The Three Investigators is an American juvenile detective book series first published as "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators". It was created by Robert Arthur Jr., who believed involving a famous person such as movie director Alfred Hitchcock would attract attention. Random House is the U.S. publisher and still has some of the rights to the books. Other rights are possessed by the heirs of Robert Arthur, Jr. and the German publisher Kosmos. The characters known as the "Three Investigators" are three boys named Jupiter Jones, Peter Crenshaw and Bob Andrews. As the series has become very popular in Germany, several stories have been produced directly for the German market. Most of the mysteries involved investigation of baffling phenomena (e.g., an ancient Egyptian mummy that apparently whispered and a human skull that seemed to talk). Original editions The original series was published from 1964 to 1987 and comprised 43 finished books, one unfinished story (The Mystery of the Ghost Train) and four Find Your Fate books. Between 1989 and 1990 Random House published the Three Investigators Crimebusters series. Books number 1 to 9 and 11 were written by the creator, Robert Arthur, who also specified ideas for a few of the other stories. Arthur had been an editor for several book collections attributed to Alfred Hitchcock. 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 were dictated purportedly by Hitchcock and later in the series a fictional writer, Hector Sebastian, who supposedly recorded the adventures of the Three Investigators from their words. 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. For 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 legally, 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 younger. On one occasion it was mentioned that Pete was part of the high-school wrestling team. In the later Crimebusters series, it was stated once that the Three Investigators team was