This week’s forgotten book is essential for anyone who has ever read one of the Hardy Boys books by Franklin W. Dixon. My thanks to David C. Tucker, https://davidctucker.blogspot.com/, for drawing my attention to it. I found it a mesmerizing read.
The true authors of the Hardy Boys books were a closely held secret for years because of a secrecy agreement Edward Stratemeyer made all of his writers sign. Leslie McFarlane (1902-1977) took the agreement quite literally and didn’t even tell his family, mostly because he didn’t consider the books important. His son was stunned to learn that his father had written the first 20 titles. McFarlane thought his work for the Stratemeyer syndicate nothing more than piecework, taken on because he needed the money. His fiction and radio and television scripts were far more important to him, and he was deeply frustrated that interviewers never wanted to talk about his award-winning work.
McFarlane’s memoir Ghost of the Hardy Boys was published by Methuen in 1976, the year before McFarlane died and about 50 years after the first Hardy Boys book was issued, and reprinted by David R. Godine in 2022 with an introduction by McFarlane’s biographer Marilyn S. Greenwald. McFarlane’s early struggles as a journalist as he developed writing skills and collected one rejection slip after another for his short stories only encouraged him to strike out as a full-time writer as soon as he could. When the opportunity to write for the Stratemeyer syndicate was offered, he jumped at it because it offered consistent pay for not much work.
McFarlane’s first Stratemeyer books were for the Dave Fearless series written by Roy Rockwood, a house name. Fearless was a young diver and underwater explorer and McFarlane wrote a few books about the youthful adventurer, which apparently can’t be found anywhere these days. McFarlane had an extensive outline to work from, written by Stratemeyer, but he felt free to embellish the plot here and there within guidelines. For instance, no more than one octopus per book and it had to be a friendly octopus. Man-eating sharks were fine, but no mean octopi.
Then the wily Stratemeyer, ever on the lookout for another way to make money, told McFarlane that he had noticed the S. S. VanDine books were popular among the reading adult population and perhaps it was time to give boys a similar detective series. Thus the creation of Frank and Joe Hardy, sons of Fenton Hardy, world-famous private investigator, written by Franklin W. Dixon on paper but in real life by McFarlane.
Most of the book describes his dealings with the Stratemeyers. McFarlane was quite naïve about the business side of publishing; on the other hand, Edward Stratemeyer was sui generis, his approach revolutionized the publication of children’s literature. McFarlane explains the Stratemeyer syndicate and its business plan and the general state of juvenile fiction in the early 1900s. His description of the books available to the young reader, especially the Elsie Dinsmore series, made me sad for the youth of 100 years ago when I was not snickering over McFarlane’s gently sardonic phrases.
McFarlane eventually honed his fiction writing skills to the point acceptance letters were more common than no thanks notes. Then he wrote a series of scripts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which gave him an entrée to the National Film Board of Canada, where he worked for some 15 years. In 1946 McFarlane resigned from the Stratemeyer syndicate, after writing a few Dave Fearless books, a few of the Dana Girls stories, and 20 Hardy Boys titles.
For years he did not understand the importance of the Hardy Boys to the reading world and was stunned to learn that the books were bestsellers. As of 2026 some 70 million copies in 25 languages have sold. Perhaps what I find most discouraging is that the books have been rewritten over time, such that McFarlane’s original work has been heavily revised or simply removed. Perhaps some of it needed to be; McFarlane created the local police as comic foils and some parents and librarians thought the treatment encouraged youngsters to be disrespectful of local law enforcement.
This memoir is easy to read, McFarlane had a flowing style and self-deprecating humor that considered just about everything amusing. Having read my share of the Stratemeyer books—I loved the Bobbsey twins—the factory Stratemeyer established to produce them is eye-opening.
The 2022 edition can be found at reasonable prices in the secondary market. A number of library systems hold the title and it may be available via interlibrary loan. The original edition is harder to locate. There are eight first editions listed on AbeBooks that range in price from $75 to $4000.
Highly recommended!