Of Hawks and Hoods.

 Time for another book upload. This time its the Hooded Hawk mystery, a strangely current mystery involving falconry, kidnapping and Indians coming over in a boat.

Despite the title of the story, at no time is there a hawk, what they do get sent to them is a Peregrine Falcon, one of the fastest birds in the world. But still not a hawk. there is a Goshawk owned by Prince Tava (or just Tava in the remake) and yes its a proper, member of the hawk family. BUT and I paraphrase a Peregrine is a Falcon and not a member of the hawk family.

Rant over, I'll now give you a recap on the main story and a few differences between the two.

The Hardy's receive a Falcon in the mail, Fenton is working on a case involving Illegal Immigrants being smuggled into the states via small boats and the kidnapping of prominent Indian Nationals son, Tava Nayyab.

In the meantime, the boys learn how to handle her, freak out Aunt Gertrude and on a trip out to Chet Morton's farm, they intercept a pigeon carrying rubies in a capsule around its leg.

After a bit of sleuthing for their dad in the Sleuth, their boathouse gets bombed. Later Chet Morton invites them to his farm for a fish fry, they find a mysterious cabin in the woods, and a young Indian with a Goshawk. When they investigate the Hardys and Chet get whacked.

Much later they find a poisonous snake (a Krait) and more clues that it was leased by Indians, which leads them to a boat called the Daisy K. After more shenanigans, an assailant lobs a bomb that blows up the Hardy home and steals their falcon (after a few unsuccessful attempts). Getting Sam Radley to look out for them and provide back up leads the boys to an island in Barmet Bay to break up the illegal ring and a showdown on the mountain to recover Tava from his kidnappers.

This is not a bad book really. The story feels current, especially with the current asylum seeker crisis in the English channel, involving small boats, and this is one of the few books with foreigners as the bad guys. Demoting Prince Tava to the son of a wealthy industrialist is actually pretty genius. there are rich Indians, and India is now something of an emerging economy. It makes sense.

The original isn't bad, and you are largely spared people talking in accents, here, just the Hardy's Italian gardener which is altered to non accented speech in the remake. It's the usual later book, directors cut edition. Complete with Krait encounter in the woods and an expanded encounter on the mountain where the boys grab (illegally) a falcon fledgling with the help of another falconer.

Finally the cryptic thanks to Professor John Craighead, lead to a page on Wikipedia about prominent ecologists Frank and John Craighead, who did indeed write on Falconry and about living in India with an Indian prince in 1940, as well as conducting long running studies on ecology (largely on Grizzly bears). Maybe have to see if its worth reading and see how it influenced the book.

Anyway both are up now so Original. remake for your reading pleasure.