History Recap / HardyBoysCaseFiles11BrotherAgainstBrother

* FightingYourFriend: Or rather, your brother who's ''also'' your best friend. The amnesiac Joe attacks Frank several times under the mistaken belief that the latter is the hitman who's after him and Rita, including directly fighting him several times. Since he's fighting for his life (or so he thinks) while Frank, of course, doesn't want to hurt him and is holding back, Joe wins their multiple fights and knocks him out.

* WitnessProtection: Mark Tabor gathered evidence against the mob and got them convicted and sent to prison, but they appeal and get a new trial on a technicality. They hire a hitman to murder the Tabors, knowing that, if they could kill off the family (all of whom could testify against them), the case would fall apart without the star witnesses and they'd get to go free. The mobsters succeeded in murdering Mark's wife/Rita's mother, and the two of them had to go into witness protection to avoid a similar fate. When Joe first meets them, Mark is pretending to be Rita's "Uncle Delbert".
** WitlessProtectionProgram: The plot of the book kicks off because the gangsters have discovered the general vicinity of where the Tabors are hiding and sends a ProfessionalKiller after them, and Joe is sent to warn them about this so they can escape to a new hiding place. Unfortunately, partially thanks to Skell attacking Joe and giving him amnesia and the Tabors finding him and taking him in, this is what leads Skell to them, and he manages to kill Mark and their dog, Lucky.
** By the end, Rita, the SoleSurvivor of the family, re-enters witness protection so she can someday testify against the mob again once they get another trial, and adopts a new, unknown alias.

* AmnesiacResonance: And yet, despite the above, Joe gets several memory flashes of moments with Frank from previous books--wherein they worked together against their foes, or Joe was upset about him being hurt--that make him question his conviction that Frank is trying to kill them, and become confused. And besides his SanitySlippage and heightened paranoia, he otherwise retains his personality, sense of justice, and desire to help people in need, and protects Rita with his life throughout their journey.

** AmnesiacDissonance: Because his head trauma gives Joe some FakeMemories, he spends the majority of the book mistakenly believing that his brother Frank--the person he's closest to and cares about most in the world--is the ProfessionalKiller trying to murder him and Rita, and violently attacks him several times.
** AmnesiacResonance: And yet, despite the above, Joe gets several memory flashes of moments with Frank from previous books--wherein they worked together against their foes, or Joe was upset about him being hurt--that make him question his conviction that Frank is trying to kill them, and become confused. And besides his SanitySlippage and heightened paranoia, he otherwise retains his personality, sense of justice, and desire to help people in need, and protects Rita with his life throughout their journey.

* BigDamnHeroes: Frank finally catches up to Joe and Rita, only to find that the hitman has captured them and is preparing to murder them. He uses an explosion to distract the killer and draw him from the room long enough to sneak in and unlock their cells (even if he only manages to free Joe before Skell comes back). This is also when Joe's memories finally return.

* SpottingTheThread: How Frank eventually figures out that Joe has amnesia. When they fought, his brother was seriously trying to hurt him and acted like he didn't know him, and Frank realizes that the enemy must have done something to make Joe think he's the hitman. He remembers that, when he first saw Joe from a distance earlier, he mistook him for a guy in a turban, understands that the "turban" was actually head bandages, and from there, it dawns on him that Joe suffered head trauma and now has amnesia.

* IdiotBall: Downplayed, but once Joe has lost his memories, during his numerous encounters with Frank where he believes him to be the enemy, Frank never addresses him by name at any point (even though both of them usually make frequent use of SayMyName), even after figuring out that Joe has amnesia. You'd think it would occur to Frank that, if he knew Joe's name and used it, his brother might stop and listen to him and realize they're on the same side, but doesn't attempt it at all, and it takes until the climax of the book, when Frank shows up to save him and Rita, for Joe to remember him.

* TheMole: Rita's father, Mark, a construction company owner, was approached by the mob with a scheme to defraud the government out of millions of dollars. Mark pretended to agree, but immediately reported it to the authorities and secretly gathered evidence against the criminals until he had enough to get them arrested, acting as the star witness in court to get them convicted. Unfortunately, this got his wife killed, and he and Rita had to go into WitnessProtection.

* HeyYou: Justified with Rita towards Joe; she does ask him for his name not long after meeting him, but since ''Joe himself'' doesn't remember his own name thanks to his amnesia and can't tell her what it is, she spends most of the book addressing him without it. Once his memories are restored, she meets Frank, and he gives her both of their names, she does call him "Joe" once in the denouement.

* FakeMemories: Joe's memories of Frank become warped thanks to his amnesia-inducing head trauma, and it causes him to misremember the beginning of the first book in the ''Casefiles''--where Frank had to knock Joe out to stop him from running into a fire after a bomb explosion--as Frank stopping him from saving Iola. This is a big part of the reason he spends most of the book thinking his older brother is the enemy who's trying to kill him.

* HesBack: Frank showing up JustInTime to rescue Rita and Joe before Skell kills them--while drawing the killer away long enough to free Joe --finally causes him to get his memories back and remember who Frank is, with perfect timing for the two of them to team up and fight Skell together.

* HesBack: Frank showing up JustInTime to rescue Rita and Joe before Skell kills them--while drawing the killer away long enough to set Joe free--finally causes Joe to get his memories back and remember who Frank is, with perfect timing for the two of them to team up and fight Skell together.

* HesBack: Frank showing up JustInTime to rescue Rita and Joe before Skell kills them--while drawing the killer away long enough to set Joe free--is what finally causes Joe to get his memories back and remember who Frank is, with perfect timing for the two of them to team up and fight Skell together.

* BigDamnHeroes: Frank finally catches up to Joe and Rita, only to find that the hitman has captured them and is preparing to murder them. He uses an explosion to distract the killer and draw him from the room long enough to sneak in and unlock their cells (even if he only manages to free Joe before Skell returns). This is also when Joe's memories finally return.

* NameAmnesia: One of the many things Joe forgets because of his head injury is his own name, along with the names of everyone else in his life.

** The story starts out with Joe having a nightmare about the climax of the previous book, "Hostages of Hate", except that it has an EverybodyDies DownerEnding instead of the real one where they successfully beat the terrorists.

* ProfessionalKiller: Skell, who was hired to kill Rita and her dad, is apparently one of the best. While he does succeed in killing Mark, his primary target, he fails to kill Rita thanks to the Hardy Boys' interference, and is defeated and arrested in the end.

* LastStand: "Uncle Delbert"--actually Rita's father--decides to make one of these (with their dog by his side) against the hitman to protect his daughter after entrusting her to Joe's care. It helps that he's SecretlyDying and not long for this world anyway. He and the dog are killed soon after when the killer blows up the cabin.

* HeyYou: Justified with Rita towards Joe; she does ask him for his name not long after meeting him, but since ''Joe himself'' doesn't remember his own name thanks to his amnesia and can't tell her what it is, she spends most of the book addressing him without it. Once his memories are restored, she meets Frank, and he gives her both of their names, she does call Joe by name in the denouement.

* EvilRedhead: The contract killer, Skell, has red hair and is completely remorseless about all the murders he's killed, even gloating to Rita about having murdered her father and how he's going to kill her and Joe too.

* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: In standard Hardy Boys villain fashion, rather than just immediately killing Rita and Joe after he has them cornered and then being on his way, Skell decides to engage in some EvilGloating for several minutes, which allows Frank to rig an explosion to draw him away so he can free them and leads to Skell's defeat and arrest soon after.

* AmnesiacHero: When Joe is pushed over the the cliff in the trunk of a car by the BigBad, he suffers a head trauma so bad that it makes him forget [[NameAmnesia his name]], his mission, and everyone in his life, save for some bursts of WistfulAmnesia, and worst of all, [[FakeMemories warps his memories of Frank]]. He only recovers from it at the climax thanks to the shock of a nearby explosion and Frank showing up to rescue him and Rita.
** AmnesiacDissonance: Because his head trauma gives Joe some FakeMemories, he spends the majority of the book mistakenly believing that his brother Frank--the person he's closest to and cares most about in the world--is the ProfessionalKiller trying to murder him and Rita, and violently attacks him several times.
** AmnesiacResonance: And yet, despite the above, Joe gets several memory flashes of moments with Frank from previous books--wherein they worked together against one of their foes, or Joe was upset about him being hurt--that make him question his conviction that Frank is trying to hurt them, and become confused.

** The book starts out with Joe having a nightmare about the climax of the previous book, "Hostages of Hate", except that it has an EverybodyDies DownerEnding instead of the real one where they successfully beat the terrorists.

** We, of course, know what Frank's and Joe's names are, and the narration continues referring to them as such. However, thanks to Joe's amnesia, he doesn't remember his own name--nor Frank's, whom he refers to as "the dark-haired guy"--until the climax. Likewise, despite Rita spending most of the book being protected by Joe and fearing Frank as a possible enemy, she doesn't get to learn his name until the ending, when Frank introduces them both.
** Thanks to Joe's head injury, he misremembers Iola being killed by the car bomb as her being surrounded by flames and that Frank stopped him from saving her, which causes him to spend most of the book thinking his brother is the enemy, up to and including attacking him a few times because he fears Frank will try to hurt him and Rita. Frank and the reader know that Frank stopping Joe was to prevent him from dying in the fire from the bomb (not to mention Iola was already dead and couldn't be saved anyway) and he's really trying to protect him from the ProfessionalKiller after them.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Skell, the hitman, tries to kill Joe, but the latter survives and sees Rita, and because he's injured and begs for help, she brings him back to her cabin. As Skell boasts to them later, this is how he found their exact hiding place, and Joe feels terrible that he was supposed to warn Rita and her father only to accidentally lead the killer right to them. Rita, though, assures him that it's not his fault and she knows he was trying to help.
* PluckyGirl: Rita is an ActionSurvivor who powers through her parents' deaths and the hitman's numerous attempts to kill her so she can survive as a witness to bring the mobsters responsible to justice. She manages to lessen Joe's amnesia-induced SanitySlippage (even stopping him from killing Frank at one point) despite not even knowing his name. During the climax, despite being captured and locked in a jail cell by Skell, she remains a DefiantCaptive and helps the Hardys fight him as much as she can, such as pushing Joe back into the fight when he falls against her cell door, and stealing Skell's gun through the bars when he gets too close.

* RedHerring: Joe is a little suspicious of the overly-friendly stranger sitting next to him on the plane at the beginning, but so far as we can tell, though, he has no involvement in the plot at all and is exactly who he seems to be.

* SecretlyDying: Mark's reason for refusing to join Joe and Rita in escaping from the safehouse before the hired killer gets there. He learned months ago that he has a terminal illness and doesn't have long to live anyway, so he chooses to make a LastStand to give the kids a better chance of escaping.

* SoleSurvivor: Rita's mom was murdered by the mob in retaliation for her dad bringing them down, and said dad and their dog are killed by Skell, leaving Rita as the only member of the family still alive by the end. She re-enters WitnessProtection to be able to testify against the criminals again someday.
* SpottingTheThread: How Frank eventually figures out that Joe has amnesia. When they fought, his brother was seriously trying to hurt him and acted like he didn't know him, and Frank realizes that the enemy must have done something to make Joe think he's the hitman. He remembers that, when he first saw Joe, he mistook him for a guy in a turban, understands that the "turban" was actually head bandages, and from there, it dawns on him that Joe suffered head trauma and now has amnesia.

* WitnessProtection: Mark Tabor gathered evidence against the mob and got them convicted and send to prison, but they appeal and get a new trial on a technicality. They hire a hitman to murder the Tabors, knowing that, if they could kill off the family (all of whom could testify against them), the case would fall apart without their star witnesses and they'd get to go free. They succeeded in murdering Mark's wife/Rita's mother, and the two of them had to go into witness protection to avoid a similar fate. When Joe first meets them, Mark is pretending to be Rita's "Uncle Delbert".