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Informationen zum Autor Franklin W. Dixon Klappentext A thrilling amusement park ride turns diabolically deadly in this Hardy Boys adventureNa fresh approach to a classic series. Leseprobe The Vanishing Game G-FORCED 1 FRANK DID YOU KNOW THAT COTTON candy depends heavily on the molecular construction of sugar?” I asked brightly, grabbing a hunk of my brother Joe’s fluffy pink confection and popping it into my mouth. “The cotton candy machine uses centrifugal force to spin hot sugar so quickly and cool it so rapidly, the sugar doesn’t have time to recrystallize!” My date—or so I’d been told, because she didn’t seem super attached to me—Penelope Chung, rolled her eyes. “That’s fascinating, Frank,” she said, shooting a glare at her best friend, Daisy Rodriguez, who was Joe’s date and the glue barely holding our foursome together. “Please tell me more about molecules. Or force times acceleration. Or the atomic properties of fun.” Joe coughed loudly, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me close enough to hear him mutter, “Ixnay on the ience-scay.” I couldn’t help it. Joe is always telling me science isn’t romantic, but come on. Isn’t “romance” itself a scientific concept? Attraction, biology, all that stuff? Daisy smiled, a little too enthusiastically. “Shall we head over to the G-Force?” she asked, looking hopefully from Penelope and me to Joe. “My dad said the first ride would be at eight o’clock. And it’s just about quarter of.” “Yes!” Penelope cried before Joe or I could respond, grabbing Daisy’s arm and pulling her ahead of us toward Funspot’s new ride, G-Force. Penelope leaned close to Daisy’s ear, and while I couldn’t hear what she was saying, her tone did not sound warm. Joe met my eye and sighed. “I don’t think she likes me,” I told him. Joe just shook his head and patted my back. “I think your powers of detection are dead-on true.” We started walking. “Sorry,” I said. “I know you’re really into Daisy.” Joe nodded. “It’s okay, man,” he said, holding out his cotton candy for me to take another hunk. “I just don’t think you’re Penelope’s type.” I nodded. “But it’s pretty cool that we get to be some of the first people to check out G-Force, right?” “Very cool,” Joe agreed. G-Force was the new, premiere attraction at Funspot, a small amusement park that had been a staple of Bayport summers for generations, but had been getting more and more run-down over the years. Last fall, Daisy’s dad, Hector, had used their entire family’s savings to buy the park from its longtime owner, Doug Spencer, who had fallen on hard times. Hector wanted to build Funspot into a top-tier amusement park—the kind of place people would drive hours to visit. His first step toward making that happen had been to install G-Force. The ride was a new creation of Greg and Derek Piperato, better known as the Piperato Brothers—the hip new architects of premiere amusement rides all over the world. They built the HoverCoaster for Holiday Gardens in Copenhagen, the Loop-de-Loco for Ciudad de Jugar in Barcelona, and the ChillTaser for Bingo Village in Orlando, right here in the USA. These guys are seriously awesome at what they do. They know their physics, they know their architecture, and they keep coming up with new ideas to revolutionize the amusement industry. They don’t work cheap, though. According to Daisy, Hector had to take out a major loan to afford G-Force. And unfortunately, right after Hector signed the contracts—Funspot had exclusive rights to the ride for five years—Daisy’s mom had been laid off from her job as a manager at some big bank in New York City. If Daisy and her family had hoped Funspot would be successful before...
