1928

Eighteen year-old Frank Hardy and his seventeen year-old brother Joe no sooner accept a 'shantytown' beach investigation from Bayport Police Chief Collig when two of their close chums vanish. After a crime occurs which they partially witness and the matter of the same squatter town surfaces again and again, they wonder if all of Bayport's havoc could stem from that one place.

Timber wolves, a Rocky Mountain blizzard, and a mine cave-in are only a few of the perils Frank and Joe Hardy encounter during their search for the members of a notorious gang responsible for a payroll robbery. In the old Montana mining camp of Lucky Lode, the young detectives puzzle over a series of mysterious events. A piano-playing ghost haunts the long-abandoned dance hall; eerie blue lights flash from the hilltop cemetery in the dark of night; strange men arrange a meeting at Shadow the Bear, and a suspect disappears through a curtain of frozen ice. Are these events related to the men who kidnapped the boys in Chicago on their way to Montana? Who booby-trapped the helicopter which flew the young detectives to the ghost town? And what ever happened to Bart Dawson who seemingly deserted his gold-mining partners twenty-five years ago? Frank and Joe cleverly fit the scattered pieces of this dangerous puzzle into place, and come up with an astonishing solution.