Hey guys! Yes, I am back once again for another review as promised. I managed to finish The Tower Treasure before I went to bed last night so that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So let's get into it.
As I've talked about on the blog before, I've been a fan of the Hardy Boys since I was 8 or 9 years old. For years I had a huge collection of the series which was a combination of the original text versions and the revised text versions, as well as a few books in the Digest series and some of The Hardy Boys Casefiles as well. Of course the first Hardy Boys book I ever read was the revised text version of the first Hardy Boys book ever published, The Tower Treasure. I read it in that 2-in-1 edition I talked about in a previous post.
While the book is called The Tower Treasure, the mystery of the Tower Treasure only takes up about half the book. I say half, it's probably more like three quarters of the book. The book is twenty chapters in total and the the mystery of the Tower Treasure is introduced in chapter 6. Because this is the first book in the series, all the characters need to be introduced and so the first five chapters, as well as the beginning of chapter 6, take the time to introduce everybody by having Frank and Joe solve a smaller mystery. That smaller mystery is the theft of Chet Morton's car. Chet is their best friend basically and he accompanies them on pretty much all of their cases after this book. It's only after the boys return to Bayport that they find out about the robbery of Tower Mansion, hence the title of the book.
I really feel like the mysteries in some of the earliest books of the series are more personal for Frank and Joe. For example, in this book, the father of a friend of Frank and Joe's is accused of robbing Tower Mansion despite there being very little real evidence against him. The thing I've never understood is how Mr. Applegate even decided that Henry Robinson was the one who robbed Tower Mansion without any investigation by the police or Fenton Hardy. Sure, the book described Hurd Applegate as a mean man, but he's employed Robinson for years, so surely he would not have employed him if he didn't trust him.
There are alot of characters introduced in this book. However, there are two that aren't introduced here. Aunt Gertrude, who won't be introduced until the third book, The Secret of the Old Mill, and Sam Radley, Fenton Hardy's detective friend, who wasn't introduced until the 45th book in the series, The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge, though he does appear the revised text versions of book #12, Footprints Under the Window, book #16, A Figure in Hiding, and book #19, The Disappearing Floor. Pretty much everyone else is introduced in this book though. Including Oscar Smuff who showed up sporadically through the original versions of the first forty books, but disappears from the series after book #12 in the revised text versions.
I think that's probably my one real criticism about this book, keeping in mind that the original version was first published in 1927 and this version was published in 1959. There are so many names thrown out at us in this book, with most of them either never appearing again or not appearing as often in the revised text version of the series or the latter part of the series, that it can become overwhelming if you're not used to such a large cast of characters in a book. It's also a little bit annoying when most of the characters introduced here don't matter going forward.
The Tower Treasure is probably my favourite book in the original series. I can't count just how many times I've read this book in the last 25 to 26 years since I first got the 2-in-1 plastic cover edition that I used to have. It must've been hundreds of times. I think it's because while the later books go right into the main mystery, this book gives us time to get to know Frank and Joe. I actually have two favourite scenes in this book.
The first one takes place relatively early in the book. It's such a simple scene too. Frank, Joe, and Frank's girlfriend, Callie Shaw, go to the Morton farm for dinner and it's just the three teens, with Chet and his sister, Iola, who is also Joe's girlfriend, are there making dinner and having fun. Just like my friends and I would do today. Like I said, it's such a simple scene, but it shows that Frank and Joe are ordinary teenagers with friends, school, activities and a life, but they happen to enjoy doing detective work and solving mysteries. The later books usually open with Frank, Joe and Chet doing something together or Frank and Joe doing something together, but it's never like the way this scene is.
The other favourite scene of mine is actually a whole sequence that starts with Frank talking to Callie at school, and expressing his worry about the whereabouts of his father, who was on the trail of the criminal who had robbed Tower Mansion, but hadn't reported in yet, to her. This shows that Frank and Joe do worry about their father when he's away for long periods of time while he's on a case. It also shows that Frank trusts Callie enough to confide in her, and it shows that Callie is a compassionate person, who is genuinely interested in Frank's life, and will comforts him when he's feeling down about a case or anything else that's bothering him.
You know, I see how dating is in these books and it makes me wish that dating was still this way today. I know the books were written in an earlier time, when romance and dating were very different things than they are today, but it looks so easy and way less complicated than it is today, or was when I was in high school in the 2000s. While Callie is Frank's girlfriend in this book, she acts alot like my female friends would today and would've when we were in high school. Which is probably why Callie is one of my favourite Hardy Boys supporting characters. Well that, and the fact that she has been in pretty much all of the TV show adaptations and has been given more and more to do in each subsequent book series, particularly The Hardy Boys Casefiles, where she's basically Frank and Joe's full-time crime fighting partner.
Overall, this is a great book. I have it in three different forms. I have the revised text in the omnibus Meet...The Hardy Boys, I have the 1987 (and later) plastic cover flashlight edition of the revised text, and I have the revised text eBook as well. Even now as an adult, I still go back to this book at least once a year, along with the 1946 edition of the original version of book #10, What Happened at Midnight, which also shows Frank and Joe spending time with their friends outside of solving a mystery. And having it in the plastic cover edition, which was available brand new in bookstores when I was a kid, when I got the 2-in-1 plastic cover edition, makes it even more awesome.
Alright guys that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Monday with my review of the 1985/1986 TV movie, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, on VHS and then other reviews and posts throughout the week. I know I said I was only going to post on Mondays and Fridays, but you know I wasn't going to be able to stick to that since there's alot of things that I want to talk about on here. So posts will come whenever I feel like doing them. So until then have a great rest of the weekend and I will see you all back here on Monday for The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. Later
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