When I visited Germany last year on business trips I saw posters everywhere for something called Die Drei ???. It looked kinda like Scooby Doo – a trio of kid mystery investigators. I soon found copies of the books in the many bookstores (Germany appears to not have been stricken with the plague that killed off American bookstores, even though they have the internet, too), but there seemed to be some sort of live-action show, too.
Okay, I can understand the appeal – kid’s adventure show combining mystery solving with supernatural elements.
When I looked into it after I got back to the US, I was surprised to learn that the series, which I assumed was home-grown, was actually started in the US when I woiuld have been the right target audience. But I’d never hear of them before this.
The series The Three Investigators was created by Robert Arthur, Jr., who had edited book anthologies under Alfred Hitchcock’s name, and this new series was attributed to Hitchcock, as well. It was originally entitled Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, and featured an intro and epilogue supposedly written by Hitchcock. (This was published at a time when several paperback anthologies were published as if edited and presented by Hitchcock, and there was a kid’s book series also supposedly introduced by Hitchcock, which I HAD read) . Each story was apparently much like the original Scooby Doo series in that the apparently supernatural mystery turned out to have a mundane, scientific explanation. Forty three books were published between 1964 and 1987, in addition to various spinoffs.
Translations of the books started appearing in Germany in 1968, and eventually all 43 were published in German. Then in 1993 new and original German books started being published. I have no idea if the ones I saw were from the original American series o the later original German editions, although I suspect the latter. There have apparently been five German live-action movies based on the series so far.
I’d never heard of these before. Did anyone here read the original American books? Or even the German ones?
I read these growing up, and still have all those copies, plus some that I picked up at the occasional used bookstore visit. At some point I also read a summary of the copy book used by ghost authors to create them… Jupiter Jones being plump needs to be mentioned, etc. etc.
It was my favorite series growing up, though like a lot of those series it deteriorated overtime.
And I’m intrigued to hear that it has been revived in Germany, I will need to find a copy of the first one.
I read these in the UK, late 70’s early 80’s. They were a staple in our school library. Pretty fun read in a Nancy Drew meets Scooby Do kind of way.
I remember they had a clubhouse hidden in the middle of a junkyard with loads of gadgets created from scrap. But the only one I can remember was the answering machine they built from a car radio.
There was a haunted house where everyone felt scared, but they discovered it was due to an organ playing a deep note way below human hearing. Slightly nicer than the brown note of legend.
I may have a couple of them still, but all my books are in storage right now, so I can’t check.
German here. “Die Drei ???” have been a staple of children’s and youth’s entertainment for almost 50 years, still going strong. The most successful format in which the stories got released are not books (although I think they came first), but as audio plays on cassettes. The voice actors who play the three investigators started as kids and are still recording new plays until today, and they and the series have become cult items. People who grew up with it introduce their own children to the series and get nostalgic when they listen to it with their kids. There are also often successful live shows with the original actors.
I had no idea about the American origin, let alone the Hitchcock connection, I’ve always thought the series was genuinely German. But that’s an interesting fact.
ETA: to give an impression of the scope, here’s the site for the series from my streaming service Deezer with all 241 episodes ever recorded:
Genuinely funny that my wife grew up on base in Germany reading The Three Investigators but never knew about Die Drei ???.
So far all I’ve found is a preview on amazon.de, but omigod they turned Jupiter Jones into “Justas Jonas”, with Bob and Pete unchanged. And they changed the chauffeur from Worthington to Morton.
This whole thing is fascinating. I wonder if the plots are the same? ETA: yes they are, but the Germany series carries on past the expiration of the US one.
Where are the German stories set? The original American stories were set in a California coastal town. And, by the way, there was this recent thread about the Hardy Boys books that drifted into a discussion of the Three Investigators and other children’s book series.
I was a huge fan of the Three Investigators in my elementary school years (80s)… As a somewhat portly kid who fancied himself to be pretty smart, Jupiter Jones was a role model!
I’m surprised that you never ran across The Three Investigators, Cal, given some of your other interests which are very similar to mine. I absolutely adored The Three Investigators as a kid, and still have a not-quite complete run of their books on my shelves to this day. They’re probably the only books from my childhood that I bothered to keep, although I haven’t read them in years.
They were a lot cooler than the Hardy Boys, who always came across as pretty square to me. The Investigators hob-nobbed with Alfred Hitchcock (each book had a concluding chapter where they reported their results to Hitchcock in person). They had access to a limousine, complete with uniformed British chauffeur who they could order about like a mere lackey. Their headquarters was an old trailer in the middle of a large junkyard (owned by Jupiter Jones’s aunt and uncle), and had a variety of secret entrances. They were cool and hip in a way that stiffs like the Hardy Boys could only dream of.
When I went to Germany for a couple of weeks with my high-school German club back in the 80s, I happened to see a copy of one of the “Die Drei ???” books in the window of a bookstore. I wondered if it could possibly be my old pals The Three Investigators. I later found out that it sure was.
The series was still in progress when Hitchcock died. They actually wrote his death into the series, with the Investigators having a solemn moment as they remembered him. His role in the books was taken over by a fictional mystery author named Hector Sebastien. Of course, in reality Hitchcock had never had anything to do with the books apart from allowing them to use his name and image.
The series ended long ago here in the U.S. (apparently one of the authors had a manuscript in progress when they were informed “Never mind, it’s over now”). But I’m glad to know that, in Germany at least, Jupe, Pete, and Bob are still on the case.
Edited to add: I am a bit surprised that there doesn’t seem to have ever been any effort to adapt the Investigators for TV or movies here in the States. I think they would have made a nifty TV series.
How ironic…until very recently I never realized that there was a German connection.
I read the whole original series religiously back in the late 1970s. It was one of my favorite book series from ages 10-12. In my mind, it was always ALFRED HITCHCOCK and The Three Investigators in….
I read the first couple of books out of order. The first one I read was a paperback Scholastic Books edition, The Mystery of the Green Ghost.
Then I started looking for more in the school library. The second one I read was The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot. I first learned about Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare from the clues in that book. To this day, I still remember all of the clues.
Whenever I’m in a parking garage and I’m in Section 2B, to this day I still say to myself, “To-to-to be or not to-to-to-be, that is the question,” just like the stuttering parrot.
I was also living on an U.S. Army base in Germany when I got my first paperback Scholastic Books copy of a Three Investigators book. This would have been in 1977 or so, so it may have predated the German versions.
As I noted in the OP, the GErman series began appearing in 1968 (according to Wikipedia, anyway), so the 1970s wasn’t too early for the German versions.
Reading about it now, I’m surprised, too. But I don’t recall ever seeing The Three Investigators as a kid, or later. (I DID read the other Alfred Hitchcock anthologies for kids – Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful, Alfred Hitchcock’s Sinister Spies – and even some of the paperback anthologies. But not The Three. )
Sorry, I missed that as well. Doubly ironic that I was completely unaware of the German versions until many decades later, despite first discovering the series while living in Germany.
They evidently started with the German translations fairly quickly, since the first Robert Arthur, Jr. book was published in 1964.
To this day, I still remember all of the clues.
