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New Three Investigators #2
The Mystery of the Brobdingnagian Beast
A Bear Flag rebellion. A powder keg waiting to blow. And a trap set just in time.
The Salvage Yard is still there. So is the secret headquarters. And so are the Three Investigators—smarter than ever, a little older, and ready for their most challenging cases yet.
Conceived and co-written by Elizabeth Arthur, the daughter of Robert Arthur, the creator of the Three Investigators universe, this exciting reboot of the classic series takes its iconic characters into a new age. They return reimagined, reinvigorated, and more relevant than ever.
In the second book of a 26-book story arc, the Three Investigators find themselves on a dangerous mission to uncover the truth of what’s happening on a film being shot in Sonoma, California—location of the historic Bear Flag rebellion. Pete Crenshaw's father, a set construction manager, enlists the team to help when strange events begin unfolding on the set of Bear Valley, a movie about the controversial explorer and politician John C. Frémont.
From the moment the boys arrive, they're thrust into a chaotic mix of violence, protests, and intrigue. A mysterious group called OUTLAW is determined to shut down the film. As its members push against police barricades in their black masks, tensions run high between two feuding historians - Phillipa Paxton and Daniel Hernández – with competing views on Frémont's legacy.
The team faces explosive threats, the masked mob, and a reenactment of the past with a a man who believes he is the reincarnation of a 19th-century Pomo bear-doctor. But the deeper they dig, the more they realize that what seems like a simple protest is just the surface of a much darker, more dangerous conspiracy. Phillipa Paxton puts The Three Investigators on the trail of a piece of Frémont memorabilia, and their suspicions are aroused when it turns out that someone else has been searching high and low for the same item.
Who is behind the mysterious keg of gunpowder that's set off on set? Who slashed Dr. Paxton's tires and left ominous signs of their presence near her garage? What's the connection between a Frémont artifact that reportedly burned in the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906 and a strange letter supposedly signed by the famous frontiersman, Kit Carson?
Join the team as they sift truth from falsehood and face a real-life villain with a heart of darkness in this thrilling continuation of the new Three Investigators saga. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the series, you’ll find yourself part of an adventure that mixes history, mystery, and the ever-present need to fight for what's right.
The Salvage Yard is still there. So is the secret headquarters. And so are the Three Investigators—smarter than ever, a little older, and ready for their most challenging cases yet.
Conceived and co-written by Elizabeth Arthur, the daughter of Robert Arthur, the creator of the Three Investigators universe, this exciting reboot of the classic series takes its iconic characters into a new age. They return reimagined, reinvigorated, and more relevant than ever.
In the second book of a 26-book story arc, the Three Investigators find themselves on a dangerous mission to uncover the truth of what’s happening on a film being shot in Sonoma, California—location of the historic Bear Flag rebellion. Pete Crenshaw's father, a set construction manager, enlists the team to help when strange events begin unfolding on the set of Bear Valley, a movie about the controversial explorer and politician John C. Frémont.
From the moment the boys arrive, they're thrust into a chaotic mix of violence, protests, and intrigue. A mysterious group called OUTLAW is determined to shut down the film. As its members push against police barricades in their black masks, tensions run high between two feuding historians - Phillipa Paxton and Daniel Hernández – with competing views on Frémont's legacy.
The team faces explosive threats, the masked mob, and a reenactment of the past with a a man who believes he is the reincarnation of a 19th-century Pomo bear-doctor. But the deeper they dig, the more they realize that what seems like a simple protest is just the surface of a much darker, more dangerous conspiracy. Phillipa Paxton puts The Three Investigators on the trail of a piece of Frémont memorabilia, and their suspicions are aroused when it turns out that someone else has been searching high and low for the same item.
Who is behind the mysterious keg of gunpowder that's set off on set? Who slashed Dr. Paxton's tires and left ominous signs of their presence near her garage? What's the connection between a Frémont artifact that reportedly burned in the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906 and a strange letter supposedly signed by the famous frontiersman, Kit Carson?
Join the team as they sift truth from falsehood and face a real-life villain with a heart of darkness in this thrilling continuation of the new Three Investigators saga. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the series, you’ll find yourself part of an adventure that mixes history, mystery, and the ever-present need to fight for what's right.
326 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 3, 2025
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Arthur
29 books21 followersElizabeth Arthur was born on November 15, 1953 in New York City. She is the daughter of Robert Arthur, a fantasy, horror and mystery writer and the creator of The Three Investigators mystery book series for young people. She was educated at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Notre Dame University of Nelson, British Columbia, and the University of Victoria in Victoria, B.C.
Her first book, Island Sojourn - a memoir about building a house on a wilderness island in northern Canada - was published in 1980 by Harper and Row. A second memoir, Looking For The Klondike Stone, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993. She has also published five novels - Beyond the Mountain (Harper and Row, 1983), Bad Guys (Knopf, 1986), Binding Spell (Doubleday 1989), Antarctic Navigation (Knopf, 1995), and Bring Deeps (Bloomsbury U.K., 2003).
Athur's novel Antarctic Navigation - an 800-page epic narrated by an American woman who sets out to recreate Robert Falcon Scott's British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1912 - was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book, received a Critics' Choice Award from the San Francisco Review of Books, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1995 by A Common Reader. In 1996 the novel received the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction from the Ohioana Library Association.
These awards came on the heels of two NEA Fellowships, as well as an operational support grant from the Division of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation - the first ever given to a fiction writer.
Arthur has taught creative writing at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the University of Cincinnati, and Indiana University/Purdue University of Indianapolis - where she directed the creative writing program. She has been married to the writer and editor Steven Bauer since June of 1982, and the two of them have recently completed twenty-six books in a contemporary Three Investigators mystery book series, updated for a new generation of readers.
Her first book, Island Sojourn - a memoir about building a house on a wilderness island in northern Canada - was published in 1980 by Harper and Row. A second memoir, Looking For The Klondike Stone, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993. She has also published five novels - Beyond the Mountain (Harper and Row, 1983), Bad Guys (Knopf, 1986), Binding Spell (Doubleday 1989), Antarctic Navigation (Knopf, 1995), and Bring Deeps (Bloomsbury U.K., 2003).
Athur's novel Antarctic Navigation - an 800-page epic narrated by an American woman who sets out to recreate Robert Falcon Scott's British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1912 - was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book, received a Critics' Choice Award from the San Francisco Review of Books, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1995 by A Common Reader. In 1996 the novel received the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction from the Ohioana Library Association.
These awards came on the heels of two NEA Fellowships, as well as an operational support grant from the Division of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation - the first ever given to a fiction writer.
Arthur has taught creative writing at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, the University of Cincinnati, and Indiana University/Purdue University of Indianapolis - where she directed the creative writing program. She has been married to the writer and editor Steven Bauer since June of 1982, and the two of them have recently completed twenty-six books in a contemporary Three Investigators mystery book series, updated for a new generation of readers.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 3, 2025
As a lifelong Three Investigators fan, it's with some small quantity of pain that I give this new book just two stars, but I don't believe in "grade inflation," and I can't justify a higher rating (well, maybe 2.5, if that were an option). Like many other fans, I've waited decades to see the boys taking on new mysteries, riddles, and conundrums, but so far, this series is something of a letdown. After so many years of anticipation, maybe that was inevitable.
As with the first book in this new series, I liked the cover art. The artist didn't do so well in combining the book's elements as in the first series entry, but there wasn't much to work with. This title, like the last, being unfamiliar and unpronounceable for many readers, seems to me likely to repel more readers than it attracts. And those who were fans of "Dancing Devil" and "Sinister Scarecrow," and for that reason are drawn by the title, are likely to be somewhat disappointed by the story.
My views about the book's appearance are similar to those that I had for the first. The book is attractively made, the typeface well chosen, and I spotted no more than two typos, which, in a self-published book is fairly remarkable.
Arthur and Bauer seem to me more than capable when it comes to the mechanics and--to a slightly lesser extent--the craft of writing. Frankly, to complete 26 books in such a short time and have them be at all readable is quite an accomplishment in itself. The dialogue feels mostly natural to me, and there are fewer of the Wikipedia-like interludes in this second book than in the first. The descriptions of places, people, and things are vivid and detailed enough for me as a reader to form a mental picture of what's described. Things mostly follow a logical order (though there's a minor exchange between characters on page 260 that makes no sense to me).
The central characters are portrayed in keeping with the original series but are fleshed out--in a good and believable way. In revealing the boys' inner thoughts, the writers explore personality traits that are present in the original series and add a few of their own. Any changes that the authors make to the boys' personalities feel reasonable to me in a way that the choices made in the Crimebusters books never did.
And as somebody who does a lot of historical research, both as a vocation and as a hobby, I enjoyed following the characters as they conducted their research. The portrayals of the research process were accurate and were interesting to me, though I think they wouldn't be to the majority of readers.
As with the first book, though, there's barely anything in the way of action, suspense, or deduction to counterbalance the super-lengthy passages of internal monologue and--at the risk of using an oxymoron--passive activities. I found this book more of a slog than the first. Around the 1/3 mark, the writers set themselves up with an excellent opportunity for an action scene in which the boys could have played an active role, but, incredibly, they miss the opportunity they'd given themselves.
I don't know how to finish this without getting political, as much of this book, like the first, is political: The major problem that I have with the book is what's concerned me since the initial Substack announcement: Elizabeth Arthur and/or Steven Bauer have a political ax to grind, and they've inexplicably chosen this juvenile mystery series as a platform for their ax-grinding.
What is the intended audience for these books? I'm no judge of what kids like these days. I don't have a TikTok account, I know exactly three words of exactly one Taylor Swift song, and beyond its title, couldn't tell you anything about "Frozen." But I have to believe that the kinds of things that turned on kids 50 years ago are the same kinds of things that turn on kids today: mysteries, adventures, treasures. Do kids today want to read a lengthy book with no action that's little more than a thinly veiled diatribe against "cancel culture"? While we're at it, do any adults want to read a lengthy diatribe against "cancel culture" that's written at a juvenile level? This one doesn't. What would be the point, when there are undoubtedly a number of adult books on the topic?
In speaking through Pete's dad, the writers go beyond just being against "cancel culture." If we accept his view as theirs, the writers tell us on page 24 that we should simply accept history as it's handed to us and that historians have no business re-examining historical figures. I suppose they'd have taken Voltaire to task when he wrote, "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Okay, now I'm in danger of going on a rant of my own and will stop. I do continue to hope that these books are going to get better as they go along. A 1-star rating from me means that I barely managed to finish a book (and since I don't rate any of the many books that I don't finish, that in itself is a compliment). A 2-star rating from me means exactly what it's supposed to mean here, and nothing more or less: This book was, in my opinion, okay. So, despite the faults that I've found with the books so far, the quality of the writing has me hopeful that better things may be coming (without the political asides, I would hope). I've heard the third book is the best of the this first set of three, so that's encouraging.
As with the first book in this new series, I liked the cover art. The artist didn't do so well in combining the book's elements as in the first series entry, but there wasn't much to work with. This title, like the last, being unfamiliar and unpronounceable for many readers, seems to me likely to repel more readers than it attracts. And those who were fans of "Dancing Devil" and "Sinister Scarecrow," and for that reason are drawn by the title, are likely to be somewhat disappointed by the story.
My views about the book's appearance are similar to those that I had for the first. The book is attractively made, the typeface well chosen, and I spotted no more than two typos, which, in a self-published book is fairly remarkable.
Arthur and Bauer seem to me more than capable when it comes to the mechanics and--to a slightly lesser extent--the craft of writing. Frankly, to complete 26 books in such a short time and have them be at all readable is quite an accomplishment in itself. The dialogue feels mostly natural to me, and there are fewer of the Wikipedia-like interludes in this second book than in the first. The descriptions of places, people, and things are vivid and detailed enough for me as a reader to form a mental picture of what's described. Things mostly follow a logical order (though there's a minor exchange between characters on page 260 that makes no sense to me).
The central characters are portrayed in keeping with the original series but are fleshed out--in a good and believable way. In revealing the boys' inner thoughts, the writers explore personality traits that are present in the original series and add a few of their own. Any changes that the authors make to the boys' personalities feel reasonable to me in a way that the choices made in the Crimebusters books never did.
And as somebody who does a lot of historical research, both as a vocation and as a hobby, I enjoyed following the characters as they conducted their research. The portrayals of the research process were accurate and were interesting to me, though I think they wouldn't be to the majority of readers.
As with the first book, though, there's barely anything in the way of action, suspense, or deduction to counterbalance the super-lengthy passages of internal monologue and--at the risk of using an oxymoron--passive activities. I found this book more of a slog than the first. Around the 1/3 mark, the writers set themselves up with an excellent opportunity for an action scene in which the boys could have played an active role, but, incredibly, they miss the opportunity they'd given themselves.
I don't know how to finish this without getting political, as much of this book, like the first, is political: The major problem that I have with the book is what's concerned me since the initial Substack announcement: Elizabeth Arthur and/or Steven Bauer have a political ax to grind, and they've inexplicably chosen this juvenile mystery series as a platform for their ax-grinding.
What is the intended audience for these books? I'm no judge of what kids like these days. I don't have a TikTok account, I know exactly three words of exactly one Taylor Swift song, and beyond its title, couldn't tell you anything about "Frozen." But I have to believe that the kinds of things that turned on kids 50 years ago are the same kinds of things that turn on kids today: mysteries, adventures, treasures. Do kids today want to read a lengthy book with no action that's little more than a thinly veiled diatribe against "cancel culture"? While we're at it, do any adults want to read a lengthy diatribe against "cancel culture" that's written at a juvenile level? This one doesn't. What would be the point, when there are undoubtedly a number of adult books on the topic?
In speaking through Pete's dad, the writers go beyond just being against "cancel culture." If we accept his view as theirs, the writers tell us on page 24 that we should simply accept history as it's handed to us and that historians have no business re-examining historical figures. I suppose they'd have taken Voltaire to task when he wrote, "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Okay, now I'm in danger of going on a rant of my own and will stop. I do continue to hope that these books are going to get better as they go along. A 1-star rating from me means that I barely managed to finish a book (and since I don't rate any of the many books that I don't finish, that in itself is a compliment). A 2-star rating from me means exactly what it's supposed to mean here, and nothing more or less: This book was, in my opinion, okay. So, despite the faults that I've found with the books so far, the quality of the writing has me hopeful that better things may be coming (without the political asides, I would hope). I've heard the third book is the best of the this first set of three, so that's encouraging.
July 22, 2025
I grew up on the Three Investigators and I introduced them to my son. We have read and read a lot of the books from the 1960’s. This however was our first book of the recent series. I was a little nervous going in. But I am happy to report that we both loved this book. I was surprised how the advancements in tech didn’t take away from the books of yesterday. In fact, this book was very topical and I appreciate that. We’re about to start with the first of the new series tomorrow and I have a feeling this one will be a winner as well.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews