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Three Investigators(Redirected from The Three Investigators)
The Three Investigators was a popular American juvenile detective series first published as "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators". It was created by Robert Arthur who thought of using a famous figure as the movie director to attract attention. Random House is the publisher and still holds the rights to the books. The Three Investigators were Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Robert 'Bob' Andrews. Most of the mysteries involved investigation of baffling phenomena such as an ancient Egyptian mummy that whispered and a human skull that talked.
A brief introduction and publishing historyThe original series ran from 1964 to 1987 and was composed of 43 books. Books number 1 to 9 and 11 were written by the creator Robert Arthur , who also set the plot for some of the other books. The other authors were William Arden , Nick West , M. V. Carey and Marc Brandel , some of them were pseudonyms. In the original series, the investigators would be introduced into a mystery, either through a client, or stumbling upon it by accident. The plot would see the investigators encountering baffling, and sometimes misleading clues, danger before finally solving the mystery or the crime. The last chapter would be an epilogue whereby the investigators would sit with Alfred Hitchcock (and later, Hector Sebastian), reviewing the mystery and revealing the deductions through the clues shown earlier in the book. In 1989, Random House revamped the series and published it as 3 Investigators, Crimebuster Series. In this series, the investigators were older and the books contained less detecting and more action. It was not well received and was halted in 1990 after 11 books. In Germany, the Three Investigators were continued in their original genres but the books were not published in the United States. Characters
BackgroundThe Three Investigators team were composed of teenagers of unspecified age (except that they had not reached the legal age to get a driving license in California). The team had a calling card designed by Jupiter to intrigue their potential clients. [[1]] The hometown of the team was Rocky Beach, a fictional town in California. It was described as being 10-12 miles to Hollywood and 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles, and had its own beach. The team had a headquarters in the Jones Salvage Yard ("the Yard") run by Jupiter's family. It was an old trailer hidden amidst the "junks" with several secret entrances. The trailer was equipped with a telephone, a darkroom, a filing cabinet and a workshop used by Jupiter to assemble devices, mostly from discarded items found in the Yard. These devices assisted the Investigators in their detective work. The team often had to pay for the items they took from the Yard by working under the direction of Aunt Matilda, a hard taskmaster who believed "idle" boys should be put to work, but generous at heart. The first book of the series was first published in 1964 and the technology employed may seem outdated today. Nonetheless, part of the reason readers were attracted to the series was the scenario of three ordinary boys tackling mysteries that baffled adult professionals, using only their persistence, ingenuity and sometimes, just a little help from jury-rigged items made out of discarded junks. Unlike the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew which the Three Investigators seemed to be competing against, the investigators were younger (they could not drive), and they did not have the kind of background support enjoyed by the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys were sons of a famous detective whose name usually got the Boys cooperation from local authorities even outside their homebase of Bayport City, or even outside the country. Nancy Drew was the daughter of a famous lawyer. She and the Boys got to travel around the world in style without worrying about funds. The Investigators also had a patron, first in the form of Alfred Hitchcock, and after the demise of the movie mogul, a famous detective-turned-writer in the form of Hector Sebastian (him being a fictional character). Howevever, their patrons usually did no more than introduce cases to them, and on certain occassions, gave them introductions to specialists of certain topics such as a scholar on studies of the supernatural. At no point in time was it ever suggested that the patrons provided the Investigators funding in their work. The Investigators also received a short note of recognition from the local police Chief Reynolds which they used occassionally to convince others they were serious detectives. Detective work in California would be impossible without a car. When they need to go to places beyond the reach of the bicycles, to get around that problem, the writers arranged for the investigators to be driven in the Salvage Yard's pickup by either Hans or Conrad, a pair of Bavarian migrants working at the Yard. This needed the permission of either Uncle Titus or Aunt Matilda, neither of whom took the boys' investigation work seriously. A special compensation given by Robert Arthur come in the form of a rented Rolls Royce, along with a British chauffer named Worthington and an in-vehicle telephone. The availability of the car was explained by Jupiter winning the use of the limousine for a month after winning a promotional contest held by the rental agency. The use of the limo beyond a month became available after its expiry through a grateful client. Nevertheless, though Worthington became a confidante of the boys and a supporter of their work, the limo's use became rarer in later books of the series. One plausible reason was the type of unwanted attraction the Rolls Royce got the boys when they were trying to perform discreet investigations. The Three Investigators had a few recurring nemesis. The most annoying was E. Skinner Norris, a student from a well-to-do family in their school who was a legal resident of another State, and thus able to drive. Skinner was constantly trying to outdo the Investigators, always failing in the end but not before causing the Investigators some trouble. Another antagonist was Hugenay, a French international art thief who cleverly eluded police from Europe and had a professional respect for Jupiter Jones. The earlier books had the boys investigating ghostly/unusual phenomena, a missing treasure or a crime, the typical subjects of detective fiction. Because of the boys' age, most mysteries took place around their hometown. Only on one occassion, when they befriended a European prince, were the boys transported to the most exotic location of their adventure, a small fictional country in Europe. Reflecting the trends in the American society, there were references to the growing public interest in the supernatural such as seances in two books published in the 1970s, the awareness of ecology in The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow (published 1979), UFOs in The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs (1981) and protection of whales in The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale (1983). The booksThe complete series of The Three Investigators
Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators in... (after book 31, it was renamed as The Three Investigators in...)
Find Your Fate Mysteries (1985-1987)RH1 Case of the Weeping Coffin (1985, by Megan Stine and H. William Stine) RH2 Case of the Dancing Dinosaur (by Rose Estes) RH3 Case of the House Of Horrors (by Megan Stine and H. William Stine) RH4 Case of the Savage Statue (1987, by M.V. Carey) Crimebusters (1989-1990)
Special Note
External links
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