Hardy perennial.

The Secret of the Hardy Boys: Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, by Marilyn S. Greenwald (Ohio University, 384 pp., $32.95)

THE Hardy Boys books have sold more than 50 million copies since the first volume appeared in 1927. Countless young people have grown up on them, developing a love for literature through these unpretentious tales of Frank and Joe Hardy, two energetic teenagers who solve mysteries in the fictional small American town of Bayport.

This huge success was by no means the simple result of canny marketing or sheer luck. Although critics have long dismissed the books as insufficiently sophisticated and of scant literary value, such cavils overlook the great virtues of these stories. In fact, virtue and vice are at the center of the Hardy Boys tales, and the books' treatment of fundamental moral choices is a central aspect of their wide appeal.

The creators of the series were never greatly concerned with literary merit--they were out to secure a steady stream of money by appealing to a broad spectrum of young readers. The idea for the series came from Edward Stratemeyer, who built a publishing empire in the 1910s and 1920s on the strength of several child-fiction series written by ghostwriters from detailed synopses he provided. Among his highly successful series were those featuring Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, the Rover Boys, Dave Fearless, and Bomba the Jungle Boy.

A church-going straight arrow who was intensely concerned about moral issues, Stratemeyer took the formula of the dime novel and incorporated 20th-century conditions--including new technologies and social freedoms--to make his books unusually relevant and engrossing for young readers. He created a variety of authorial pseudonyms, one for each series, and quickly started to farm out the actual writing, mostly to hungry newspaper reporters looking for a little extra cash. One of these was Leslie McFarlane, an especially famished reporter based in rural Ontario, who began writing for Stratemeyer in 1926.

After cutting his teeth on several Dave Fearless books, which he found frustratingly silly and melodramatic, McFarlane accepted the opportunity to begin a new series relating the exploits of the two teenage Hardys. The attraction for McFarlane, as Marilyn S. Greenwald notes in this new biography, was that "the books would focus more on dialogue, plot, description, and narrative than on simple action." Stratemeyer retained his usual requirements that the books be written to an exact page count and that the author stick strictly to the detailed chapter outlines he provided; but, as Greenwald points out, the publisher allowed McFarlane "to insert his own style into this series, as well as his views on such diverse issues as authority, family, and life's small pleasures." Under the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon, McFarlane made the books his own. He wrote carefully and without condescension (often taking delight in driving his young readers to the dictionary to look up words such as ostensible and propounded), incorporating people and places he had encountered in his child hood in rough, rural northern Ontario.

McFarlane contributed the first 16 volumes of the series, plus a handful of later ones, before handing off the engagement for good in 1946. In the 1960s, Stratemeyer's heirs updated the books, revising, shortening, and bowdlerizing them for what is now called political correctness. This was by no means an improvement, and many aficionados prefer the original versions.

Profit margins for these series were very low, so Stratemeyer could not pay the authors much, and they received no royalties or other payments beyond the original flat fee. Nor could they reveal their identities as ghostwriters. In later years, McFarlane never complained about the arrangement, because he had freely entered into it. Much of Greenwald's book tells of his economic hardships and the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Freelancer, but the narrative is most interesting when it leaves McFarlane at his typewriter and considers his one memorable achievement, the Hardy Boys.

And they were truly his creation. Although Stratemeyer provided the author with descriptions of the town and major characters, McFarlane brought these to life through telling details, and imprinted a spunky, down-to-earth style on the series. He enjoyed including humor and horseplay, which added to the appeal--the books were fun to read, and they still are. In addition, the politically conservative McFarlane gave the stories a cheeky skepticism toward authority figures, which would obviously appeal to most young people and is a healthy attitude as the author presents it (his target is not authority itself but the imperfect human beings who hold it).

The series sold well though not spectacularly for the first couple of years, but over time it developed an immense following. Capitalizing on the increasing popularity of detective fiction in adult novels and movies, the books followed a strict formula. The boys take on a case (usually one initially meant for their father, the celebrated private detective Fenton Hardy), follow a trail left by the evildoers, stride into mortal danger, and escape just in time (either rescued by others or through their own ingenuity, courage, and athleticism). Then, as Greenwald puts it, "the criminals confess and good triumphs."

The conflicts all play out in action--the dialogue is usually about the problems at hand, not how the characters feel about the situation or, worse yet, themselves. One of the fine things about the Hardy Boys books is their cheerful avoidance of psychology. The purpose of psychology, after all, is to explain behavior, and--in literature as in the courts--that all too often means explaining away misbehavior. The Hardy Boys stories, by contrast, rely on normal motives we all have experienced. It is the characters' moral values and conscious choices, not some irresistible psychological forces, that impel their actions. The protagonists are typically motivated by courage, common sense, and altruism; the villains by garden-variety vices such as greed, gluttony, sloth, and anger. The stories depict conflicts in which the moral lines are very clear, but the individuals involved are not entirely good or evil, contrary to the common impression that the books are simple morality tales pitting immaculate heroes against thoroughly depraved antagonists. The Hardy Boys and their pals display many imperfections, and the villains can be quite bold and clever.

What makes these simple stories so interesting to young readers (and many older ones) is the particularity of the characters and the situations: McFarlane makes them real to the readers, and the resulting sympathy and identification inspire us to ponder our own likely responses to the same circumstances. As Greenwald notes, when adults discuss why they liked the Hardy Boys books when they were young, "nearly all mention an identification they had with the characters, the ability of the books to engage the senses, and the quirks that made the characters sympathetic and not wooden."

This quirky specificity and lack of condescension are McFarlane's great contribution to the series, and they are the reason the stories remain so memorable and affecting. The Hardy Boys live in a small-town America much like the one that existed in the early years of the last century (albeit with rather more crime), but their stories point to common human feelings and depict the kinds of hard choices we all have to face at one time or another. In so doing, they enable young people to exercise their moral faculties--an activity from which children of any time can benefit greatly.

Mr. Karnick is senior editor for the Heartland Institute and an associate fellow of the Sagamore Institute.