Return to Black Bear Mountain (Volume 20) (Hardy Boys Adventures)

Kurzbeschreibung Brother detectives Frank and Joe face the dangers of Black Bear Mountain once again in the twentieth book in the thrilling Hardy Boys Adventures series. Frank and Joe are back on Black Bear Mountain, the scene of a previous wilderness adventure and mind-bending mystery. This time, the brothers are checking in on Dr. K, a friend they made during their first trip. Dr. K is a fan of living off the grid, but he’s been MIA long enough to cause worry in the small mountain town. And so the teenage detectives Black Bear Mountain relied on before have been called in to help once again. It’s not a good start to the investigation when Frank and Joe’s ATV is put out of commission by a falling tree. Then their camp, including their radio—their only way to contact the outside world—is destroyed by wildlife searching for food. And when they finally reach Dr. K’s research station, they find his cabin has been cleaned out and abandoned—the only current resident is an angry skunk. Frank and Joe may have been better prepared for their second Black Bear Mountain adventure, but they’re not having any more luck this time around. In fact, they’ve been downright unlucky. Is someone trying to sabotage their mission? And if they are, how can the brothers stop this invisible foe? Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende Franklin W. Dixon is the author of the ever-popular Hardy Boys books. Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Chapter 1: Grave Rubbers 1 GRAVE RUBBERS JOE IT’S NOT EVERY DAY YOU get a letter from a notorious convict asking for help locating a scientist who’s gone missing from a remote mountaintop research station. In fact, my brother Frank and I were probably the only people ever to get one. I figured we were definitely the only ones to ever read said letter in a two-hundred-year-old country graveyard. I yawned away some of the sleepiness from our bumpy sunrise bus ride to the mountains, adjusted my seat in the grass to get comfortable against the mossy old headstone I was using as a backrest, and pulled the letter from my pack. I could practically hear the author’s deep voice and thick Russian accent in my head as I reread the opening paragraph aloud. “?‘I know is inconvenient for the young detectives, but if you would go please to see the doctor to make sure everything is okay. I have heard not from him at all for too long after he wrote me very worried letter about unscrupulous people skulking in the old neighborhood.’?” I studied the hastily scrawled handwriting, hoping it might reveal new information to help us on our expedition. It had been over a year since we’d last seen Aleksei Orlov, the fugitive mobster-turned-feared-hermit-turned-selfless-hero who gave up his own freedom to help us on our previous death-defying trip to Black Bear Mountain. When Aleksei wrote the old neighborhood, I had no doubt he meant the top of the mountain—where he’d faked his death and hidden from authorities for decades while pretending to be a mythical man-eating mountain man to scare people away. Including us. I’d been convinced he wanted to turn me into supper right up until the moment he saved my life. Usually when I thought of Aleksei and his off-the-wall stunts, it made me smile. His letter from federal prison did the opposite. “I hope Dr. K is all right and just out in the field doing research somewhere,” Frank commented. The identity of the “doctor” in Aleksei’s letter wasn’t hard to guess either, and he wasn’t a medical doctor. Renowned scientist Dr. Max Kroopnik had been the only other person besides Aleksei to make his home on Black Bear Mountain. “Aleksei wouldn’t have been so cryptic in his letter and asked us to come all the way out here if he wasn’t really concerned, though.” The early morning sun lit up the sheet of paper Frank had taped to a particularly ancient headstone to hold it in place while he made a rubbing of the dead guy’s name with a f