Leslie McFarlaneRecensioni

If you’ve read the first 20 or so books of the Hardy Boys series, you’ve read work by Leslie McFarlane. The series was launched by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which churned out a staggering number of juvenile fiction series in the first half of the 20th century. For each title, the writer would be given an outline of the events to be included in each chapter, and if the syndicate liked how the writer fleshed out those outlines, they could keep going. McFarlane acknowledges that these were not Great Literature by any means, but he did not believe in insulting the intelligence of his audience. If you can find original editions of his titles, they are easily the best of the series. My personal favourite is The Mystery of Cabin Island, which probably owes some debt to McFarlane’s Canadian upbringing.

McFarlane’s memoir, like his Hardy Boys books, is pacy and fun, with plenty of tongue-in-cheek commentary on his life and career. He lived and worked in northern Ontario for the Cobalt Nugget and the Sudbury Star, eventually being able to make a full-time living as a writer. His stories of his journalism days are just as entertaining as, if not more so than, his Hardy Boys writing. I’d recommend this book if you’ve been curious about the man who started Frank and Joe’s path to adventure, or if you liked books of the Hardy Boys era and are curious about how the publishing process worked.