Hold As ‘Twere The Haunted Mirror Up To Nature

You sometimes have to look beyond your own country in this Three Investigators collecting game, bloggers.  Having hunted high and low all over the UK for a small hardback Haunted Mirror, I turned to New Zealand to see if any Kiwis had any for sale.  Lucky for me that I did, folks, because otherwise I would have missed this:  

 And what a tragedy that would have been.  A New Zealand based Abebooks dealer was offloading a bunch of small hardbacks, including this little beauty.  It had been given to “Paul Alexander” by his mum and dad in 1980, with the wish that he had “happy reading” and by the looks of the clean pages and tight binding of the book, the ungrateful little bastard didn’t bother his arse.  Well, bloggers, his loss is our gain and we add an unread small Haunted Mirror to the collection.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Nectar!

Deadly Double, Toil and Trouble

It’s not enough, bloggers, just to search eBay for “three investigators” or indeed “3 investigators” and hope for the best.  Some of the more useless sellers just list the actual title of the book, missing out everything other than the actual title.  In this instance, “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot” can be listed as “The Mystery of The Stuttering Parrot” or even in cases of extreme uselessness; “The Stuttering Parrot”.  Since most searches will include only “Three Investigators” or “3 Investigators”, then any book listed as “MYSTERY OF THE DEADLY DOUBLE – ARDEN” will not be found.  Being a seasoned eBay guy, I search every day for the individual titles in the series, which is how I managed to get this book for less than £20:

Nice, eh?  I know the DJ is a little tatty, however bear in mind it is not an ex-library book and therefore has clean pages throughout.  It’s a bit of a hen’s tooth this one, in fact this is the only copy I have discovered online since I started this collection back in March. 

I was so pleased with my purchase that I settled down to read it.  My my my what a mistake that was.  Total rubbish from start to end, pretty much.  I remember thinking it was a bit shite when I read it years ago and indeed time has not been kind to The Mystery of the Deadly Double.  Jupiter seems to spend half of the book being kidnapped and there isn’t even a Scooby Doo monster to keep us entertained.  Total tripe from beginning to end; is this really from the same author who gave us Dead Man’s Riddle and more recently Headless Horse?  Well I suppose everyone is allowed an off-day. 

Love Looks Not With The Fiery Eye

What's the best thing about this book?

It has a character called “August August”?

If features “The Black Moustache Gang”?

T3I get all future use of the Rolls Royce and Worthington for free?

The answer is, of course, none of the above. The best thing about this book, is that it was given to “Gordon” by “Mrs Robertson” in 1974:

We are left to wonder what services the young Gordon had performed for the said Mrs Robertson that she felt compelled to reward him with a book of such enormous cultural value. Having watched The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman, we are left with little doubt as to what was going on here. All I can say is well done, Gordon you lucky bastard.

He Hath Eaten Me Out of Shrinking House and Home

My new small Shrinking House used to belong to Brian Falconer.

The poor bastard was given it as a prize by Fraserburgh Old Parish Sunday School in 1981 for “successful completion of 4^th Year in senior department.” I know four years is a lot of god bothering to put up with, but I imagine it was worth it to end up with a book of such raging quality.

If Thy Fiery Eye Deceive Thee..

Every time I search ebay for Fiery Eye, I get offered this sort of stuff:

Fiery eye jewellery! When what I’m really looking for is this sort of stuff:

That’s more like it! I don’t need jewellery to make me look nice, I’m frankly fucking lovely enough as it is, so I spent my money instead on this really nice large Fiery Eye from an Abebooks dealer. A total bargain, folks, at only £12.90 inclusive.

I’ve read this a few times, bloggers, and every time I get totally lost as to the whereabouts of the various busts. Anyone else have this problem? I’m pretty sure Robert Arthur must have been high on a cocktail of Buckie and deep fried pizza when he wrote it.