Breakaway Books

Authored by Tom Ryan; Published October 2024; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

I’ve never read a book that embodies the adjective ‘campy’ as much as The Treasure Hunters Club. It is a callback to a simpler type of mystery: a treasure hunt gone horribly wrong.

The Treasure Hunters Club follows Peter, Cass, and Dandy as they are drawn into the hunt for the treasure from the Obelisk pirate ship, washed ashore long ago near their small Nova Scotian town—Peter and Dandy are pulled in as part of their family legacy, and Cass as a hopeful author looking for a new book deal. While the writing was clunky at times and the set up seemed a little contrived, The Treasure Hunters Club was pure joy.

Picturing myself in the beautiful Canadian coastal town, with the idyllic main street featuring cozy bookstores and cafes, I was willing to put up with the stereotypical villains and the predictable long-held family secrets that appeared almost immediately at the beginning of the novel. The author was certainly self-aware enough to poke a little fun at all the tropes referenced in the novel, and these moments made me chuckle. The involvement of Dandy, a precocious teenager, certainly lent a Scooby Doo type of vibe to the whole mystery—fun, but not too creepy.

There was just a tinge of romance in the novel that came off as thin and unnecessary to me, but the twist at the ending had me racing through the final pages. While it was easy to see that not everything was adding up, I was not quite able to predict exactly how the twist would turn out. Of course, it led to a pages-long monologue from the evil villain—but who doesn’t want to know precisely how his (overly?) complex plot was contrived?

If you’re looking for a goofy, campy mystery, you’ll love The Treasure Hunters Club.