Hi everyone. Today I got a special treat. I am showcasing "The Three Investigators Series" by: Robert Arthur. These books are part of the 60th-anniversary editions and I even got a sneak peek with some fun facts for you below. These books are a middle grade mysteries series with a supernatural hook to keep you reading. Hope you enjoy the rest of this post. Happy reading :).
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.
EXCERPT FROM THE MYSTERY OF TERROR CASTLE
Jupiter started up the road, using a flashlight to pick his way around the rocks that had tumbled down from the steep canyon walls onto the cracked concrete. After a moment Pete hurried after him.
“If I'd known it was going to be like this,” he complained, “I'd never have become an investigator.”
“You'll feel better after we solve the mystery,” Jupiter told him. “Think of what a wonderful start it will give our investigation firm.”
“But suppose we meet the ghost? Or the Blue Phantom, or the mad spook, or whatever it is that haunts this place?”
“That's exactly what I want.” Jupiter slapped the compact flash camera that hung from his shoulder. “If we can get its picture, we'll be famous.”
“Suppose it gets us?” Pete retorted.
“S-s-sh!” his stocky friend said, stopping and snapping off his flashlight. Pete froze into silence and the darkness closed around them.
Somebody - or something - was coming down the hillside directly toward them.
Pete crouched down. Beside him, Jupe was swiftly getting his camera ready.
The noise, a pattering of rock displaced by moving feet, was almost on them when Jupe's flashbulb lit up the night. In the sudden radiance of the flash, Pete saw two huge red eyes leaping directly at him. Then something furry scurried past, struck the concrete road, and went bounding away. In its wake several small rocks rolled down and came to rest at the boys' feet.
“A jackrabbit!” Jupiter said. He sounded disappointed. “We frightened it.”
“We frightened it!” Pete exclaimed. “What do you think it did to me?”
“The natural effect of mysterious sound and movement at night upon a susceptible nervous system,” Jupiter said. “Forward!” He grabbed Pete's arm and pulled him along. “We don't have to move quietly now - the flashbulb will have alerted the phantom, if there is a phantom.”
“Can we sing?” Pete asked, reluctantly falling into step beside him. “If we sing 'Row, row, row your boat' loudly enough, we won't be able to hear the spook moan and groan.”
“There's no need to go to extremes,” the other boy said firmly. “We want to hear any moans and groan - also any screams, sighs, screeches, or rattling of chains, all of which are supposed to be common manifestations of a supernatural presence.”
Pete suppressed the impulse to tell his partner that he had no desire whatever to hear any moans, groans, screams, screeches, sighs, or rattling chains. He knew there was no point in it. When Jupiter made up his mind, he made up his mind. He was about as easy to move as a large rock.
As they moved forward, the rambling old building loomed larger, gloomier, and altogether less desirable. Pete tried hard to forget all the stories Bob had told them about the old place.
After a last stretch along a high, crumbling stone wall, the two boys entered the main courtyard of Terror Castle.
“Here we are,” Jupiter said and stopped.
One tower stretched skyward far above them. Another, shorter tower seemed to scowl down at them. Blank windows were like blind eyes reflecting the starlight.
Suddenly something flew around their heads. Pete ducked.
“Wow,” he yelled. “A bat!”
“Bats only eat insects,” Jupiter reminded him. “They never eat people.”
“Maybe this one wants a change of diet. Why take chances?”
Jupiter pointed to the wide doorway and the big, carved front door .directly ahead.
“There is the door,” he said. “Now all we have to do is walk through it.”
“I wish I could get my legs to believe that. They think we ought to go back.”
“So do mine,” Jupiter admitted. “But my legs take orders from me. Come on.”
He strode forward. Pete couldn't allow his partner to enter a place like Terror Castle alone, so he followed. They walked up the old marble steps and across a tiled terrace. As Jupiter was about to reach for the doorknob, Pete grabbed his arm.
“Wait!” he said. “Do you hear spooky music?”
Both boys listened. For a moment they had the impression they heard a few weird notes, sounding as if they came from a million miles away. Then in the darkness they could hear only the night noises of insects and of a small stone or two rolling down the steep sides of the canyon.
“Probably just imagination,” Jupiter said, though he did not sound too certain of it. “Or possibly we heard a TV set playing over the ridge in the next canyon. Some trick of acoustics.”
“Some trick, all right,” Pete muttered. “What if it was the old ruined pipe organ being played by the Blue Phantom?”
“Then we certainly want to hear it,” Jupe said. “Let us enter.”
He grasped the knob and pulled. With a long scre-e-e-ch that curdled Pete's blood, it opened. Not waiting for their courage to evaporate, the two boys marched into a long dark hall, playing their flashlight beams straight ahead.
They passed open doorways, full of shadows, which seemed to breathe musty air at them. Then they came out into a large hallway with a ceiling two stories high. Jupiter stopped.
“We're here,” he said. “This is the main hall. We'll stay one hour. Then we'll leave.”
“Leave!” a voice low and eerie whispered in their ears.
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
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Check out Reviews and Recommendations!
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!
Purchase your Copy Today!
The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
The Three Investigators Book 2
Add to your TBR List!
Check out Reviews and Recommendations!
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!
Purchase your Copy Today!
Don’t miss the rest of the series!
Robert Arthur
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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