Philip's Fan Fiction

I am in the process of fulfilling a lifelong dream of completing a Three Investigators story. It actually will not be my first. The first T3I story I wrote was when I was in the 5th grade as a project with two other boys. Our entire class was assigned to work together to write a story or a book. I was heavily in the passion of T3I at the time and suggested that we write a T3I story which we entitled The Mystery of the Headless Horseman. This was before I knew there was such a story as The Mystery of the Headless Horse that existed in the real series, of course; so it is interesting to see now what we wrote. Our story was a spinoff of The Mystery of the Green Ghost, whereby some missing jewels are hidden by robbers who must retrieve them. In looking at it now, it's an awful story, but it was fun to "publish" a story. We had it typed up and duplicated and even had our art teacher draw a cover for us. It was a great experience!

Below is a chapter that I pounded out a few weeks ago. It is a rough draft of a story that picks up on some story points from the end of The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot. It is an unnamed story and an unnamed chapter at this point. I intend to write a full-length novel with this starting point and am interested in seeing how the T3I community responds to this chapter as it compares to the old-style Robert Arthur stories. I realize that the mystery does not take off in Chapter 1; however, I want to know if people think I have captured at least some of the style of Robert Arthur. The story is actually very complex and will involve some good detective work by Jupe, Pete, and Bob. My desire is to return to the type of story where all three boys have a valuable role in the story and where the boys characters themselves are fun to read.

I am interested in getting feedback under the following conditions:

  1. Please be cordial in your comments. I don't need you to sugarcoat everything, but try to keep things within some limits of civility.

  2. Please do not compare my chapter with the writings of Dennis Lynds, MV Carey, Marc Brandel, or other T3I authors who published with Random House. I am primarily interested in Robert Arthur's style of writing and my attempt to capture some of the fun of his stories.

  3. Please do not compare my chapter with the writings of Mark Zahn or Rick Keating, both of whom have done excellent work in providing us with stories on the web. I am not competing with them. They have their unique excellent style of writing, and I believe it is not fair nor productive to compare me to them.

  4. Please let me know if you would be interested in reading the rest of this story when it is completed. It may be illustrated when completed...I'm working out the details on that.

If you would like to read it, you may download it below, and send your comments to t3ifan@juno.com

Download Chapter 1

Thanks,

Philip