Review: The Tower Treasure

The Tower Treasure
The Hardy Boys, Book 1

Author: Franklin W. Dixon
Pages: 180
Publisher: Grosset and Dunlap
Source: Read at friend's house

Description from Goodreads:
A dying criminal confesses that his loot has been secreted "in the tower." Both towers of the looted mansion are searched in vain. It remains for the Hardy boys to make an astonishing discovery that clears up the mystery.

First Sentence: "Frank and Joe Hardy clutched the grips of their motorcycles and stared in horror at the oncoming car."

Review:
Last night, my friend and I ended up crashing at another friend's house. We wanted to drink, so we stayed there and watched a movie and had tasty margaritas made for us in an absurdly tiny blender. Awesome, right? Well, the downside comes when my allergies wake me up at 9 in the morning. I neglected to bring along a book, not planning to be there overnight. At least I have my iPod Touch with some Kindle books loaded on it, I thought. Nope, I forgot it at home. Everyone else is sleeping and I don't have a book! Obviously, I did what anyone would do, raided their library for something I could read during the morning. That's how I came to read The Tower Treasure.

To my knowledge, I never read The Hardy Boys when I was younger, though I think I did read a few volumes of Nancy Drew. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I thought it was about two young brothers who solved crimes, but I think I mixed it up with Encyclopedia Brown, which I did read way back when. In fact, the Hardy boys are 17 (Joe) and 18 (Frank). I was rather surprised they were so old since these books are for kids.

The scene opens on a country road with our young heroes riding on their motorcycles. They spot a car coming up fast and swerving all over the road. Fearful for their lives, the boys climb off the motorcycles and climb an embankment, leaving their motorcycles to be completely squashed. Lucky for their transportation, the car turns off the road before it gets there. They get back on their motorcycles and ride away, but the car comes back, having turned down a dead-end road and nearly runs them down.

The boys run their errand, dropping off a package for their detective father (the best in the world) who they totally hero-worship, as good children do. On the way home, they pass the car they saw, now crashed on the side of the road. The driver is nowhere to be seen. Rather than contacting the authorities, Frank and Joe decide to go hang out with their friend Chet.

At Chet's, the boys find more mysterious doings: Chet's car has been stolen! LE GASP! Someone took off in his precious yellow jalopy! Seriously, these kids are so spoiled. I'm pretty sure it was fairly rare for people to have cars in 1927 when this was first published, but they pretty much all have transportation and not just borrowed from dear old dad. The boys set out, with Chuck in tow, to chase after the car thief, convinced that their motorcycles are much faster, even though they couldn't outrun that car earlier. Plot hole, you say?

I don't want to spoil everything for you, because I'm sure you'll want to enjoy the unspoiled mastery of the detective work that unspools within The Tower Treasure. Frank and Joe use such unparalleled techniques as: visiting every single shop in town that might have seen a man in a wig, searching every inch of town for Chet's car with their popular buddies, and asking daddy. These boys clearly have a promising future.

The writing is quite stilted to a modern reader, and I'm not convinced it was even great for the time. One of the boys says "Have you any idea," which seemed like very odd phrasing for a hip teen. Callie, Frank's girl, on finding out that Chet's car has been stolen, responds "that's a shame." What a caring girl. Also strange is that, when offered money to help a costume store owner with his inventory, Frank and Joe say they want to work for free because it sounds fun.

Of course, the book also has plenty of sexism. The boys and men in this novel are all working hard to bring down the criminal. The women spend the entirety of the book making food to take to the people affected by the bad guy's crime spree. No joke. Frank and Joe's girlfriends keep asking them what's going on and the boys promise to fill them in later, but never do, because obviously ladies have more important things to do, like make cake. To be fair, the boys do help cook in one scene, but they leave to do some investigating (the call is totally coming from inside the house) and the girls finish the cooking alone.

The mystery plot line itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and is rather unsatisfying. The blurb on Goodreads even totally spoils it, so that's fun. As stupid as most of the actions taken by the Hardy boys to figure out the mystery are, this isn't the sort of mystery the reader can solve, since the guilty party has exactly no screen time in the book. This is lazy plotting. Also, despite the father's purported insane skill at being a detective, his sons wrap up the case, which I assume is only because he wanted them to earn the thousand dollar reward and save him some money on their college tuition.

All in all, The Tower Treasure was humorous and gave me something to do with my morning, but I wouldn't say that it was a good book, nor that I will be hunting down the rest of the series.

Rating: 2.5/5

Favorite Quote: "I've heard dad say there is no such thing as a clever crook. If he was really clever, he wouldn't be a crook at all."