Book Review: The Lost Treasure of Casa Loma Isn't Really Lost

As a kid, I read some of the books that are part of Eric Wilson's Canadian mystery series featuring Tom and Liz Austen. There are only 20 books, and I have only recently continued to collect them. The series brings back a lot of memories for me, as it appealed to me because I love the classic Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. I also found it cool that it's a Canadian series. At the time, I hadn't come across too many kids' books that mentioned parts of Canada. 

You Should Read The Lost Treasure of Casa Loma if...

• You love whodunnits
• You enjoy learning about Canadian cities
• You prefer fast reads

Want a short, spoiler-free review? Check out my review on Reedsy Discovery!

Summary 

Sir Nigel Brampton, owner of Casa Loma disappears, and his only relative is called to Toronto to inherit the castle in case Sir Nigel can't be found. His relative is Henry, uncle to mystery-solving siblings Tom and Liz Austen. They discover that, shortly before his disappearance, Sir Nigel had found diamonds in the castle, shown them to several people and then, found another place to hide them. Tom and Liz investigate his disappearance while getting to know the suspects, touring the city of Toronto and looking for the diamonds.  

-- SPOILERS AHEAD --

Characters

• Tom: He is Liz's brother. He has solved many cases throughout the series with and without his sister. Tom is known for his red hair and has a love of sports, baseball being one of them.

• Liz: She is Tom's sister. She has solved mysteries on her own and with Tom. She is a cool and level-headed person and has short brown hair around the nape of her neck in the earlier books, which is depicted as a bit longer towards the end of the series.

• Uncle Henry: He is Tom and Liz's uncle. They were staying with him in Winnipeg during Spring Break. He is also the cousin to Sir Nigel and will inherit Casa Loma if Sir Nigel is not found.

• Sir Nigel Brampton: He is the current owner of Casa Loma, having retired from making millions in gold and oil. Sir Nigel has lived at Casa Loam for only a year; he moved to Toronto from Britain. While living in Casa Loma, he became interested in its history. During his research, he found a coded document, which lead to hidden diamonds. Sir Nigel showed the diamonds to a few people before hiding them in a new secret hiding place.  

• Vince Winter: He is a sports newscaster and knows many famous sports celebrities, including Dexter Valentine, a baseball star. Vince is a close friend of Sir Nigel.

• Tia Nightingale: She is Sir Nigel's private secretary and used to be a tour guide at Fort York. She has a disability and must use a wheelchair at all times.

• Smythe: He's the new butler. He's only been at the Casa for a few days and doesn't seem to know how to be a butler because he is an undercover Mountie 

• Irene: She is a maid at Casa Loma and an undercover Mountie, assisting Smythe with his case.

Note: Since this story is so short, the chauffeur and the blacksmith at Casa Loma are not named and very little information is provided. 

What I Liked

The book has several maps! One shows the section of Old Toronto that Tom and Liz visit, such as Casa Loma and Kensington Market. The second map shows Toronto in relation to Niagara Falls, and the third map shows a plan of Casa Loma's first floor, which I found helped to orient me in the first two chapters. 

Classic Mystery Vibes

The first line, "We fear it was murder," makes for an excellent hook, followed by a creepy butler answering the door to a castle. 

Not too long after Uncle Henry, Tom and Liz have met Smythe, Vince, Tia and Irene, Sir Nigel's valet shows up to discuss some peculiar things he has observed at the Casa. However, the lights go out at this important moment, and he is nowhere to be found when the lights come back on. The plot thickens!

The opening chapters reminded me of the movie Clue since Vince brings Uncle Henry, Tom and Liz to Sir Nigel's study to show them where Sir Nigel was found. With Irene and Smythe in tow, Vince opens the door and gasps to find Sir Nigel's valet seemingly dead in the same position as Sir Nigel before disappearing when the group returns.

Although the book points the finger at Smythe the butler from the beginning, which is a classic mystery cliché that I appreciated, I knew it was a red herring. But since it's a book for a grade school audience, it makes for a nice introduction to mysteries to help readers become familiar with tropes.

Miscellaneous

The brevity of the story is nice. It gives it a fast pace and makes it easy to read. The edition I have is under 100 pages, so it took me only a few hours to finish it. 

I noticed that Tom says "eh" a couple of times, making me laugh at this Canadian stereotype, although I know people who do say it occasionally.

I feel as though the two opening chapters and the two chapters before the wrap-up have the most development in them. The opening was like a classic mystery movie, and I did not expect Vince's diamond trick where he hides fake diamonds in the jerseys to double-cross his partner.  

Towards the end of the book, Tom, Liz and Vince are touring Niagara Falls and talk about past stories of people going over the falls and surviving, which was foreshadowing of their near-death experience on the water. This scene reminded me of Superman 2 where Lois and Clark are at Niagara Falls and Superman suddenly shows up to save a boy from ending up in the water. While my edition of the book was published in 2005, the first edition was published in 1979 and Superman 2 came out in 1980.

What I Didn't Like

The title of the book is: The Lost Treasure … This is not entirely true. The diamonds were originally lost until Sir Nigel decoded a document he found in the Casa. He found them and then, hid them again because he doesn't trust banks. The title is a bit of a letdown since Sir Nigel knows where the diamonds are and we are told through exposition that Sir Nigel found the diamonds. If Tom and Liz were to have helped him to find the diamonds in their first hiding place, that might have been more interesting than this mystery.

Vince says Sir Nigel didn't trust the diamonds in the hands of a bank, but he trusted Vince and Tia enough to show them the diamonds. Talk about bad judgement!

Leaving Too Much Out

The brevity hinders the story. So little background information is given about the characters that they seem two-dimensional and lacking realistic motivations, which gives the illusion that things are said or done out of left field. For instance, Uncle Henry suddenly asks Irene out to dinner at the end of the story. She was only in two short scenes and was mentioned at one point to have up and left Casa Loma. In Irene's scenes and those with Uncle Henry, there is no indication that either one of them is interested in the other. 

Tom

The Bookstagrammer jessethereader mentions in one of his videos (see 8:14 below) how tired he is of books having proclamations of strong lead characters. I agree that it's good to have strong characters, like Nancy Drew, but weak ones need to be given more of a voice. It would help that weak characters have a strong story to support them, which is not the case with this book. While this book is short and Tom should be a better detective seeing as this is the 19th book in the series, he is portrayed as a weak character. He is filled with fear at different points, he blunders around when he escapes from his kidnappers and is way too trusting. He is a realistic character for someone of his age, but not for someone with his background. He makes many mistakes. While I think Nancy Drew is older than him by maybe 2-5 years, he does not inspire confidence. He seems very much like a kid, looking to have fun. I can't say anything about Liz because she's hardly in the story. 

Liz

Liz is described as having glasses when she and Tom arrive at the Casa's stables after being rained on. I'm not sure if the glasses were supposed to be sunglasses because none of the book covers I own with her on the cover show her wearing regular glasses. 

For their 19th mystery out of 20, I would have thought Tom and Liz had matured and knew how to solve mysteries. This story gives me the impression they are amateurs, making rookie mistakes and don't really do any investigating … which ties into another qualm I have with the book. The covers says it's a Tom & Liz mystery. The story favors Tom and Liz is barely involved. She even finds a secret passageway "offscreen" while Tom returns to Sir Nigel's bathroom to take a shower. 

In the scene where Tom is with Vince at Kensington Market, Liz is conveniently visiting the Science Center "offscreen." Moreover, Liz leaves Tom and the others at the very end of the book to scream about a musician who's in Toronto when she had been described as calm and collected earlier in the book. I don't understand why the author consistently cut her out of the story. He might as well have removed her altogether as she doesn't add anything that Tom couldn't have done himself. 

Tom & Liz

Neither Liz nor Tom treat Vince like a suspect. Any good detective who has solved mysteries would have had Vince and Tia on their suspect list. It is not directly stated why Tom and Liz trust him, but I think it's because he is a friendly guy and knows a lot of celebrities, which impresses people. Both Tia and Vince admit earlier on that Sir Nigel showed them the diamonds. Tom doesn't realize until it's too late that the only reason the chauffeur and the blacksmith kidnapped him right after his being with Vince is because Tom told Vince he knew where the diamonds were hidden, but refused to tell him where. 

When Liz discovers a secret passageway, she and Tom explore it in the dark, like that's a good idea. There could have been holes or other obstacles. They don't go get flashlights and, for some reason, they don't carry flashlights on their person despite having solved other mysteries.  

Characters & Dialogue

I found one scene between Tom, Liz and their uncle strange. Tom returns to Casa Loma after having been kidnapped, escaping, ending up in their kidnappers' hands by mistake, dunked in a lake while being interrogated and then dumped at a park. Upon Tom's arrival, neither Liz nor his uncle are concerned. He learns that the kidnappers had called Uncle Henry, pretending to be the chauffeur's wife and provided a cover story for why Tom would be absent over night. When Tom says that it was a lie, Liz does not believe him. When he explains what happened, Uncle Henry is only "concerned," but merely polishes his glasses. He is too calm for this type of situation. No one asks if Tom is okay, no one rushes to embrace him; there is no sign of affection. It's as if Tom and Liz don't have a history of being involved in mysteries. Liz of all people should believe her brother. There's no mention of him being the prankster type. Tom was the only one whose dialogue clearly demonstrated any realistic emotion.

We get a lot of explaining from Vince and Tia about how they pulled off their scheme, which I appreciated. Vince admits to pretending to being friends with Sir Nigel while being insanely jealous of his riches. Vince also says he's struggling to make a living and, therefore, thought to steal the diamonds. With Tia, we aren't given any details except that she's greedy. Again, the scales are tipped too much in favor of one of two characters, much like Tom versus Liz. 

Conclusion

It has been many years since I read this series, but I remember the stories being better developed. It may be that I was too young to notice issues or maybe this book is a lemon since it's the one before last in the series. The first book I read was #12: The Prairie Dog Conspiracy. 

While this book has many issues, I still recommend checking out the series, especially the earlier books. Although, I should re-read the ones I have to make sure they are as good as I remember them.

Check out my other book reviews in the library.

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