The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border is the first volume in the Radio Boys series written by Gerald Breckenridge and published by the A.L. Burt Company in 1922. The series revolves around the adventures of three teenagers, Frank Merrick, Bob Temple, and Jack Hampton. With well-to-do parents they travel to worldwide destinations and find adventure and mystery, and radio always serves an important role. In this story, Jack’s Dad is taking the kids with him on a business trip to Texas and New Mexico concerning oil excavation. Mr. Hampton already has his own transmitter on Long Island for his business and is building a matching site in the Southwest to communicate back to headquarters. The boys are mostly interested in the radio project, but they soon discover more sinister activities on the border.
In radio’s early, experimental days of the 1920s there were two major series of juvenile fiction identically titled The Radio Boys; this series by A.L. Burt and a more commercial series by Grosset & Dunlap written under the name Allen Chapman. Of the two series, these Breckenridge stories were written in a somewhat more adult style and involve more exotic locations. (There was a third series published by Cupples & Leon Company for girls, titled appropriately The Radio Girls.)
Book publisher: A.L. Burt Company, New York
Book copyright: 1922
Pages: 231 (262 bound pages)
Size: 5″ x 7-5/8″
Edition: First edition, likely first printing
Dust Jacket: Yes, color
Illustrations: Semi-glossy frontispiece
Back matter: 14 pages of book series listings from A.L. Burt Company
Digital edition © 2005 Curtis Philips. All Rights Reserved.