The Secret of Terror Castle

Being a middle school teacher I try to keep up to date on books aimed for younger readers. As I was browsing through the bookstore I came across The Three Investigaors series. WOW! TALK ABOUT A BLAST FROM THE PAST!I recalled (back in the late 70's) reading a few of these stories involving the three teens and their mystery solving cases dealing with mummies, sharks, and scarecrows. Of their partnership with Alfred Hitchcock and their secret headquarters buried in a salavage yard. But, would their adventures be as fascinating to a grown up?The answer (as I briefly pinch my lip) is - YES! I'm happy to say that Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews have held up remarkably well over the years. Granted Mr. Hitchcock is now referred to as Reginald Clarke, but everything else remains the same just a fun-filled mystery. The Secret of Terror Castle does a nice job of starting off the series and introducing readers to the characters and their exploits.Anyone who grew up with Scooby Doo will love these books. As an educator I also strongly recommend them for parents who are looking for books to get their young boys interested in reading.For anyone (of any age) that is looking for more to young-literature than Harry Potter, the Hardy Boys, or the Wolrds of Narnia...then The Three Investigaors series will be a great discovery!

All of the Three Investigators books are much more than children's books. Reading this book brought back all kinds of memories from my childhood years, and I enjoyed it almost as much now as I did twenty years ago. The biggest danger of adulthood is forgetting your childhood, and I am somewhat surprised to realize that I have forgotten as much as I have already. How could I have forgotten Jupiter Jones? When I was young, I wanted to be Jupe--the brains, the adventurous spirit, the dauntless courage, the determination and drive to know everything. He was my hero. I dreamed of having my own secret headquarters, with all of those great hidden entrances. I should add here that I was a nerd, and that accounts for some of the admiration I had for the stocky sleuth. Maybe athletes by nature aren't as drawn to these boys as I was, but I always felt as if I knew these guys. Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews are great all-American guys in their own right. All three are very different individuals, but together they do form a powerful team and serve as a wonderful model of the power of friendship. The only thing I can't figure out is why Bob spends so much time working at the library. At one point in this book, he has the task of reorganizing the whole catalogue--I work at a library now, so I know this is a pretty big task to be assigning to a kid.This book, while eminently readable by youngsters, is more than satisfying to me as an adult. The story is suspenseful and well-contrived. Robert Arthur does a masterful job of allowing the reader to "investigate" the mystery along with the Three Investigators. The boys come across as extraordinary but very real. I can't imagine any youngster, girl or boy, who would not be drawn in to these adventures, and I can think of no better way to introduce a child to the enjoyment of reading than to give him/her one of these books. The Secret of Terror Castle is the first one, so I would start with it. If you are an adult who loved these books as a youngster, don't be afraid to pick this book up and reintroduce yourself to your old friends. If you happen to be an adult who has never immersed himself in the world of the Three Investigators, do yourself a favor and pick one up--it may be about as close as you can come to recapturing the magic of your youth.???

At one time I used to own the first 23 titles of AH & The Three Investigators. As I've grown older, I've lost titles until I recently realized I only had two left. I've lamented to my wife, after searching used book stores high and low for the other titles and not finding them, that this was a great blow against childhood reading. I was so glad that they are still being printed and read! The format may be different and Alfred Hitchcock is lamentably missing, but they are still as readable and enjoyable as they were when I was a child!I highly recommend this series for young readers who dream of adventure and suspense. They invigorated my youth and helped interest me in reading and writing. I hope to God that there are more coming out!And for those of us who remember Alfred Hitchcock, maybe Random House could put out a collectors series of the books as they were originally released - covers, illustrations and all. I would certainly snap them up!

I was first introduced to this series in 5th grade, some 23-24 years ago. This was one of the books in my classroom, and I fell in love with it. I had already read almost all of the Hardy Boys and while I enjoyed them, the Three Investigators books were not as formulaic. You knew of course that they would solve the mystery, but you couldn't specify the events chapter by chapter, they way you can with the Hardy Boys.I had been looking for these fairly regularly for the past few years and was disappointed that they had been out of print. Now they are back in print, but they have been abridged to remove the references to Alfred Hitchcock. I assume this is a licensing problem with his estate, or possibly a mistaken theory that young kids would not know who he is anyway, but I strongly urge Random House to reconsider this and put them back in. I remember fondly looking for Alfred Hitchcocks trademark appearance in the cover art. Just like in his movies he was always there somewhere. I was shocked to see him replaced with Hector Sebastian, who did appear in the later books, after Mr. Hitchcock past away.In anycase, if you can't find the originals, at least the stories are here for our kids, and they are great stories.

The Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series was the best juvenile mystery series I ever read, and is of such high quality that I can still read and enjoy it as an adult. In fact, I only need "The Mystery of the Cranky Collector", the last book in the original series, to complete my collection. For far too long these books have been out of print, though I understand they're still being published in Europe. With their return, a whole new generation of readers can thrill to the adventures of Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews. In "The Secret of Terror Castle", Jupe, Pete and Bob, whose motto is "We Investigate Anything", investigate an allegedly haunted house in order to prove their mettle. Author Robert Arthur not only gives the boys distinct personalities, rather than making them "types", he also has them conduct their investigation in a logical, methodical fashion, even as they deal with a trouble maki! ng rival. He also plants clues throughout the text to give the reader a sporting chance to solve the mystery. Arthur and his successors further respected their readers' intelligence by making the endings of the books logical developments of the stories, rather than coming up with a contrived solution. Granted, the means by which Jupe, Pete and Bob become involved in "The Mystery of the Silver Spider", a later book in the series, is a bit contrived. However, that story is also good, and throughout the series as a whole, the writers don't talk down to their readers. Readers of the original hardcover editions may remember an illustration on the endpapers that depicted Hitchcock in profile behind a spider web on one page, while the facing page showed Jupe, with magnifying glass, Pete, with tape recorder, and Bob, with a home made walkie-talkie, making their way through a cemetery at night. That drawing exuded an atmosphere of mystery, and Random House might want to! consider duplicating it, sans Hitchcock, of course, in the! current paperback reissues. In fact, Hitchcock's absense is the only negative aspect of the revised version. He added a touch of realism, because he was a real person. Now, he has been replaced by the fictional characters of Reginald Clarke and Hector Sebastian, and the illusion that Jupe, Pete and Bob might have been real people is gone. This is a minor point, of course, and doesn't affect the stories themselves. At least not until the series gets to #31, "The Mystery of the Scar-Faced Beggar", the first post-Hitchcock volume. Jupe, Pete and Bob meet Hector Sebastian for the first time in that story-- a meeting which is central to the plot. I hope the series will continue to sell, so we'll see how that problem will be addressed. Better still, I hope Random House publishes new adventures after the old ones have been reprinted.