Grownups will remember Frank and Joe Hardy and their ability to solve even the most baffling of mysteries. The first book was published in 1927, and over the years the series has sold over 50 million copies. But mysteriously, the original books have disappeared. Now, Applewood is pleased to present The Tower Treasure, the very first Hardy Boys mystery ever published.

Review:
Hopefully, the reader will not mind if I wax nostalgic for a paragraph, but The Hardy Boys were an important part of my childhood. I got one book on the holidays and one for my birthday for some 5 years straight, and these were my entire personal library for some time. I owe all the thousands of books I have come to enjoy to a royal elephant, a detective pig, and Frank and Joe, the two inquisitive sons of Fenton Hardy. Now it is forty-some years later, and the temptation to see if I could go back again is simply too strong.
‘The Tower Treasure’ is the very first, in which Frank and Joe start out trying to track down a stolen car for a friend, and suddenly find themselves embroiled in a jewel theft at the Tower Mansion. The father of another of their friends is a suspect, and the boys join with their father in the effort to bring the right man to justice.

What makes these books work is that, while the plots are not particularly convolute, the books are peopled with many delightful characters and narrative. Adventures are had, wonderful secrets are divulged, the bad are punished and the good rewarded. In this day and age of equivocal messages, the clean, straightforward approach to life of Frank and Joe Hardy is like a breath of fresh air.

I found the book quite engaging, even after all these years. I was quite envious of the Hardys, who even had their own motorcycles, and I find flickers of the same feelings even today. After all, I still don’t have a motorcycle. I wish I could have grown up solving mysteries and adventuring with my sibling and father, but books like ‘The Tower Treasure’ turned out to be the next think. I learned a lot from Frank and Joe, and I think those values are still worth promoting.

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