Dead on Target is the first book in The Hardy Boys Casefiles series of detective novels.

[1] Joe Hardy's girlfriend, Iola Morton, is caught in a car bomb and dies.

When the book is about to end, Frank, Joe, Chet (who is Iola's brother) and their other friends begin searching a shopping mall when they learn that the Assassins plan to kill a presidential candidate giving a speech in Bayport.

The fight ends with Al-Rousasa falling to his death, and Joe remembers what he had been told - "Nobody takes an Assassin alive."

The boys also collaborate with the Gray Man, who represents a cloak-and-dagger crimefighting unit (similar to SKOOL and UGLI in The Secret Agent on Flight 101).