The Secret Panel

Infobox Book |
name = The Secret Panel
orig title =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Franklin W. Dixon
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = The Hardy Boys
genre = Detective, Mystery novel
publisher = Grosset & Dunlap
release_date = January 1, 1946
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 192 pp
isbn = NA
preceded_by = The Short-Wave Mystery
followed_by = The Phantom Freighter

"The Secret Panel" is Volume 25 in the original The Hardy Boys book series published by Grosset & Dunlap. This is the last Hardy Boys book ghost written by Leslie McFarlane, who wrote the first sixteen books, as well as books 22, 23, 24 and this one, number 25 in the series. (26 was to have been written by McFarlane but was instead written by his wife Amy). McFarlane is considered to be far and away the best, and most influential, of all the ghost writers used for the Stratemeyer Syndicate story series, of which there were a number or others in addition to the Hardy Boys. (See main Hardy Boys article or the article on Leslie McFarlane.)

Plot summary

Innocently responding to a motorist's request that they shut off a light at his home, the Hardy Boys discover a deep mystery: the man used the name of a man, John Mead, that Chief Collig claims died five years earlier in a car accident. Adding to the mystery, the Mead mansion's doors have neither knobs nor visible keyholes. Only after speaking to a locksmith do they learn that the locks were concealed.

Meanwhile, their father Fenton assigns them to investigate a lead in the kidnapping of a doctor that may lead down the trail to a local boy who fell in with a local thief, a master criminal, who's a relation to the boy. The Hardy boys are to locate a traffic signal that hums like someone singing faintly, and drive ten minutes from it in each direction, then investigate the area for a "secret panel".

Fenton's mystery ends up intertwining with the Mead mansion and the master criminal, who's been carrying out a series of break-ins and thefts without triggering the alarm systems. It turns out that the deceased Mr. Mead was an electronics genius who developed a device that could open any lock and defeat alarm systems, but asked that, upon his death, it be turned over to the FBI. The master criminal had befriended Mr. Mead, found out about the device, and stolen it.