The Hardy Boys - Lucky Fellows is the author's look back at the book series that intrigued him at the age of twelve. Through full-color photos of the books, quotes and a solid recall on the Hardy Boys' adventures over forty volumes, a genial and sensitive story is told about why juvenile readers fell in love with the boy detectives. The author confesses that the vivid colors and designs of the dust covers on the books were the original selling point in his desire to read every Hardy Boys book available to him as a young reader. The cover illustrations were stunning, and even today, they are a major reason why collectors look on used book store shelves for these fiction gems. The stories are almost secondary in the desire to own the books, but if you read them, you see just how outlandish and quirky the stories were. After all, two 15 and 16 year-old brothers were solving major crimes in a town called Bayport - crimes that the police and their father, famous private detective in his own right, could not solve. They frequently faced death-defying situations, only to be, almost comically, "lucky" to escape. The author has subjectively chosen the series' end as the fortieth volume, even though many more books were printed. The chosen number was not arbitrary. The fortieth book in the series signaled the end of the beautiful dust jackets, with later volumes printed less impressively by having the artwork applied directly to the linen hard-cover backing of the book. So, in addition to the author's story about these cool-as-a-cucumber young detectives, The Hardy Boys - Lucky Fellows serves as a beautiful, full-color reference to the artwork of those first forty books. If you are are Hardy Boys juvenile fiction fan, you'll need to own this.