The Three Investigators is a book series written by the famous director, Alfred Hitchcock*. It was a pretty popular series in the mystery genre among kids born in the nineties.
The book series centered around three teenage boys, Jupiter Jones, Peter Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews as they go around their West Coast town solving mysteries that even dumbfound even adults. They specialize in an individual skill which complement each other's weaknesses, making an effective team and setting up great character dynamics. In this blogpost we look a bit more into the Three Investigators and their backgrounds.
First Investigator
Jupiter Jones is the leader of the trio as well as the brains behind their group. He does most of the heavy lifting throughout the series: receiving the mysteries, observing the evidence, connecting dots, analyzing clues and even cracking the cases. His disguises and his voice modulation are aided by his past acting career and his knack for coming up with tricks, traps and inventions are second to none.
He is an orphan, with his parents having died at a young age and lives in a junkyard with his aunt and uncle. They have been rather supportive of their teenage nephew's dangerous endeavors, having provided a trailer in the junkyard which serves as the headquarters of the group. It is quite sophisticated for amateur detectives and comes with its own small lab, desk, telephone, typewriter, and a series of secret entrances connected to passages throughout the junkyard.
Second Investigator
Pete Crenshaw is more well-built of the three, and generally carries out more physically demanding tasks. Often times, he is also a comic relief character, a reflection of us readers as what we would feel in the situation. He is however Jupe's right hand man and accompanies him on the field for every mission.
His attitude, mannerisms and role on the team are a stark contrast to Jupiter: Pete's athleticism is opposed to Jupes' plumpness, Pete's general fear of the unknown is opposed to Pete's headstrongness, as well as his ability to fill in Jupes' gaps in his line of thought depending on the situation. Nevertheless he is considered as Jupes' equal and is his trusted, right-hand man.
Records and Research
Bob Andrews started out his career with the Three Investigators on a wheelchair - literally. For the first few books he had an injury which made him confined to a wheelchair, but was able to support the outfit through his job at the local library. As Records and Research, he would use his library resources to provide crucial clues for gaps in investigations.
In later books, his injury healed and he was able to provide more active support on the field. His standout skills were still research and his trips to the library were as frequent as getting caught in a trap. As the son of a freelance reporter, his research skills were second to none and have been valuable to the trio time and time again. On a deductive scale, he would fall somewhere between Pete and Jupe; not as high as Jupe but not as low as Pete either.
In Recap
The three investigators is a book series written by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring the teenagers Jupes, Pete, and Bob - whose specialties like in brainpower, athleticism, and research - complement each other in solving cases. There group dynamics are what made this book series widely popular.
*This is actually not true. While published under the name Alfred Hitchcock, the real author was Rober Arthur Jr, whose publishers paid a handsome price to Alfred Hitchcock for having his name used in such a story.
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