Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews & Pete Crenshaw (The Three Investigators)

A latter-day Hardy Boys that first saw the light of day in the mid-1960s, the basic premise is that three boys, JUPITER JONES (the smart one), and his best friends, BOB ANDREWS and PETE CRENSHAW, set up a detective agency, their secret headquarters is in a house trailer buried in a junkyard belonging to Jupiter’s uncle in Rocky Beach, California.

In fact, contributor John Heaton goes so far as to argue that Jupiter, Bob and Pete, unlike those “rank amateurs Frank and Joe Hardy,” are full-fledged private invesitgators who truly deserve to be included. The Three Investigators are private investigators, as defined by the PWA: they are professional detectives, and they are neither police officers nor government agents. They’re even licensed, after a fashion. I don’t think any other juvenile series can claim likewise, with the possible exception of Encyclopedia Brown.

The books were full of deliciously pulpy fun–I mean, clubhouses with secret entrances? The boys even had the use of a gold-plated Rolls-Royce (Jupiter won it in a bean-counting contest). The limo came complete with a chauffeur, Worthington, who acted as a sort of designated adult, when some sort of adult was necessary.

And oh, the cases! Ghosts! Kidnapper! Voodoo! Counterfeiters! Vampires! Smugglers! UFOs! Jewel thieves!

And if that wasn’t cool enough, the books originally flew under the banner of “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators,” back when Hitchcock himself was pretty much synonymous with mystery and suspenses.

The stories held up, as well. They were surprisingly well-written with genuine mysteries at their core– especially compared to the sanitized rewrites that were being inflicted on Frank and Joe at the same time. In fact, most of the books in the first series were written by creator Robert Arthur, Jr. and William Arden (a pseudonym of Dennis Lynds), both bonafide mystery authors and Edgar winners. Just to add to the appeal, more than a few of the original covers were pulpy little masterpieces, handled by such celebrated illustrators as Harry Kane, Ed Vebell, Jack Hearne and others, that would have felt right at home on a weird menace and detective pulps thirty or forty years earlier.

But for some reason, the books lacked the staying power of their Bayport rivals. Some of the books were reissued in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s in the States, and the series plowed on without Alfred Hitchcock’s name on them until the end of the eighties. Over in Europe, particularly in Germany, however, the Three Investigators never died. The final books in the series were published over there–in German–and their continued popularity lead to two film adaptations

Constant reader Victoria Esposito-Shea recently purchased the revised edition of The Green Ghost (#4) for her young daughter, and they both found it pretty readable. (They subsequently tore through all Victoria’s old ones, and her daughter was heartbroken to find out that they’re almost impossible to find anymore. However, she did convert the downstairs bathroom into a clubhouse, complete with tunnel entrance). According to Vicky, “As nearly as I can tell from looking through the others in the bookstore, the main changes consist of removing Hitchcock and toning down some of the ickier ethnic stereotypes.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Arthur Jr. was an Army brat, born in 1909, in  the Philippines, where his father was stationed in the U.S. Army. He spent his childhood moving from place to place, wherever his father was stationed. He was accepted to West Point, but instead enrolled at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia where he spent two years, before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he graduated from with a B.A. in English in 1930, and an M.A. in Journalism in 1932. Upon graduating, he moved to Greenwich Village, and began writing for the pulps, mostly for the sci-fi and detective mags. In the thirties and forties, his work showed up everywhere, from Wonder Stories and Unknown Worlds to Detective Fiction Weekly and Black Mask. He also worked as an editor for various magazines, and after taking a course at Columbia University in radio writing, he and his writing partner, David Kogan, wrote and produced his own radio show, The Mysterious Traveler, which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1944 until 1953, and earned him an Edgar for Best Mystery Radio Show of the Year in 1952. In 1959, he moved to Hollywood where he worked in television, writing scripts for The Twilight Zone, and working as a story editor and writer for Alfred Hitchcock’s TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Thanks to his Hitchcock connection during this period, he was approached by Random House to ghost-edit Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a series of anthologies of mystery and suspense short stories purportedly chosen by Hitchcock himself. The series proved popular enough that a second series followed, aimed at younger readers, and once again Arthur was involved. It was his association with Hitchcock which also eventually led to his creating  the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, which made its debut in 1964 with The Secret Of Terror Castle.

UNDER OATH

• “Wow! What a piece of my childhood!”
  — Victoria Esposito-Shea
• “I think these books were well-written and not just for children/young adults (I am 39 years old). In fact, I am planning on reading one within a few days, probably The Talking Skull. I am very familar with the 3 Investigators and have 23 books of the series. A few were bought new, but most I found at used-book stores. My favorites would be, The Mystery of… The Green Ghost, Moaning Cave, Talking Skull, and Coughing Dragon. The oldest in my collection is Green Ghost. I’ve had this one for about 30 years. Other favorites… Whispering Mummy, Vanishing Treasure and Monster Mountain. These books are getting hard to find, maybe because I have most of them already.”
  — Tony Gaudenti