The Stone Idol is the title of a Hardy Boys Digest novel, written by Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate...

. Sometimes it goes by the number of 65 in the series, a continuation of the original novels, and sometimes as the 7th, as it is the 7th published by Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

 after Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap

Grosset & Dunlap is a United States book publisher founded in 1898.The company was purchased by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982 and today is part of the British publishing conglomerate, Pearson PLC through its American subsidiary Penguin Group....

 lost rights to publish new Hardy Boys books in 1979.

Plot summary

When an ancient stone idol disappears, the Hardy Boys are off on another fast-paced adventure. It's a mystery that takes the boys from a primitive village in the Andes

Andes

The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...

 Mountains to Antarctica and finally to Easter Island

Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

. By using their fine investigative skills, the Hardy Boys find that the mystery of the stone idol is not what it seems.