Recap / Hardy Boys Case Files 12 Perfect Getaway

End of Book 11 summary: How can a man steal millions and millions of dollars from a company—and then disappear? That's what the Hardys have to find out or a friend's father will take the rap.

What they discover is the ultimate getaway—an escape plot that defies imagination. Frank and Joe set off on the same trail, with a briefcase full of hot bills. It leads them to a tropical hideaway. But as the Hardys learn, this is no paradise.

Can they blow the secret of this escape route? Or will they get blown away themselves?

Back cover summary: It's the ultimate criminal operation. For a huge fee Perfect Getaway Travel, Ltd. will provide a clean escape from the long arm of the law. To crack the ring, Frank and Joe pose as a pair of crooks looking for a safe hideout. But when they finally manage to reach the end of the line, the brother detectives find themselves trapped in a private kingdom. A garden of evil, ruled by a murderous crimelord—where an exit visa costs a cool five million dollars....

Tropes found here are:

• All for Nothing: As the Hardys realize and Joe directly lampshades, Perfect Getaways themselves end up being this. White Collar Criminals pay premiums for the service to help them escape the country with their ill-gotten cash and start anew in a new location of their choosing, but instead are taken to a private ranch run by a power-crazed Chief, Made a Slave, and have all the money they stole taken from them anyway.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The white-collar crooks who manage to steal hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars pay for a Perfect Getaway so they can avoid being arrested for their crimes and escape their home nation cleanly, without a trace, and live out the rest of their lives in another country while avoiding the authorities. Strictly speaking, they do indeed get all of these things...by being brought to a privately-owned compound in Central America ruled by a sadistic man who uses all the criminals there as slave labor to keep the place running. Joe says it best:
  Joe: The world's greatest scam for the world's biggest crooks. Can you imagine how Karl Ross reacted when he got here and found out what he'd laid out his money for? A prison a lot worse than the one he was escaping. Not such a Perfect Getaway.
• Big Damn Heroes: Downplayed. By the time Fenton and General Rodriguez arrive at the Chief's ranch to arrest him and rescue the boys, Joe has already saved himself and Frank from being killed by blowing the ranch to kingdom come, and Fenton lampshades that he's a bit late to save them directly; however, they still did need rescuing from the ranch itself to return home, and their dad's and the general's arrival also leads to all the bad guys being arrested.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • On the second leg of their journey in The Infiltration, the boys meet an escaping criminal who paid for a Perfect Getaway and chose "Igor" as his new name, and pretend to agree to let him buy them off and spy for him. Once they've been working together with him for a while, Igor reveals his real identity to them: Adolf Tanner, Gregory Miller's boss who framed him for embezzlement, and the man whom the Hardys infiltrated Perfect Getaway to find in the first place.
  • It's mentioned at the beginning that several white-collar criminals have managed to escape justice lately before being caught, and Joe specifically name-drops a particularly notorious one he read about recently, Karl Ross. The boys end up encountering Ross when they reach the ranch where the criminals are held prisoner.
• Clear My Name: Gregory Miller, the father of the Hardy Boys' school friend Marcie Miller and the vice president of Maxtel, is arrested for supposedly embezzling millions of dollars from the company. Not helping his case is Marcie finding an attaché case full of money in his closet and him apparently having called Perfect Getaway, Ltd. to arrange his escape; nonetheless, she is confident in his innocence and enlists the Hardys to help prove it. They discover by the end that it was a Frame-Up by Maxtel's president, Adolf Tanner.
• Daddy's Girl: Marcie, in big part because her mom died when she was born. Despite being a widower working a demanding job as a high-paid executive, Mr. Miller still made sure to be a very present, loving father who spends a lot of time with her. She understandably adores him as a result and, despite all the embezzling evidence pointing to him, is wholly confident in his innocence, and is proven to be correct.
• Every Man Has His Price: Tanner, a.k.a. "Igor", certainly thinks so, and when the boys are acting as staff members at Perfect Getaway and spy on him for their "boss", he bribes them with $20k apiece to spy for him instead, and later tries to buy them off again at the Chief's complex when he's been captured. Since they're posing as just workers who are Only in It for the Money, they "agree" to his offers for the time being.
• Everyone Has Standards: The inhabitants of the Chief's labor camp may be criminals, but Frank and Joe are still sickened at watching and listening to them being tortured and brutalized, noting that no one deserves this fate.
• Frame-Up: Adolf Tanner embezzled millions upon millions of dollars from Maxtel and framed his subordinate, vice president Gregory Miller, for it, complete with leaving a briefcase full of money at his home to make him look more guilty and hoping Miller will be accused of murdering him after his disappearance. He gloats about all of these things to the Hardys in his "Igor" alias, not knowing that he's the exact man they're searching for to clear Mr. Miller's name.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: As always, the Hardy Boys are the Good, becoming involved with Perfect Getaway, Ltd. to bring it down and prove a friend's father innocent. The clients of Perfect Getaway are the Bad, as remorseless white-collar thieves attempting to flee the country to escape justice for their crimes. The Chief and his men are the Evil, as Sadists who keep the criminal "Bad"s prisoner, use them as slave labor, and torture or kill them (as well as any other workers there) for stepping out of line in any way.
• The Infiltration: The boys go undercover in Perfect Getaway, Ltd.'s operation to find Gregory Miller's partner, Adolf Tanner, and prove that the latter was the one who really embezzled the money from Maxtel. They initially pose as customers paying for their own Perfect Getaways, and when that cover is blown, pretend to be new hired help for the company^note (helped by the fact that the various branches of Perfect Getaway don't have contact with each other, to make it harder for authorities to track culprits down, so the people in charge of later legs of the journey haven't heard of the Hardys infiltrating the gang).
• Irony: As the Hardys note, white-collar criminals pay hefty fees for Perfect Getaways in order to evade justice for their crimes and escape the United States...only to end up as forced labor for a Sadist Chief who confiscates everything they stole and is willing to kill them without a second thought if they step out of line, leaving the crooks out all their money and in a far more unpleasant situation than if they'd just gone to jail in the States.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: The customers of Perfect Getaway, Ltd. are white-collar thieves attempting to evade the law—sometimes even framing other innocent people for their crimes, as is the case with Adolf Tanner to Gregory Miller, to make their escapes easier—and escape to somewhere else in the world of their choosing where they can never receive punishment. Perfect Getaway puts on all pretenses of helping them with this for most of the trip, only for the would-be escapees to find themselves brought to a ranch in a Central American Banana Republic where they're imprisoned, Made a Slave, and gradually tortured into giving up all the money they stole. As Joe puts it, they ultimately end up in a different prison that's much worse than any sort of sentence they would have received from the justice system back home.
• Karmic Overkill: All of the forced labor at the Chief's ranch are remorseless crooks and thieves who stole large amounts of money and paid for Perfect Getaways to escape justice for it. None of them are good people by any stretch of the imagination, but the cruelty and torment they receive from the Chief and his subordinates still far surpasses whatever punishment they deserved for their crimes.
• Make an Example of Them: Once the Chief and his men have captured the Hardys again, he decides to murder them in front of everyone at the compound as a warning to the prisoners of what could happen to them if they don't fall in line. Luckily, Joe has one more plan up his sleeve, and then Fenton arrives to rescue them.
• Missing Mom: Marcie's mother passed away due to Death by Childbirth, so Marcie never knew her and grew up with only her father, another reason she's so close to him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The first leg of the Hardy's undercover investigation of Perfect Getaway has them pose as two escaped criminals paying for the service, but their cover is pretty quickly blown thanks to Frank accidentally forgetting/not getting the chance to discard a magazine from home that he brought with him to read, which has his full name on the shipping address. They escape from being murdered, but are forced to switch gears and pretend to be hired help instead for the rest of the journey.
• No Name Given: The Chief is only ever referred to as such, with his actual name never given.
• Only One Name: As part of the Perfect Getaway travel package, they state that they will not keep any records of their clients under their real names, and ask them to choose a new first name for themselves to use to make it less likely anyone will be able to track them down. Frank and Joe, who are pretending to be Mr. Miller and his partner, are able to use their own first names for this; meanwhile, Adolf Tanner chose "Igor" and Karl Ross picked "Hans".
• Public Execution: The Chief plans one of these for the Hardys in front of all of the staff and prisoners at his ranch as a way to Make an Example of Them, though as per usual, they're saved from death Just in Time.
• Real Name as an Alias: Once Frank answers the call to the Miller home from Perfect Getaway and pretends to be Mr. Miller in order to infiltrate, he's told he'll need to choose a one-name alias for himself to use during the travel process, and so decides to use his own first name. To ensure Joe can come with him, he then arranges for a "business partner who also needs a Perfect Getaway" to accompany him as a two-person group, and when asked to provide a new name for his companion, he "chooses" his brother's actual first name.
• Right Hand Vs Left Hand: This is the main reason the boys are able to make it all the way to the end of the line at Perfect Getaway even after their covers as clients are blown during the first part of the trip. Because the leaders of the various travel stages don't communicate with each other once their respective journeys have begun, Frank and Joe are able to pose as hired hands and continue onwards without being outed as impostors until it's too late.
• Sadist: The Chief. He rules his private ranch with an iron fist, tortures the captured criminals there until he can get all their money out of them, and then enslaves them once they're of no further use. After the boys capture him and he then manages to turn the tables back on them, he's so furious that he tries to kill them slowly by locking them in a sauna-like room, wanting them to "sweat blood". And when that fails, he later attempts to murder them in a Public Execution in front of all the other prisoners. The narration describers him as being like a "rabidly cruel fox."
• Small Role, Big Impact: The Millers. Marcie only appears at the beginning to ask the Hardys to clear her father's name, and Mr. Miller himself is The Ghost, but this is what kicks off the events of the entire book. It's largely because the case takes the brothers out of state and then out of the country, while he's in jail and she stays in Bayport to be near him.
• Spoiled Sweet: Marcie Miller, the boys' friend from school who asks them to take the case to help her father. Because he's a high-paid executive at a big company, she grew up incredibly rich in a big home and wanted for nothing; however, it's stated that she has a great personality and everyone likes her, and she's shown to be nothing but a Nice Girl for the entirety of her short screentime.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Sam orders Frank and Joe to spike Igor's drink with sleeping pills so they can search his cabin while he's out, but Igor fakes it and turns the tables on them, bribing them to work for him instead. Later, once Sam turns on them and intends to kill them, he passes out before he can do so thanks to sleeping pills that Frank put in his coffee.
• Title Drop: Because the name of the company is "Perfect Getaway, Ltd." and the service they offer their customers is called a Perfect Getaway, this unsurprisingly happens numerous times throughout the book.
• White-Collar Crime:
  • The adventure of the week for this book focuses on white-collar criminals who think they're using the Perfect Getaway service to seemingly avoid punishment for what they've done, only to find out too late that they were part of a scam that specifically targets rich criminals so the greedy Chief can steal all their money.
  • A couple of specific examples include Maxtel president Adolf Tanner embezzling millions of dollars from his company and framing his subordinate, vice president Gregory Miller, for it (which is the specific case the boys set out to solve), and Karl Ross, a financier who stole millions from the stock market.