''Tic-Tac-Terror'' is the 74th title of the

Hardy Boys The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in a series of mystery novels for young readers. The series revolves around teenage amateur sleuths, solving cases that often stumped their adult counterparts. ...

Mystery Stories, written by Franklin W. Dixon.''Tic-Tac-Terror''
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

It was published by Wanderer Books in 1982.

Plot

In this book the Frank and Joe Hardy are asked to investigate a mystery involving a world-famous spy from HAVOC, an international network of terrorists, who wants to defect to the U.S. Frank and Joe know the spy as "Igor”. Also a million-dollar

emerald Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium.Hurlbut, Cornelius S. Jr., and Kammerling, Robert C. (1991). ''Gemology'', John Wiley & Sons, New York ...

from South America has vanished. Joe and Frank think “Igor” was involved. Their only clue is mysterious symbol in shape of

tic-tac-toe Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian English, Canadian or Hiberno-English, Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who ta ...

. The game lead to a building that is run by the U.S. government. The building has a bomb and the Hardys are trapped in a deadly game of tic-tac-toe.

References

The Hardy Boys books 1982 American novels 1982 children's books Novels about terrorism {{1980s-mystery-novel-stub