the various hardy boys series offer readers an escape from the everyday world into one of mystery and adventure with two self-controlled, gentlemanly, homosocial, idealized young white males who are the equals of their father (and other men) in intelligence and powers of deduction. their ignorance of sex, their "squareness" (socially conventional), their respect for the law, and their homosociality have generated parodies such as "the hardy boys and the mystery of where babies come from", "the secret of the old queen: a hardy boys musical", and "a ghost in the closet: a hardly boys mystery".