Welcome To The Salvage Yard
I’m thrilled you’ve joined us here at The Salvage Yard, where the legacy of The Three Investigators continues to thrive. My father, Robert Arthur, brought a lifetime of experience to the task of crafting mysteries for young people, and his Three Investigators universe has been capturing the hearts and minds of readers since its debut in 1964.
I’ve been writing for adults all my life, but in 2018 I set out to continue my father’s legacy, in collaboration with my husband, Steven Bauer, by writing a brand-new series – one that aimed to give the current generation of young people a version of The Three Investigators that was faithful to everything important about the original series, but that had also been updated to reflect the era they are actually living in.
The new series features twenty-six books – one for every letter of the Roman alphabet – that combine stand-alone mysteries with an overarching narrative. The first book begins with Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews on the cusp of turning fourteen, while the last book ends just after their graduation from high school. In the course of the series a new character, Mallory MacLeod, becomes a Special Consultant to the firm.
Like the originals, the twenty-six books in the new series are grounded in critical thinking, keen observation, and the power of friendship; like the originals, they’re filled with danger, puzzles, and discovery; and like the originals, they’re rich in historical and cultural exploration, and feature both heroes and villains from a wide variety of American subcultures.
But the new books also offer two things young readers rarely find in today‘s cultural landscape. The first is simply independence. As you probably remember if you grew up on the series, the Three Investigators are what might now be called “free-range” kids – young people who make decisions, take risks, and grow from their own mistakes. They have actual agency.
As for the second thing these books offer the young people of today – well, as it turns out, the second thing is something a lot of adults seem to be hungering for, as well.
That something is a world governed by logic, honor, and moral clarity – a world in which it is still possible to know what’s true, and to act accordingly. One reader put it perfectly: “The Three Investigators take place in a sensible and rational world far removed from the madness of the present day.”
That’s the world these books restore, and although they were written for readers of the current generation, they’re finding their way into the hands of both home-schooling parents and adults seeking stories that remind them of a world in which truth-seeking, moral courage, and the willingness to stand against wrong matter more than hopefully-ephemeral cultural trends.
If that sounds good to you, too, you’ve come to the right place. Thank you for being here. Going forward, I’ll use this space to share updates about the series and also occasional reflections on the larger world in which these mysteries now live.
The Salvage Yard is open, the universe lives on, and the story begins again.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth Arthur
P. S. To find all the new Three Investigators books that have been published so far, go to the New Three Investigators series page on Amazon.
To find the 60th anniversary editions of my father’s ten books, go to the Classic Three Investigators series page on Amazon.
