I first read this book many years ago when I was 11 or 12, procured from a Scholastic book fair, and somewhere, sometime, lost track of my copy. I loved the book, but after my copy disappeared I couldn’t remember the name or the author and so years later I started trying to find this wonderful book that I read as a kid, but without the author’s name or title it was very difficult. I finally stumbled across it not long ago and procured it. It is still as wonderful as it was when I read it years ago. It has mystery, suspense, and action and once Shirreffs establishes his characters and the plot, the book quickly builds in both action and suspense and becomes a real page turner. Gary and Tucker are on summer break preparing to enter their senior year, and Sue is Tucker’s freshman cousin who has eyes for Gary. Together they brave the mountains and the wrath of nature, potential landslides and ghosts and one very real killer to try and find a rumored treasure that may or may not exist. It’s a quick read, with great characters and enough action to keep the pages turning through to the end. I am thrilled to have finally found it again, and to find that it as good a book as I remember. ( )

HAUNTED TREASURE OF THE ESPECTROS - Back cover: "The Espectros...The Haunted Mountains! Somewhere in those canyons is a fortune...thousands of dollars worth of gold that men have searched and died for. The Indians say it is guarded by ghosts - but Gary and Tuck refuse to believe that ghosts use live ammunition!" The Espectros are in Arizona, they are dominated by a formation know as "The Needle", they are rumored to contain a fortune in gold left over one hundred years ago by the Malgosa Brothers; where did he get a story idea like this?