What Happened at Midnight review.

 Got done reading through both editions of What Happened at Midnight, as the title suggests, one of the old Les Macfarlane stories before it was rewritten in the sixties.

I'll start off  with the original text, as there are quite a few parallels between the two. First off all we have the set up. Chet Morton has gathered the gang downtown, to the opening of a brand new automat. Whilst pissing about ordering food, some out of town lads start making trouble and (to cut a story in half) Joe Hardy barrels into a tall blonde haired bloke.

The same guy is also bumped into again after the boys pick up their mum's diamond ring from the jewellers. And that is the start of their trouble. At a party at the Morton farm, on the stroke of midnight, Joe is kidnapped by the blonde haired guy. And it takes a frantic search by Frank and an unlikely tip from Aunt Gertrude before he is rescued from a cave on the Barmet Coast.

There are several drag backs in this book to earlier stories, the Shore Road mysteries where the boys set up a trojan car to apprehend a gang and later on in the story with a nascent Bayport airfield as seen in the Great Airport mystery.

Nothing much happens until the boys catch sight of Joe's kidnapper again and they trail him all the way to New York, where Frank has his pocket picked and their cash and return train tickets are stolen. 

They decide to sleep out in Central Park and then hitch home, lucking out where they work at a cafe for a bit before catching a lift back with some company men (DOJ) on the look out for a big time crook called Taffy Marr.

Marr is working at a jewellers in town and soon gets wind that the boys are onto him and gets a plane from Bayport Airfield to escape. The boys also get a plane  but as its a piece of junk it stalls and they, dramatically bail out before it crashes, parachuting to the ground.

The gang is finally wound up on the coast and the boys recap this back at the Morton farm where a party is held in their honour.

 Remake.

The remake text follows it quite closely, but has the boys play burglar to steal an super portable radio on behalf of its inventor, to stop it getting in the hands of Taffy Marr's gang. The blond haired guy still captures Joe, but this is more to do with him eavesdropping rather than being bumped into.

There is no hitching, or automats in this one and the plane crash is worked in as a vintage biplane club (its never explicitly described as a biplane in the original.) and its pilot, who provides the means to track Taffy's plane. 

The Agents are now FBI rather than DOJ men, and the boys rely much more on the cops to get them out of trouble when  they are stranded in New York. But in most regards its still the same story but much more fleshed out.

Conclusion.

Whether you read the original or the remake. Its not a bad story, whichever you choose. The original is more dated and barebones, but at least you don't have the Hardys playing housebreakers for some super transistor radio. The remake is shorter but feels much more fleshed out, Joes kidnapping is not the main emphasis of the tale as it is in the original. Its more the theft of the radio and jewels.

Finally we have one line that's bugging me from the original.

All to the Worcester(shire) sauce. which from context seems to be the equivalent of lets go get 'em line its not a quote, but maybe an old slogan for sauce that is long forgotten. I'll have to dig around and see what I can find.

Oh and the non bracketed version is how Worcestershire sauce is known in the UK. Seems to be a yank thing where its spelt right out.