Showing results by author "John Blaine" in All Categories

The Electronic Mind Reader, the 12th Rick Brant novel, was published in 1957 and is another JANIG-based adventure with government spook Steve Ames as one of the main characters. The story involves foreign espionage against a secret government missile project based in Washington. Steve Ames comes for help from the Spindrift Foundation after several project scientists are struck down by a mysterious neural malady that seems to cause severe aphasia and inability to communicate.

Rick Brant, Don Scott, Dr. Tony Briotti, and Dr. Hobart Zircon travel down to the Virgin Islands on what is planned to be a pleasure trip. The boys’ only goal is to unearth a possible sunken shipwreck and find a golden Spanish statue lost centuries before to pirates. Archaeologist Tony plans to look for submerged Native American artifacts, while physicist Zircon expects to spend time just fishing. Soon after they reach Charlotte Amalie, the boys run across JANIG security agent Steve Ames in a chance encounter on the street.

All the Spindrifters want to do is to locate, quietly dig up and study some ancient native artifacts, including a full-sized, solid-gold skull that is sacred to the Filipino natives. Unfortunately, corrupt government officials want to steal it to sell on the black market, and head-hunting natives want to stop them because unearthing it will desecrate their lands.

The Spindrift Scientific Foundation has sent Dr. Tony Briotti, Rick Brant, and Don "Scotty" Scott to the Philippine Islands for a quiet peaceful archeological expedition. Dr. Briotti wants to investigate some native artifacts, among which is supposedly a golden skull. Rick and Scotty travel along to assist Dr. Briotti. The artifacts are located in a remote part of an island with natives who are purported to be headhunters.

Two of the scientists from the acclaimed Spindrift Scientific Foundation in New Jersey are missing in the Philippines. When the staff zoologist, Dr. Howard Shannon, and the staff archaeologist, Dr. Anthony Briotti, fail to turn up on schedule from an expedition to the Sulu Sea, the entire Foundation became personally concerned. All work stops while the staff speculates on what might have happened and what course of action to take.

There is something fishy near the scientific foundation near Spindrift Island, NJ. A fishing trawler has wrecked upon well-known a reef by an experience fishing boat captain who says he was drunk when it happened. The experienced captain is a teetotaler, however, and refuses to talk about how or why his trawler suddenly crashed onto the reef. Rick and Scotty are also baffled and as they investigate they find many things don't add up.

Two scientists working on a top-secret government project suddenly start talking gibberish. The government does not know how or why this has happened and asks the Brants if they can move the remaining scientists to Spindrift Island, a scientific foundation located on an island off the New Jersey Coast, in order to better protect them. The Brants agree. Rick and Scotty become suspicious of a new barber in town and believe he is part of an espionage ring.

Barby, Rick Brant's sister, and Jan Miller have sighted a Civil War ghost while vacationing in Virginia. The ghost is, apparently, a Civil War Union soldier who died while visiting his sweetheart across Confederate lines. The ghost always appears exactly at 9 p.m., and then only when there is a considerable audience. Rick and his ex-Marine pal Scotty, travel to Virginia to investigate the ghostly sightings. A cave, a pool, clouds of mist, figures walking over the fields at midnight picking up the invisible dead from the war...are they real ghosts or people.

Rick Brant and his friend Scotty travel to Egypt with a Spindrift expert to help with some radio astronomy scientists that are attempting to decipher and interpret some very odd signals that the telescopes are receiving. Before Rick and Scotty leave the United States for Egypt, an Egyptian man asks them to take a plastic figurine of a cat with them and deliver it to a man in Egypt. Thinking that it is nothing more than the simple delivery of a token, Rick and Scotty agree to deliver the item. However, it quickly becomes evident there is far more to the situation than they believed.

Rick Brant and Don Scott are back from their vacation in the South Pacific and are finding adventure near Spindrift Island. They're on their own this time, with no support from any of the Spindrift scientists, though they do get help from a likable old sea salt named Cap'n Mike and some familiar members of the press.

Rick and Scotty go to work on a project at an experimental rocket installation in Nevada at the request of Dr. John Gordon. Someone has been trying to sabotage the rocker launches and leaves pictures of a knight sticking a sword through a rocket. The person calls themselves The Earthman.

Sea Gold is the third book in the Rick Brant Science Adventure series, where young adult Rick Brant and his ex-Marine pal, Don Scott, live on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey, where Rick's father, Hartson Brant, heads the scientists of the Spindrift Foundation. In Sea Gold, Rick and Scotty are off for the summer because college is out of session and all the scientists have temporarily left Spindrift for other research challenges, so nothing is happening there.

Rick Brant and his friend Scotty are bound for the islands of the South Pacific. But beaches and the tropical climate are not what they have in mind. Deeper than divers have ever been lies the ancient temple of Alta-Yuan. Is the Spindrift's new experiment, the Submobile, capable of withstanding the pressures of the deep? If so, there may be others interested in using it for purposes other than scientific studies.

With the success of the lunar rocket in the previous novel, The Rocket's Shadow, Rick Brant and Scotty learn that they have been chosen as part of the Tibet expedition to place communications equipment there to bounce radar signals off the moon. From the beginning of the expedition, however, they discover that someone does not want the experiment to succeed. As the date for the lunar relay looms closer, they are still miles away from their destination and in the hands of a dangerous criminal. Their only friend is a clever Indian boy, Chahda, who has disappeared.

In The Rocket’s Shadow, Rick Brandt first meets his new friend Don Scott, and investigates the apparent sabotage of the Spindrift Foundation’s new experimental rocket, which if successful, will net them a two-million-dollar grant. The deadline is only a few days away, and confused fingers of guilt point to more than one suspect. But, who can it be? This novel is not only a ripping tale of young adventure, but it is very much a slice of life from the beginning of the cold war and serious experimentation in the U.S. with rockets.

In this Rick Brant Adventure #9: Rick and Scotty stay close to home near Spindrift Island, set mostly in an old abandoned amusement park on the New Jersey coast next to a scientific research facility. They're investigating a mysterious hit-and-run case that injured Rick's sister Barby and this time are up against hardened domestic criminals.

Barby Brant finally gets to leave Spindrift Island and accompany Rick and Scotty on an adventure. The three Spindrifters and Chahda meet their friends, the Warners, on the trawler Tarpon and head off to map fishing grounds in the exotic South Pacific. They soon run head long into a mystery concerning a mysterious individual called the Phantom Shark, who sells the best pearls to be be found anywhere and has a reputation for being a dangerous person to cross.

As The Whispering Box Mystery gets underway, we find Rick and Scotty in an unfamiliar position: on the outside looking in, as Rick's father and scientist friends work on a secret government project. The Spindrift Island leader, Hartson Brant, had always implicitly trusted Rick and Scotty before, but ever since a government spook named Steve Ames came to him with details of a national threat, Hartson has refused to tell Rick and Scotty anything. It's a bitter pill to swallow, considering their record of saving Spindrift's projects from sabotage.