A Tale Told By An Idiot, Full Of Sound And Fury

I received an interesting email recently, bloggers, from a fellow T3I fan who told me of his passion for these most nectar of books.  He and his two mates were so into them that they started their own detective agency, with the intention of solving as many mysteries as they could.  I’m not sure how successful they were as a detective agency, but he did mention the story of the time when one of the boys’ mother was suspicious as to the contents of the briefcase that these three kept their case notes in as they made their way to and from the attic that served as headquarters.  Her reasoning seemed to be that what else would boys have in a locked briefcase in a loft other than tod mags? 

Anyway this correspondent explained to me that his first exposure to the Three Investigators was via the Terror Castle audio cassette, with which he was so enamoured that he sought out the books and went on to be a huge fan.  The reason I mention this story, bloggers is this:

It arrived in the mail recently from an eBay seller who had it listed along with another couple of unrelated childrens audio books.  Of course I snapped it up, as my collection was lacking in that department.  If you haven’t heard these audio adaptations of Terror Castle and Stuttering Parrot, I urge you to seek out a copy immediately; you can probably find them converted to MP3 and available on some bit torrent site or other.  They are absolutely of the highest quality with an outstanding performance by Valentine Dyall as Hitch himself.  They are also hugely faithful to the source books, bloggers, so much so that Bob doesn't get it on with any pre-teen temptresses, in fact he does exactly what he does in the book!  So if the movies pissed you off because they were not exactly faithful, maybe these will be more up your street.

Might There Not Be A Charity Shop In Sin?

We all know that charity shops are fairly nectar places to look for Three Investigators books, bloggers, but how many of us know that these charities also operated an online service for T3I fans?  Well they do.  I was doing my usual daily ritual of searching the corners of the internet for T3I books, when I stumbled upon Oxfam’s online store.  Here they offered all of the same kind of shite you might find in an Oxfam high street shop, with records, clothes, CDs, DVDs and, you’ve guessed it, Three Investigators books!  In fact they had about 8 small hardbacks, all being offered by the Oxfam shop in Newcastle.  Now, I’ve been to Newcastle a few times, bloggers, and never found any Three Investigators books at all.  In fact the closest I’ve come was in nearby Whitley Bay, where I bought a large box of Harold Hill Hardy Boys from Oliver’s Bookshop a few years ago (I’ll never forget Oliver telling me to watch his shop while he jumped in his car and nipped home to get them; I’m sure that wouldn’t happen in Waterstone’s).  Anyway I’m digressing again; sorry, bloggers.  I ordered four of these small hardbacks as upgrades to my own copies; I went for Flaming Footprints, Phantom Lake, Haunted Mirror and Invisible Dog.  All at the frankly awesome price of £5.99 each including postage.  Here’s what they looked like:

 Nice, eh?  That Flaming Footprints replaces the manky one I had with the painted spine and the Phantom Lake and Haunted Mirrors both have much nicer spines than my previous copies, so I can list the old ones on eBay.  The Invisible Dog turned out not to be an upgrade at all, since my own copy was better.  Getting these hardback upgrades is nice, bloggers, but it doesn’t make that number in red at the top of the page go down any and I really need to pull my finger out and get myself involved in some hot paperback T3I action.

A Monster Mountain Begot Upon Itself

So I received an email, bloggers, from a blog follower giving me a hint that there was a small hardback Monster Mountain on ebay’s Australian site.  It was a bit expensive though, but I had my eyes opened a wee bit.  You see, I hadn’t really bothered looking to Australia much for this collection as postage rates are eye-wateringly high so imagine my surprise when I saw not only this small Monster Mountain but another two; along with dozens of other high quality hardbacks both Collins and Random House.  There were in fact easily five times as many Collins hardbacks listed than on the UK site.  I have a theory that these Collins books were very heavily distributed in the colonies.  A quick check of other titles appeared to confirm this theory; there were plenty of Malcolm Savilles, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drews, Pony Libraries, Enid Blytons, Jennings, etc etc.  Check it out if you don’t believe me; here’s a link to the three investigators books currently listed down under:

http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_trksid=p4069.m570.l1313&_nkw=three+investigators&_sacat=0&_from=R40

If you look and don’t see considerably more than are listed on the UK site, I’ll eat my hat.  Fortunately, folks, it’s a chocolate hat, so I’m covered in case of any eventuality. 

Anyway, I went ahead and ordered the book and here it is: 

Not bad, if a little worn at edges of spine.  This, of course, completes my small hardback collection and indeed my UK hardback collection as I now have all large and small hardbacks in the series.  Sheer nectar, eh, bloggers?.