Mystery of the Desert Giant

Mystery of the Desert Giant by Franklin W. Dixon (1961) is number 40 in the Hardy Boys series, originally published in 1961, making it very much one of the “new ones”—as it was originally written well after they had started revising the old titles. I will not read any Hardy Boys after number 40, and this one is pushing it, and it's not very good. I mainly re-read it for nostalgia, because I remember having a positive reaction to it as a kid. The interesting thing about the story is the Hardy Boys are investigating the disappearance of a man near the Native American desert “Blythe Intaglios” at the Arizona/California border, which are figures etched into the landscape, only able to be seen by them in their small plane. These things really exist, and you can now find them with satellite maps, so that would have been especially cool when I was a kid. I guess at that time I wasn't entirely sure if they were real or made up (same as the Hardys!)