Friday, November 28, 2014
The Secret of Terror Castle
Back in July I posted an ad for The Three Investigators books (click HERE.) Our good friend Mr. C admitted in the comments to having never read any of the many adventures involving Bob Andrews, Pete Crenshaw, and Jupiter Jones, --which to my ears also means that he's never seen the wonderfully atmospheric illustrations each book contains as well! And there's no better place to start than with the very first Three Investigators tale, "The Secret of Terror Castle", written by Robert Arthur in 1964 and featuring the spooktacular art of Harry Kane.
I never was into this kind of narrative as a kid, but the art is fine: Hammer-style castles, ghosts (presumably fake) and a Fu-Manchu character ...
ReplyDeleteSome of my favorite early reading as a kid
ReplyDeleteLike Karswell, I was a big Secret Investigators fan. Dead Man's Riddle was my favorite, but by the time the late 70s rolled around I was reading King/Koontz/etc, so I've never read some of the later ones.
ReplyDeleteGreat books for kids, really.
Never got why some were "secret" and others "mystery", they were relatively interchangeable.
Cool! I love that ghost!
ReplyDeleteYeah that page was a real freak-out to 4th grade me reading this book... just try to get passed the text page opposite with her looking at you for a few minutes out of the corner of your eye!
ReplyDeleteHey thanks! You know, I am shocked to discover that the interior illustrations are somehow even better than the covers. I can't wait to see more (even if that means getting a DC library card the next time I'm in the US).
ReplyDeleteI'll get some more up in Dec for ya... we'll be heading into Poe territory next :) thanks for the comments!
ReplyDeleteI first read this book back in the late '60s or early '70s, but I don't recall the illustrations (apart from the endpapers) so perhaps the British editions didn't have them. I have a smaller edition of this book and I'm pretty sure that it doesn't have any illos either. Funny thing is, whenever I re-read any of these books, they conjure up the exact same images (and associations) as they did when I first read them. (First one I ever read was The Mystery of the Green Ghost, obtained from my local library.)
ReplyDeleteSome reprints did not include illustrations, Kid... foreign versions may have been without as well.
DeleteLove the book, but I like this cover better:
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B01geV_O1VoHVDIzS0E4WmFpQU0/view?usp=sharing
More...evocative.
Nice castle
ReplyDelete