Three Investigators - Introduction and History

Introduction and History

The original series ran from 1964 to 1987 and comprised 43 books. Books number 1 to 9 and 11 were written by the creator, Robert Arthur, who also sketched out ideas for a few of the other stories. Arthur had been an editor for several Hitchcock book collections. The other authors were William Arden (Dennis Lynds), Nick West (Kin Platt), Mary Virginia Carey and Marc Brandel (born Marcus Beresford). All of the authors wrote their own introductions and epilogues, which purportedly were dictated by Hitchcock and later in the series by "Hector Sebastian". The illustrators in the series began with Harry Kane and Ed Vebell and include Jack Hearne, Herb Mott, Stephen Marchesi, Robert Adragna and William A. ("Bill") Dodge.

In the original series, the specific ages of the investigators were never revealed, but contextual information indicates that they were likely 13 or 14 years old. They were not old enough to drive a car, but were said to be just a few years younger than their nemesis Skinny Norris, who had a driver's license from a state where the required age for a license was lower. On one occasion it was mentioned that Pete was on the high-school wrestling team. In the later Crimebusters series, it was stated once that the Three Investigators firm was founded when the boys were 13.

The investigators were typically introduced to a mystery through a client or by accidentally stumbling upon something unusual in their scrapyard of Uncle Titus Jones and Aunt Mathilda, who run a salvage business. The boys encountered baffling, sometimes misleading clues and danger before finally solving the mystery. The series was organised around one major theme: however strange, mystical, or even supernatural a particular phenomenon may appear at first, it is capable of being traced to human agency with the determined application of reason and logic. Most mysteries were invariably solved by Jupiter Jones, a supreme logician who implicitly deployed the Occam's Razor principle: that the simplest and most rational explanation should be preferred to an explanation which requires additional assumptions. The boys were able to solve their mysteries with relatively few resources: they generally could get by with little more than a telephone, bicycles, access to a library and - in a nod to the peripheral Hollywood setting of the series - a chauffer-driven vehicle. The last chapter of each book was an epilogue in which the investigators sat 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, calling it The 3 Investigators — Crimebusters Series. The investigators were now 17 years old, could drive cars and were far more independent. The stories continued to contain an abundance of detecting, but with the addition of more action. The series was well-received, but was halted in 1990, when legal disagreements between Random House and the heirs to the Arthur estate could not be resolved. By 2005, the disagreements were still not settled.

At least eleven novels were published in the CrimeBusters series, which was launched by one of the series' favorite authors, William Arden, pseudonym of Dennis Lynds, who wrote the Dan Fortune mystery series for adults under the pen name of Michael Collins. The other authors were: Megan Stine and husband H. William Stine, G.H. Stone (Gayle Lynds), William MacCay, Marc Brandel and Peter Lerangis.

Random House has reprinted several of the original books in two paperback reprint series, partly to assure their legal rights.