A $10,000 prize lures Tom into competing at a local aviation meet at Eagle Park. Tom is determined to build the fastest plane around, but his plans mysteriously disappear, which means Tom must redesign his new airplane from the beginning. A side-plot through the story is Mr. Swift's failing health.

Every boy possesses some form of inventive genius. Tom Swift is a bright, ingenious boy and his inventions and adventures make the most interesting kind of reading. These spirited tales convey in a realistic way, the wonderful advances in land and sea locomotion and other successful inventions. Stories like these are impressed upon the memory and their reading is productive only of good. This series of adventure novels starring the genius boy inventor Tom Swift falls into the genre of "invention fiction" or "Edisonade".--LibraryThing