seduce Frank.
He stays loyal to Callie, but Tessa says she loves him.
She kisses him, right when everyone else appears.
Harley goes wild at this point.
It's revealed that Harley and Tessa are the culprits.
Tessa spent her entire fortune on parties, which is why she had to fire the staff.
They faked all the murder attempts as a publicity stunt.
That way, she can sell the Borgia dagger for a huge amount of money.
There are two problems with this explanation.
First, she fired everyone a year ago; how has she survived so long, after total bankrupcy?
Second, three of the five murder attempts took place in private, where no one was around
besides the Hardys and Tessa's co-culprits.
That's not going to drum up any publicity!
Harley turns off the lights.
They get flashlights and search for him.
He stabs Callie in the ear and there's a fight.
But just as they stop Harley, Dr. Lansdale appears with a gun.
SHE was the mastermind beind the entire plot!
And, for some reason, she took separate transportation from the diner to the mansion.
That should count as a culprit giveaway; she deliberately showed up late, so she could
have a dramatic reveal.
Tessa turns on Dr. Lansdale, and she accidentally starts a fire.
They run out of the mansion before it burns down.
The police show up at this point; they examined the gun and found evidence that Tessa faked
her shooting.
So our heroes could have ignored the entire mystery, and the culprits would have been
stopped anyway.
Harley and Lansdale are arrested.
Even though Tessa committed crimes, too, she walks away free.
Since she's broke, she's forced to become a terrible actress on an even more terrible
soap opera.
The End
Post-Book Followup
As I pointed out, the timeline with Tessa is messed up.
Sometimes, the book insists everything happened recently; sometimes, it insists everything
happened a year ago.
Maybe the book was the victim of a sloppy rewrite.
There was a lot of Frank/Callie drama in this book, and I didn't like it.
Callie is a ferociously jealous girlfriend, and Frank is an incredibly awful boyfriend.
It's obvious that Callie doesn't want him getting close to Tessa, so why does he do
just that?
Tessa is a jerk!
Frank should have let Joe solve the mystery on his own for a change, because this mystery
is not worth losing his girlfriend over.
And now I really want to see Callie appear in the Supermystery series where Frank openly
crushes on Nancy Drew.
This is the worst of Callie's appearances so far.
She doesn't help stop the culprits, like in previous books; all she does is yell at Frank,
who totally deserves it.
The book was entertaining, but it doesn't hold up on a second reading.
Too much focus is put on the fakeout suspects, and Joe is useless.
I give Hardy Boys Casefiles #13: The Borgia Dagger a 4 out of 10.
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