The Three Investigators series are a wonderful and wholesome mix of
adventure, mystery, comedy, and critical thinking/detection. They
enthralled several generations of readers worldwide – and in these
new 60th-anniversary editions, they are again ready to take on
the world!
The Secret of Terror Castle
The Three
Investigators Book 1
by Robert Arthur
Genre: Middle Grade Mysteries with a Supernatural hook
In the first adventure of Robert Arthur’s classic mystery series,
it’s 1964 in the town of Rocky Beach, California. Working out of
their newly established Headquarters – an old trailer hidden behind
carefully arranged junk in the Jones Salvage Yard – and driven
around southern California in a gold-plated vintage Rolls Royce
they’ve won the use of in a contest, Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw,
and Bob Andrews decide to get publicity for their fledgling detective
firm by finding a real haunted house for the renowned film director
Reginald Clarke.
But although the highly rational Jupiter
starts with the belief that there is no such thing as a ghost, a
spook, a phantom, or a spirit, Terror Castle – the old mansion
supposedly troubled by the ghost of the late Stephen Terrill, the
silent horror film star called the Man with a Million Faces – may
prove him wrong!
By turns exciting, spine-tingling, and
humorous, The Secret of Terror Castle promises to please not only the
existing fan base of The Three Investigators series but a whole new
generation of readers who will find in its pages three very different
boys whose imagination, courage, and intelligence can remind us that
curiosity, perseverance, and rational inquiry are just as vital as
friendship and cooperation.
At the end of each Three
Investigators book published by Hollow Tree Press are notes written
by Robert Arthur’s daughter and son-in-law, exploring three subjects
connected to the story – in this case, Silent Movies, Salvage
Yards, and Rolls Royces – and young readers may want to use the
notes as guidelines for further investigation. After all, the motto
of The Three Investigators is “We Investigate Anything,”
and their trademark is “???” – three question marks, taken
together.
On the 60th anniversary of the creation of The
Three Investigators series, the first-ever English-language e-book
editions of Robert Arthur’s novels, as well as the first new
English-language print editions in over twenty-five years, stand
ready to delight a whole new audience. Be sure to seek out all ten
titles!
Amazon
* B&N
* Bookbub
* Goodreads
The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
The Three
Investigators Book 2
In the second adventure of Robert Arthur’s classic mystery series,
Jupiter, Pete and Bob are in search of a missing parrot. The case
soon gets complicated as they discover that not one but six talking
parrots and a mynah bird have disappeared.
With the help
of their new friend Carlos, the Three Investigators figure out that
each of the birds has been taught to recite part of a complex puzzle,
that, when taken together, could lead the boys to a great painting.
But as their search takes them to a spooky graveyard, they’re not the
only ones hot on the trail!
By turns puzzling, compelling,
and absorbing, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot promises to
please not only the existing fan base of The Three Investigators
series but a whole new generation of readers who will find in its
pages three very different boys whose imagination, courage, and
intelligence can remind us that curiosity, perseverance, and rational
inquiry are just as vital as friendship and cooperation.
At
the end of each Three Investigators book published by Hollow Tree
Press are notes written by Robert Arthur’s daughter and son-in-law,
exploring three subjects connected to the story – in this case,
Puzzles and Word Games, Parrots, and Sherlock Holmes – and young
readers may want to use these notes as guidelines for further
investigation. After all, the motto of The Three Investigators is “We
Investigate Anything,” and their trademark is “???” – three
question marks, taken together.
On the 60th anniversary of
the creation of The Three Investigators series, the first-ever
English-language e-book editions of Robert Arthur’s novels, as well
as the first new English-language print editions in over twenty-five
years, stand ready to delight a whole new audience. Be sure to seek
out all ten titles!
Amazon
* B&N
* Bookbub
* Goodreads
**Don’t miss the rest of the series!**
Find them on
Amazon
or B&N
What made the books stand out at the time and what makes them unusual even today:
• The three boys come from blue-collar and middle-class families. Jupiter, Pete, and Bob work hard for everything they get; their headquarters is in a battered mobile home trailer in the middle of the Jones Salvage Yard (where Jupiter, an orphan, lives with his aunt and uncle.)
• These are free-range kids (as was common at the time; I certainly was.) Their parents trust them, give them enormous leeway, and the boys reward that trust with their conscientiousness, discipline, and good old American can-do spirit.
• The books celebrate rational inquiry, critical thinking, and a belief that there is no mystery that cannot be brought to heel with the proper application of shoe leather and sharp thinking, courage, and determination.
• Unconsciously (I think) Arthur created three boys who more or less embody the three aspects of human personality, at least as famously defined by Freud – the id, ego, and superego. Together the three boys interact seamlessly, make up for one another’s deficits, and are tenacious, ingenious, courageous, creative, and self-confident. As a trio, they are a supremely satisfying combination.
• The books are written simply, but with literary flair; they’re frequently very funny; and they’re genuinely puzzling and exciting.
• The books are apolitical. So many books for young readers today push an ideological agenda, and seemingly have been written with that in mind. These are just great stories — no preaching about race or gender or sex or oppression — just stories about three unusual American boys who live in a freer and more relaxed time.
ROBERT ARTHUR is best known as the creator of THE THREE INVESTIGATORS, the classic mystery series for young readers, for which he wrote the first ten books before his untimely death in 1969. By the time the last English-language-original book was published in the late 1980s, there were forty-three titles, some of which had been translated into over twenty languages.
Young readers in the U.S., Canada, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Denmark, Italy,
Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia, as well as in France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the Spanish-speaking world grew up on the books, and many credit their lifetime love of reading to having discovered the story of three young American boys who form a detective agency.
Robert Arthur got the idea for the series while working in Hollywood as a story editor, showrunner, and
scriptwriter for Alfred Hitchcock’s TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1963, he left Hollywood and moved to Cape May, New Jersey, where, in a brown-shingled house two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, he created The Three Investigators. The Secret of Terror Castle and The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot were published in 1964 by Random House. The series’ original title was ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS.
The books have supernatural hooks — haunted houses, whispering mummies, gnomes, ghosts riding carousels, screaming clocks, talking skulls — that turn out, after closer examination, to have rational
explanations.
From his memories of his years in southern California, Arthur created the small fictional town of Rocky
Beach, not far from Hollywood. His disbelief and dismay at the way old houses were being torn down and their contents junked resulted in his placing The Three Investigators Headquarters in a salvage yard,
where all sorts of goods have been reclaimed and are for sale. He based his head investigator, Jupiter Jones, on his idea of a young American Sherlock Holmes, and the boy who keeps records and does
research — Bob Andrews — he based on himself (they have the same initials!)
The books are a wonderful and wholesome mix of adventure, mystery, comedy, and critical thinking/detection. They enthralled several generations of readers worldwide – and in this new 60th-anniversary edition, they are again ready to take on the world.
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