Rick Brant

Rick Brant is the central character in a series of 24 adventure and mystery novels by John Blaine, a pseudonym for authors Harold L. Goodwin (all titles) and Peter J. Harkins (co-author of the first three). The series was published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1947 and 1968, with the previously unpublished title, "The Magic Talisman" printed in 1990 in a limited edition as the concluding #24.
Description.
In the series, teenaged Rick Brant and his ex-Marine pal, Don "Scotty" Scott live on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey, where Rick's father, Hartson Brant, heads the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists. Rick and Scotty are involved in various adventures at home and abroad. Besides Hartson Brant, the recurring supporting characters in the series include:
Various Spindrift scientists also appear several times:
The Rick Brant series has a scientific tone and was taglined as "Electronic Adventures", "Science-Adventure Stories", and finally "SCIENCE Adventures". The science in the stories is realistic, unlike the more fantastic science of Tom Swift, Jr.
Hal Goodwin was a popular science writer with a strong technical background and a sense of style unusual in the juvenile adventure-series field. The books are suspenseful, well-plotted, atmospheric, and enriched by humor and acute characterization as well as personal experience. Exotic locales such as tropical islands, the Philippine jungles, and the Himalayas were given vivid and well-researched depictions, as were a variety of specialized hobbies and professions, such as scuba diving, infrared photography, home rocketry, and the inevitable espionage work. Rick was also a private pilot who owned his own airplanes and used them in a number of the books. His first plane was a Piper Cub, presumably a Piper J-4, and his second was a "Sky Wagon", presumably a Cessna 180 Skywagon. Like the "Ken Holt" mystery series, the tales appealed to a slightly older audience than did the typical Grosset & Dunlap titles. (Ken Holt had a crossover cameo in "The Flying Stingaree", and Rick lent some of his gadgets to Ken in "The Mystery of the Plumed Serpent", by agreement of the two authors.)
The publishers were averse to any suggestion of the supernatural in the series. An ambiguous end to "The Blue Ghost Mystery" was dropped, and an entire book ("The Magic Talisman") was rejected due to its inclusion of ESP elements. This lost tale was eventually published in an independent edition in 1990.
Beginning in the 1980s, Grosset & Dunlap began transferring the copyrights to Hal Goodwin. The rights are now held by the John Blaine/Rick Brant Trust. The Goodwin family has been working to bring the works back in print, starting with the rarer final four books.
Rick Brant never graduated to any other medium of entertainment, although there are notable similarities to be found in the "Jonny Quest" franchise.
On November 9, 2010 an e-book, The Rick Brant Science-Adventure Series", was released on Amazon for the Kindle eReader containing eleven of the original novels.
List of titles.
Titles included in the eBook.
These titles are also available from Project Gutenberg.