Chet Morton

Chester Morton, Jr.
The Hardy Boys character
First appearance	The Hardy Boys #1 The Tower Treasure (1927)
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	High school student
Relatives	Father: Chester Morton Sr. Mother: Jill Morton (nee Kenyon) Sister: Iola Morton Uncle: Jim Kenyon Cousin: Bill Morton

Chester "Chet" Morton, Jr. is a fictional character in The Hardy Boys book series by Franklin W. Dixon.

Chet grew up with Frank and Joe Hardy (the Hardy Boys of the title) and has been one of their best friends since second grade. He usually says he doesn't want to have anything to do with the Hardy boys' mysteries, but ends up working with them anyway. He lives on a farm with his parents and sister, Iola Morton, just outside Bayport. Iola dates Joe Hardy through many of the books.

Chet is referred to in The Hardy Boys series as "big boy", fat, plump, chubby, stout, heavy-set, chunky, "the chubby one", portly and round. He is any or all of the aforementioned with curly red (sometimes blond) hair, a broad, wide nose, freckles and a doughy face. Chet has a weakness for food, and is known to say "and lots of it". He enjoys strawberry sodas and comic books, and is rarely seen without an apple or a pocketful of cookies. He has a liking for Aunt Gertrude's cooking, and often eats it while at the Hardys' house. He owns an old yellow jalopy he named Queen. It is also said in the books that he plays center on Bayport's high school varsity football team. Throughout the series, he does make some costly mistakes, but he is quickly forgiven.

In The Hardy Boys Casefiles first book, Dead on Target, Iola Morton is killed by a car bomb intended to kill Frank and Joe.

Chet tends to pick up new hobbies in each book, and sometimes they are connected in some way to the mystery in the novel. One example can be seen in the book Mystery of the Whale Tattoo in which the Hardy boys are deeply involved in a mystery of a missing valuable figurine that had been stolen years before by a gang of thieves who were known for having whale tattoos and using names of whales as aliases. In the book, Chet Morton's hobby is scrimshaw, and Chet uses his knowledge of whales and of scrimshaw to help the boys piece together the members of the gang. Chet also had a knack for crossword puzzles. Often throughout mysteries Chet could be found in a comfortable spot trying to figure out a crossword puzzle while Joe and Frank Hardy were stuck in some inopportune situation.

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