The Flickering Torch Mystery

Two plane crashes near an airport on the East Coast have no explanation, and Frank and Joe Hardy are handed the case. Their father, a famous detective, has been summoned to New York City by a group of insurance companies to look into thefts of air freight at Kennedy International Airport. He leaves his current investigation, the suspicious crashes, to his two teenage sons.

The brothers' first big lead comes in an airplane junkyard, where they find an engine that is radioactive. From that point the danger arrives fast and from several directions, and more than one attempt is made on their lives.

Frank and Joe keep working regardless. They make a second discovery, this one involving contraband uranium isotopes, and the two finds together with other clues they gather point toward an answer.

This is a juvenile detective mystery with two teen sleuths, a family of investigators and an aviation setting. The pace is quick, with threats breaking in whenever the boys get close to something. The case is one of the most baffling the Hardys have faced, father and sons alike.