''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 several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterpa ...

Mystery Stories, written by

Franklin W. Dixon Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who were part of a team that wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate (now owned by Simon & Schuster). Dixon was also the writer attributed for the ''Ted ...

.''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 OCL ...

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, p ...

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 (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. T ...

. 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