O...M...G what a awesome story one of my favorites! (on this whole website). I love how you made Mrs. Hardy tough I thought they made he look so wimpy in the books. BTW I read the whole thing and I had to come back and leave you a review! :):)
-A.C

Amazing story! So glad the family was able to come to terms with Laura's past and she can use her knowledge in a good way.

Wow - what a fantastic story!

Loved reading it from start to finish. What a great premise to paint Laura with a criminal past and show how Fenton and she first met. And Fenton using 'Frank' as a pseudonym, Callie and Vanessa helping Laura save the day, Laura helping solve Joe's case at the end - it was completely brilliant! )

I have to admit that when I started reading this I was a little leery. In quite a few fandoms it has become rather common in fan fiction to give too perfect characters (especially women) a criminal past. Yet, you have created something that was not only very original, it also showed Laura Hardy to be the excellent wife and mother that she is in canon and, at the same time, give her a vital depth of character that is totally missing in the original books. I also loved what you did with Callie and Vanessa.

Too many of the Stratemeyer syndicate series (outside of "Nancy Drew") really give short shrift to the female characters. You have showed the "Hardy" women to be just as strong as the men.

P.S. I'm a librarian and I loved how Laura ends up becoming a librarian.

Thanks for a fascinating read, Beth Palladino

a very enjoyable story...loved he ending and the dewey decimal system. Laura being a librarian helped with that. Good job...looking forward to more stories.

Awesome. Glad to see that Laura and Fenton has to work at being

detective partners. More realistic. Joe has more than two people to go to now. Very nice.

**“Slacking off?” Fenton inquired teasingly as he walked into his study. “I didn’t realize my newest partner was prone to bouts of laziness.”**

-It's a woman's perogative!

**Laura laid the thick tome on the desk and turned her swivel chair around to look at her husband.**

-tome..I'm not sure what this word means or if it is even spelled right.

**“Time to pay him a visit at his favorite restaurant this afternoon,” Fenton said. “We have enough time before Vanessa’s tournament tonight.”**

-O, a tournament! I wish i could watch. i miss watching my sister do her karate!

**Fenton’s desk was in the corner where it had always been. The filing cabinets had been moved and a second desk had been installed in the opposite corner where Laura now spent much of her time. One flowerpot now stood on each desk and a deep red circular rug covered the middle of the floor. Where the bare wall had previously stood behind them, a whiteboard, now showing the outline of their current case, had been added.

The changes had not been easy for either of them. Fenton’s workspace was always neat and meticulous. Laura’s was rather messy. Although she had always kept the rest of the house in perfect order, she was seemingly incapable of keeping her desk neat. Fenton stuck with his yellow notepads and extended filing system. Laura kept most of her notes on the computer with backups and only kept a few files in her drawers. She proceeded through systemic analysis while Fenton went by his gut. **

-I'm so glad that Laura gets to work with Fenton now. What a team!

**She quickly realized that catching a thief is, in many ways, harder than being one.** *snickers* I'll bet it is!

**“Everything’s fine mom,” Joe said good naturedly. “I have a case that I can’t quite solve by myself. I usually call Frank for this kind of thing, but he’s busy with finals now and I thought I’d try you instead.”**

-Aw, that's cool, going to his mom with a case.

**Laura wrote down the titles on her notepad and let her mind wander for a few seconds. “Clever,” she said with a little laugh. “Someone pays attention to their Dewey Decimal numbers.”

“Huh?” Joe said. “10, 1984, 30 and 40 don’t mean anything when you put them together.”

“Unless you put a five before them,” Laura clarified. “Then they form the Dewey Decimal classification codes. 510 is mathematics, 519 is probability, the 84 doesn’t mean anything, 530 is physics and 540 is chemistry. He’s leaving those answer keys in the corresponding fiction books. ”**

-Wow, she's good! I wouldnt' of thought of that! Course that's why i'm not a detective. Just write about mysteries.

**Laura smiled as she hung up the phone and looked at herself in the hall mirror. Laura Basden was gone forever, buried in New York City with the rest of her past. In her place was Laura Anne Hardy, private detective/librarian, wife and partner of Fenton Hardy and the mother of Frank and Joe Hardy.**

-She sure is! Wow, a great ending! Thanks for the ride, franknjoe. I loved this story! It was different than anyones. And no one got hurt! Yay!

Oh, SWEET!

Wonderful chapter, this - I loved it! From the differences in Laura and Fenton to that highly entertaining and challenging phone call. Bravo! Great story from first to last, and thank you very much for doing it for us. :)

Laura got up and walked to the chart posted on the opposite wall of the windowless study. They had slowly constructed a web on a whiteboard over the last month until they had a visual of how individual figures in their investigation were connected. Fenton joined her as they added one more line and another name, and their thoughts raced along the same path.

-YAY that Laura and Fenton are business partners now, too! And I got the BEST visual of them standing in front of the whiteboard!

An examination of tax forms had revealed that the income and investments were less than what the family had expected to inherent, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with that – the grandmother could have decided to spend some extra cash. But Sandy was adamant that it wasn’t the case, Con vouched for her judgment, and there was no record of a bank withdrawal so Fenton, Sam and Laura kept looking. Laura had obtained names of the lawyer’s clients from an overly talkative receptionist and after a long investigation, a pattern began to emerge. Several clients at the firm had similar stories. It was always a relatively insignificant amount of money, but when they added it up, it looked like someone was skimming around 50,0 per year from people’s wills. Fenton had zeroed in on a young paralegal, Simon, in the office as being the likely candidate. And now it looked like Simon might be connected to a disenfranchised branch of Sandy’s family, giving him a strong motive.

-Well, that sounds like an interesting case! Too bad it's in the epilogue! LOL!

Fenton’s desk was in the corner where it had always been. The filing cabinets had been moved and a second desk had been installed in the opposite corner where Laura now spent much of her time. One flowerpot now stood on each desk and a deep red circular rug covered the middle of the floor. Where the bare wall had previously stood behind them, a whiteboard, now showing the outline of their current case, had been added.

The changes had not been easy for either of them. Fenton’s workspace was always neat and meticulous. Laura’s was rather messy. Although she had always kept the rest of the house in perfect order, she was seemingly incapable of keeping her desk neat. Fenton stuck with his yellow notepads and extended filing system. Laura kept most of her notes on the computer with backups and only kept a few files in her drawers. She proceeded through systemic analysis while Fenton went by his gut. And, after spending one entire day in his Spartan, windowless office, she had felt like her head was going to explode.

-OMG, I LOVE that image! First I love that Laura is actually messy like Joe but very techno-geek like Frank. And that Fenton likes to do things 'old school', which reminds me of the way Joe might operate (though that is just my personal opinion). But I just LOVE how you've described their working relationship. Any chance you could be persuaded to write another story that would follow this one chronoligically? Showing us Laura working WITH Fenton (and Frank and Joe of course, otherwise it wouldn't be the Hardy BOYS! :p) to solve a crime? Pretty please? ;-)

He agreed to the rug, whiteboard, and flowerpots, but drew the line at painting the study or adding impressionist paintings to the walls. Furthermore, if she was going to be in his study, he argued, he still wanted dinner served at six o’clock. If that meant that he had to cook dinner and clean up after himself, then he was going to cook dinner for both of them and Laura better get used to not having everything exactly where she had last put it and eating crab cakes (which she eventually admitted didn’t taste that bad).

-LOL! I'm with Laura though - I LOVE seafood of all kinds but I'm not a big fan of crab cakes. :p

She quickly realized that catching a thief is, in many ways, harder than being one. And, there were a lot of things she did not know how to do, from thoroughly interviewing suspects and witnesses to whom to call to get a quick answer to a question about an obscure federal law. But she was a quick learner and Fenton was a good and patient teacher. They were currently in the process of accommodating to each other’s working styles, and even though there had been a few bumps along the way, it was working out.

-Brilliantly done, the way you've shown that while Laura's past has it advantages in her 'new job' it also has it's drawbacks. THis is just why she and Fenton make the perfect team! :)

“Hello,” she said. “Oh hi, Joe. Is everything ok?” Joseph Hardy practically never called home unless he was sick or something was wrong.

“Everything’s fine mom,” Joe said good naturedly. “I have a case that I can’t quite solve by myself. I usually call Frank for this kind of thing, but he’s busy with finals now and I thought I’d try you instead.”

-Oh this is so COOL! You HAVE to do another story with Laura working side by side with her 'men'! You HAVE TO! If you don't I'll hold my breath until I turn blue! :o :p

“Any people he sees everyday or-” she began, but Joe cut her off “Mom, I’ve been doing this for a while. Nobody he talks to regularly that he doesn’t have a perfectly legitimate reason to talk to. Some are close friends, others are in classes. And at least while I’ve been around, he’s never said anything incriminating.”

“Ok, sorry,” Laura said.

-ROTFL! I love that!

“Librarians watch everyone like hawks,” Joe answered. “If you speak above a whisper they give you really nasty looks. And don’t even think about eating or drinking.”

“So where does he sit?” Laura asked.

“The fiction sec- oh…”” Joe finished slowly.

“He’s a chemistry major and he suddenly has time to read fiction?” Laura asked.

-DING, DING, DING, DING, DING! We have a winner! :p

“Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie,” he said. “1984 – George Orwell, something about the thirty years war and North Dallas 40 by Peter Gent.”

Laura wrote down the titles on her notepad and let her mind wander for a few seconds. “Clever,” she said with a little laugh. “Someone pays attention to their Dewey Decimal numbers.”

“Huh?” Joe said. “10, 1984, 30 and 40 don’t mean anything when you put them together.”

“Unless you put a five before them,” Laura clarified. “Then they form the Dewey Decimal classification codes. 510 is mathematics, 519 is probability, the 84 doesn’t mean anything, 530 is physics and 540 is chemistry. He’s leaving those answer keys in the corresponding fiction books. ”

-YAY for Laura! And I used to know the Dewey Decimal system from when I was a library aide in middle school! :p

“Looking forward to seeing you next week,” Laura said as she heard Fenton wind up his conversation with Con Riley in the study.

“Yep, I brought my plane tickets today,” Joe said and then he hesitated. “I’m actually thinking of finishing the year here and then transferring back to a college on the East Coast,” he finally said.

“You definitely can if you want to,” Laura said. “But I thought you were happy where you are.”

“I love California,” Joe replied. “But it’s far away from Bayport, Vanessa, and Frank, and I can’t just come home on the weekend.”

“Why don’t you see how it is when we’re all home for a while?” Laura suggested. “I know Frank just wants what is best for you, as we all do. And from what I’ve seen, you’ve been happy where you are. Any more thoughts on your major?”

“I still haven’t declared yet,” Joe continued. “I can’t decide if I want to study psychology, global studies, or something else.”

“Lots of choices,” said Laura. “But I guarantee it will be easier for you than it was for me. And I ended up in the best possible place.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

Laura smiled as she hung up the phone and looked at herself in the hall mirror. Laura Basden was gone forever, buried in New York City with the rest of her past. In her place was Laura Anne Hardy, private detective/librarian, wife and partner of Fenton Hardy and the mother of Frank and Joe Hardy.

-Aw, the last part of that conversation was just so... AW! I'm all warm and fuzzy inside now! I moved to California, on my own, when I was 19 with my entire family - whom I'm very close to - all in one spot on the East cast; so I know exactly how Joe feels. I loved California, loved being on my own but missed my family and the ability to see them whenever I wanted. After three years I moved back home. Still miss California but it was the right decision. Maybe it will be for Joe too.

THANK YOU for sharing this wonderfully original story with us! :) I thoroughly enjoyed it! One suggestion - if it's finished, change the status of it to 'complete' so people will know. ;-) Some people only read stories marked as complete to avoid the unfortunate plethora of half-finished, abandoned stories here. Just a suggestion... :)

Now I'm going to sit in the corner and hold my breath until you PROMISE to write a new story! One with Laura working with all her boys! :D

franknjoe, I'm happy to share the dunce cap with you! :p

Most of the hospital staff knew Frank and Joe Hardy by sight. By the time Frank was 18 and Joe was 17, they had been admitted to the emergency room more than most people are admitted to any hospital department throughout their lifetime. At 20 and 19, Frank and Joe were at the hospital again; but this time as concerned visitors instead of patients.

-Just for variety? LOL!

Even though their girlfriends had filled in some of the blanks, Frank and Joe had too many unanswered questions to sleep peacefully. All they could do was wait together, wait until the two people who had the complete answers were available. And there was no one they would rather be waiting with than a brother.

-Aw, that gives me the warm and mushy feeling inside! :)

Just as he was about to move on to the next topic on his mind, Joe got there first.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked. “Maybe not when we were kids, but at least before we went to college. All those years, you just…”

-Ya just gotta love Joe's blunt honesty! :)

“But you were pardoned,” Frank said logically. “You helped the police catch a lot of people. And, all of your crimes were forgiven. Why would we think any less of you?”

“Forgiven?” Laura said. “Regardless of any official pardon, that is what I did. Yes, I changed, but I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do what I did.”

-Ah, but that's what forgiveness is all about, Laura. It's not saying you didn't do anything wrong, it's saying you owned up to it, did what you could to make it right and learned from it - and most people will forgive you for it.

“That’s not the real reason,” Joe said standing up and looking at her directly. “There’s more.”

Except for the distant drone of a television, the room fell silent as four blue eyes fought a silent staring battle before the older pair yielded to the younger.

-Oh, I LOVE that phrasing!

“Some are how I used to be, others are far worse. And Fenton asked me the same thing when you two started solving your own cases,” Laura told them. “Nothing made me more proud than seeing you two work together to bring criminals to justice. Nothing. If you two had chosen a different life, I would have been happy with that, too. But when I see what you two are doing, I almost think you’re making up for what I did before.”

-Aw, man... that is so, so... dang, I can't even think of a good enough word for it!

“I wanted to. But I always held myself back. If I had told Joe how to open a locked door in about thirty seconds flat and taught Frank how to hack into the DMV database, wouldn’t you two have been curious about how a librarian picked up those skills?”

“You can hack into the DMV mainframe?” Frank asked, raising his eyebrow.

-ROTFL! Nice litte touch of humor! :)

“What you could have been,” Frank repeated. “But why did you give up your life for Dad and become a librarian? I would never ask Callie to do that for me.”

-Ah, but the difference is Fenton DIDN'T ask her; she made the choice on her own. Big, big difference there, Frank.

“A different era,” she said. “There were not as many opportunities for women back then as there are now. But I didn’t give it up just for him. I gave it up for myself, and for you.

-See? I was right! LOL!

“Mom, when I found out, I was angry,” he admitted. “I called you and Dad hypocrites. Even when he tried to explain the whole situation to me, I still didn’t quite believe him… And then you almost died...” his voice trailed away.

“I’m sorry,” he said and frantically tried to get his thoughts in order. But when it came down to it, there were only two things he needed to say “I was a jerk and… I love you!”

-Aw, that is sweet! He didn't HAVE to admit that - I doubt Fenton or Joe would have told Laura if Frank chose not to - but it shows what kind of a person he is that he DID admit it, and apologize for it! Nicely done. :)

Looking at Fenton, Joe was reminded of how many times he had woken up in the hospital to see his father’s concerned face peering down at him. Now that their positions were reversed, Joe could only marvel how his parents could have gone through this so many times, never asking him to stop what he was doing. If he ever had a kid himself, he would steer his son or daughter toward a less dangerous occupation. Something like bungee jumping, skydiving, or being a racecar driver.

-ROTFL! :D Again - nice touch of humor!

“He’s come around,” Joe answered. “Seeing as how Callie did her best to set him straight earlier, and you both almost died, he’s come around. He’s now thrilled to be able to talk techie with someone in the family.”

“Good,” Fenton said. “Maybe she’ll stop badgering me to transfer my files to the computer.”

-LOL! And I totally LOVE that Frank and Laura have this techno-geek-nerdiness in common!

“If I had told you two earlier, if I had insisted that she tell you, if I hadn’t gotten so distracted and let him rattle me, if-”

“If we had never gone to the mall, Iola would still be alive,” Joe said harshly, but with sympathy in his eyes. Fenton was so shocked that he stopped speaking.

-Oh, nice comeback, Joe!

Hearing Joe say that warmed his heart. It had taken Joe a long time to return to any semblance of his own self after Iola Morton’s murder, and that event would remain with him for the rest of his life. It had taken the combined efforts of Frank and Vanessa to give him a reason to keep living, and by that remark, it sounded as if he had finally started to realize that he bore no blame whatsoever for that incident.

-I love that. You've shown that Iola's murder affected him badly and will ALWAYS be a part of him but he's learned how to accept that it happened, not continually blame himself and go on living. The death of a loved one doesn't mean life stops for the living - it goes on, just a little differently. I like that Joe has grown and matured enough to realize that. :)

I love that JOE was the one who had the 'heart to heart'with Fenton! Everyone writes Fenton and Frank as being so close so it was a nice change. And I loved how Joe was able to give Fenton some really good advice based on his own experience.

“And when we get home,” Laura said sternly, “Your Dad and I will go over his current and past unsolved cases while you will be grounded for the entire weekend.”

“Me? What did I do? My life hasn’t been hard enough already, and now I’m grounded?” Joe protested.

“I heard about your drinking,” Laura said glaring at him and refusing to be diverted. “Even though I strongly suspect you won’t do that again, I thought we had raised you to know better!”

“You told her,” Joe said looking accusingly at his father who threw up his arms in mock surrender and refused to interfere. Joe was on his own.

“Now mom,” said Joe turning back to Laura with characteristic puppy dog eyes and the trademark Hardy charm, “you really aren’t going to judge me based on what I did when I was young, are you?”

-BRAVO, franknjoe! THat was SO totally unexpected and so PERFECT! Laura is right back to being 'mom', setting boundaries and doling out punishment. And Joe is trying to talk his way out of it! I love the normalness after all the excitement! That was just wonderful! :D

What a wonderful story, and what a true talent you are! I have enjoyed your story thoroughly- and you took a risk by centering so much on Laura, which I loved! The ending was fantastic! I loved how Laura was the one to crack the code- that was a very clever little 'mini'mystery' that you managed to insert there. I am so looking forward to seeing what you'll come up with in the future! Be sure that I'll be a faithful reader! THANK YOU!

- Cheryl

Looks like I've been slacking on reviewing the last few chapters, and then you go and mention me and make me feel guilty... :o I have been reading, lol!

And that was a great epilogue. Very original to end with Laura starting to work with Fenton as a detective... some people might say ending up with the entire family detecting is a bit of a stretch, but I don't think so. Loved the part about her hating the office and wanting to make changes, with the two of them having to learn to work together and discovering that the house had been "his" and "hers" lol :D

Loved the discussion with Joe, the thing with the books was really clever.

"Laura smiled as she hung up the phone and looked at herself in the hall mirror. Laura Basden was gone forever, buried in New York City with the rest of her past. In her place was Laura Anne Hardy, private detective/librarian, wife and partner of Fenton Hardy and the mother of Frank and Joe Hardy." - Perfect ending :) I hope we get some more stories from you soon!

Alright. I must say this first, the fact that you had Laura and Frank even remotely similar, you have my respect. Just because you look like one parent does not mean you act like that parent. This fic is amazing. Instead of the boys saving the day, it's the women. Frank having someone to talk techie with in the family, Awesome seems to say it all.

I loved the talk Laurs had with Frank and Joe. And i'm glad to hear that Frank had forgiven her.

**“You can hack into the DMV mainframe?” Frank asked, raising his eyebrow. “It took Phil months to figure out how.”**

-Had to laugh at that one. I can just see the shock on his face to know that his mother is just as good or better than he himself at computers.

**“We blame ourselves when things happen to people we love,” said Joe. “It just shows how much we love them, not that we could have or should have done anything differently.”**

-That sounded a bit odd coming from Joe. The guy who wrote the book on guilt. But i loved how he phrased it. Shows maturity on his part.

Loved the story! Can't wait till the Epilogue.

Aw! This chapter was most definitely worth the wait. Your Laura was wonderful. I like how she explained her action, and they made sense- it was a very different time 20 or 30 years ago, and women were not part of the fields that Laura was. Laura was also very sweet to Frank, telling him that he wasn't a jerk and that she loved him. It was also sweet how the boys wanted Laura to understand that she is their MOM- they would have loved her no matter what. Very touching. Fenton was also very real, getting in touch with his emotions, dealing with his own guilt, apologizing... wow. Nicely done. It was sweet when Joe said that he would have lied for either Iola or Vanessa... and it made me laugh when Callie told Frank that she's kill him if he ever told her to quite her professions! :) My favorite part, though, was at the end- Joe's being grounded was funny (even though Laura was right) but his response, "you really aren't going to judge me on what I did when i was young, are you?" was PRICELESS! LOL. Terrific!

Cheryl