Secret of Pirates' Cave - a Thorne Twins Adventure Book

This is a book I picked up for a couple of reasons.  First, the title is reminiscent of the second Bobbsey Twins mystery published back in 1980 under the Simon & Schuster "Wanderer" imprint, with even the cover art bearing a slight resemblance to that book.  Second, the book features twins (a brother and sister), and I'm always picking up books about twins - although, unlike the Bobbseys, this series features only one set of twins, not two.  Now, normally, I would not pick up just one book in a series - my OCD would force me to go find all of the other books in the series, so I can have a complete set!  In this case, however, I made an exception, since my main reason was the similarity in title and cover art - the fact that it features twins is merely a bonus.  I could not find out anything about the author, Dayle Courtney, and it appears this series is the only books written by the author.

 

Secret of Pirates' Cave is the 19th, and from what I could find, final title in the Thorne Twins Adventure Book series. Interestingly, the book opens not with the title characters, but with one of their ancestors, Eric Thorne, and his family, who are sailing along the California coast, preparing to settle and start a new life in America in the year 1850.  Their ship inadvertently runs into a pirate ship, and the band of pirates - led by one known only as Scarab - take over the ship, stealing all of the family's belongings, as well as those belonging to the Roberts family, who has joined them in their adventure to the New World.  It is not until the second chapter where we flash-forward 130 years to the present, where young Eric Thorne and his twin sister, Alison, are sitting down to dinner, and Eric is telling his father about a boy in his class that shared a story about his ancestors having been robbed by pirates along with another family by the last name "Thorne."  It is here that the twins learn from their father the history of Eric's namesake, and how the stolen good were never recovered - however, the pirate reformed later in life and wrote a letter that he sent to both the Thorne and Roberts families, giving each half of the directions as to where they could find their stolen valuables (hmmm, what other story have I read where there are two pieces of a "map" that must be put together to lead the sleuths to a lost treasure...?).  The two families never found each other, and so the treasures were never recovered.  Until now...

 

As with all good series books, it's a series of coincidences that puts Terry Roberts in Eric Thorne's class, and provides them the opportunity to join forces to locate their family's heirlooms.  As Mr. Thorne is heading to Africa for his work, he sends Eric and Alison to California with Terry to visit Terry's aunt and cousin, who live in a large house on a hill, just outside of Monterey.  While the Thorne family had kept and preserved the pirate's letter and half-instructions, those sent to the Roberts family had been lost over the years, and no one knew where to find them.  Thus, the children plan to inspect every inch of the Roberts' ancestral home in the hopes of finding the other half to those instructions so they can find the treasure. The house is filled with plenty of hidden compartments and secret passages, and after some false starts, they happen across the missing half of the instructions in the pocket of a pair of pants they find inside an old trunk hidden away in a cave far beneath the great house.  Now, armed with both halves of the instructions, Eric, Alison, and Terry firmly believe they will find their families' missing heirlooms!

The author does not make it easy on the kids.  With a letter written over a century before, the places mentioned in the letter are certain to have changed considerably.  The old church was long destroyed after an earthquake.  The stained glass through which the light points the way is no longer there.  The walled fort, the boulder in the shape of a lion's head ... such cryptic clues made all the more hard to decipher, since the landscape has changed so much over the past hundred years.  But the twins are determined, especially Eric, whose growing desire to find that treasure and become rich seems to increase in strength the closer they get to finding it.  He refuses to give up, even if that means breaking a few laws to find the lost heirlooms - such as sneaking into a cemetery at night, breaking into a caretaker's shack, and opening a long-sealed crypt, all in the hope of recovering the Thornes' and the Roberts' stolen belongings.

 

Astute readers will begin to pick up on some subtle clues along the way that someone is working against them - someone wants the kids to find the treasure only so they can take it away from them.  There's the sudden appearance of the "ghost" that haunts the cemetery.  There's the odd reluctance of the elderly caretaker to provide the twins and their cousin with any information regarding the old pirate and his family (as it seems the pirate changed his ways, turned to God, and worked hard to make amends for his old life - including sending that letter to the two families, in the hopes they would forgive him if they got their heirlooms back!).  There's the strange feeling that someone is always watching them, following them, always just out of sight.  But, as with any good teen detectives, these three persevere, ultimately finding the missing treasure - which discovery also brings to light some secrets about the two families that have repercussions on a number of members of the families!

 

From what I have been able to learn about the Thorne Twins series, this is the last book in the series.  It is a rather unique series, in that it is a Christian-based series, with the main characters devout in their faith; yet, the mysteries involve chasing UFOs (book 17), saving a captive girl from a drug ring (book 16), finding a foreign dignitary (book 15), chasing down bigfoot (book 13), outwitting terrorists (book 12), and even fighting to stop a civil war on an island in the Aegean Sea (book 11)!  These are some rather adult themes for a young adult series, and definitely some themes I am surprised to find in a Christian-based series.  Although, if the rest of the series is anything like this book, right always conquers wrong, and any temptations the twins may face (such as the idea of riches in this book), by the end of the story they see the folly of their ways and realize their faith in God is more important than anything else.

 

As indicated above, I picked up this book because of the similarity in title and cover art to the second Bobbsey Twins books published back in 1980. Since this book did not come out until four years later, one is left to wonder if the Courtney, or the cover artist for this book (who is unidentified, although could be John Ham, who provided the interior illustrations), was influenced by the earlier Bobbsey Twins' book.  The stories are not overly similar, since this book is set in California and the Bobbseys travel to Bermuda in their book.  However, both stories involve pirate thieves and hidden caves under a property that is used for smuggling.  It is the covers that are more similar, with the boat heading for a cave, and the girl standing/seated above the boys, looking toward the dark entrance of the cave ahead of them.  What's funny about this is that the Bobbsey Twins' book, Secret in the Pirates' Cave, is actually taken from an even older book written by Andrew Svenson (using the pseudonym Alan Stone), The Mystery of Pirate Island, which was the second of the three-book Tollivers series published back in 1967.  When the Stratemeyer Syndicate needed new titles for their new Bobbsey Twins series being published by Simon & Schuster, they simply took the three Tollivers books and replaced the names of those characters with the names of the Bobbsey Twins and published them as "new" books in the Bobbseys' series!  Thus, we have one basic story, and three books...

 

While I did enjoy the story for the most part, it was not engaging enough for me to want to go out and hunt down the entire series.  I'll simply put this with my Bobbsey Twins collection as a knock-off of one of their books.

 

RATING:  7 broken lanterns out of 10 for combining pirate legends, hidden treasures, secret passages, and torn maps into a fun little mystery!