"Guess where the virus is? I've rigged it with a little charge. It's set to go off in five or six minutes. Everyone on board will be exposed to your pet bug, Driscoll. You'll have a death train on your hands. I have nothing to lose."
— Talia Neiman, Terror on Track
The Hardy Boys is one of the longest-running mystery book series, featuring the titular duo solving various mysteries across many areas. The series is normally very lighthearted and doesn't have many villains that push far beyond typical villainy. However, the ones that do, prove themselves to be utterly monstrous by the standards of the series.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Literature
Casefiles
- Deathgame: Major Orville Brand is the right-hand man of Colonel Hammerlock and proves to be nastier than his master. The two are behind a scheme to kidnap teenagers and run them through a deadly Death Course to turn them into perfect soldiers. Brand intends to betray and murder Hammerlock, planning to use the soldiers to help perpetuate a military operation to keep South American dictator Manuel Strosser in power, all so he can make himself rich.
- Hostages of Hate: "The Dutchman" is a European terrorist, head of the anarchistic ANWO (Army of the New World Order) which seeks to dismantle global government so the strongest can squabble with each other for power. The Dutchman takes a passenger plane hostage and threatens to start executing passengers if his demands aren't followed, nearly killing Callie, the youngest passenger on the plane, before his terrorists are talked down. By the end, rather than admit defeat, the Dutchman tries to blow himself up while he's still in the plane, spitefully trying to take dozens to the grave with him.
- Disaster for Hire: Ray Garner, acting CEO of Garner Industries, tries to destabilise the local timber industry with a wood-rotting virus, all for profit. The virus infects people, too, which results in half of a small town becoming swept up and infected as well. When bodies begin to drop because of the virus, rather than face the consequences, Garner tries to murder every person who could potentially link it back to him. Garner kills the scientist working on the antidote for the virus, then tries to murder the scientist's young daughter, the Hardys, their father, and finally his own sobbing, begging ally, all with nothing but pure ice in his demeanour.
- Terror on Track: Talia Neiman is easily one of the most Ax-Crazy terrorists the Hardys have ever fought. Talia boards a train she knows has vials filled with a lethal poison she can sell at a tidy price; to cover her tracks, Talia strangles the son of the man who invented the virus, then later attempts to assassinate one of her own allies to shut him up. Eventually, Talia gleefully reveals just exactly how she plans on escaping undetected; she's going to unleash the virus to kill off every innocent person on the train, front-to-back, to ensure nobody can ever identify her, an idea she can't help but sadistically rub in the Hardys' faces.
- Endangered Species, No Mercy, & The Phoenix Equation: Ethan Daly makes and sells weapons to international terrorist organisations for profit. Daly is behind a scheme to take over the Phoenix Corporation and has been drugging its leader into compliance while he picks off anyone, including his old partner in crime, who could expose him. Daly also illegally imports immigrants from other countries, offering them a job if they help work in his factories, and when the heat becomes too much for him, simply decides to kill them all to tie up loose ends.
- Screamers: Dr. Arthur Charles Ludwig and Conrad Seethus are the masterminds behind the plan to release the Computer Virus known as "Screamer", which causes any technology it comes into contact with to explode, and which Ludwig and Seethus have been using to bomb locations, regardless of the danger to people. Ludwig and Seethus set up a plan to use Screamer to blow up a populated convention at their place of work to cover up their attempted murder of their boss. When that fails, the two reveal that they have rigged a device to release Screamer across the entire technological grid, ending Western civilization as we know it if they can't get their way.
- Dead in the Water: Klaus Stachel is an infamous Nazi war criminal who, before the events of the book, stole a large amount of loot before using a U-boat to escape. When the new German government attempted to retrieve it, Stachel fired on his own side, wiping out a U-boat of his countrymen to escape. In the present, Stachel has been searching for the lost treasure and initiates a crime wave to get it back: bombing a treasure hunter's boat to stop him from finding it and trying to feed the Hardy Boys' friend to sharks if they don't sacrifice themselves to clear the way for him to get it back.
Undercover Brothers
- Running on Fumes: Arthur Stench is initially presented as the charismatic leader of the elusive eco-activist community living in the desert. Secretly he is on the payroll of the oil industry, where he was implanted in the eco society to discredit them in the eyes of the public. Stench often coaxed the community into acts of aggression and violence against the town, endangering safety with increasingly dangerous acts. When exposed by the Hardy brothers, Stench reveals his grand plan to crash a remotely piloted helicopter into a nuclear power plant and trigger a catastrophic explosion, while tying the brothers up in the helicopter so they will be blamed for the terrorist attack.
- Lost Mystery Trilogy (Children of the Lost; The Lost Brother; Forever Lost): Dr. Douglas Carrini is an amoral psychologist obsessed with finding the perfect childhood for kids after his own Parental Abandonment. For over a decade, Carrini has been kidnapping children from flawed but loving parents and sending them to his personal bunker "Happyland" to create the perfect childhood. Carrini has them constantly drugged into submission, which leaves the kids in an eternal state of mindlessness. The horrible effects have led to one child even dying. After one of his patients escapes, Carrini orders the death of anyone who could discover the truth of his operation, leading to the stabbing of the grandfather of one of his victims and the death via venomous rattlesnakes of another person looking into the truth. Capturing Frank Hardy for his collection, Carrini tries to gaslight him into dropping the investigation into his crimes; when that fails, Carrini is fine simply murdering the kids and starting anew. Ultimately, despite his claims that he's helping children, Carrini really only cares about forcing his own twisted beliefs on others, and shocks even Frank Hardy in how callously he's willing to kill even the kids he says he wants to help.
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries
- "Dangerous Waters": Vito Farina, aka "Mr. Hubbard," is a vicious modern-day pirate who targets yachts on the Caribbean. A crooked longshoreman before he faked his death to go into piracy, Vito always has one terrifying routine for the passengers of the ships he docks; he murders the men and dumps them overboard, and he spares the women to sell as white slaves overseas in China. Over half-a-dozen yachts have vanished by the time the Hardys find out, and Vito is totally indulgent in how evil he is.
