“The Society For Justice for Buccaneers, Brigands, Bandits and Bushwackers will pay $25 an hour for anyone who can report detailed information about local pirates, bandits, highwaymen and other colourful miscreants of California’s lusty past.”

Given the current state of the Three Investigators’ – Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Reynolds – finances, this seems the ideal opportunity, given their various past adventures that involved pirate treasure. But the organisers seem disinterested in anyone apart from Captain Joy and his tales about the inspiration for local attraction the Purple Pirate Lair, with its pirate ship attraction, the Black Vulture.

Intrigued, especially once Jupiter realises that the organisers are destroying all of their recordings of the stories being told to them – including Captain Joy, him being the only person who gets invited back night after night. Something is going on at the Purple Pirate Lair… including the appearance of a certain Purple Pirate.

So, after I read the Three Investigators’ debut, The Secret Of Terror Castle last month, it’s time for the reason for looking at that one. You see, if you didn’t know, there are 44 books in the original Three Investigators series, but the series is long out of print. Moreover, the later titles are very hard to find. I don’t think the last one published, The Mystery Of The Cranky Collector was even published in the UK, as it’s not in the Bodleian. I can read the last Peter Anthony title, Withered Murder, but not the final Three Investigators title. Go figure.

The latest title that I’d read to date was The Mystery Of The Blazing Cliffs, book 32, but then all of a sudden, I can across copies of books 33 to 39 (excluding 35). Most of them are in 3 for 1 collections, but even so… Anyway, you’ll be seeing reviews of all of these over the next few months as while I want to read these, I’ve a friend who’s a completist who doesn’t have these, so they’re heading his way soon…

You can divide most of the Three Investigators books into either “lost treasure” or “Scooby Doo” stories. You’d think from the title and cover that this is in the latter category, but despite the appearance of said Pirate, it really isn’t an important (or desperately interesting) part of the story.

The “what’s going on?” part of the tale is the hook here, and while it’s not exactly rocket science mystery, it’s a decent tale and it does have a strong test at the end – there’s something of a similarity with my last read, only without, needless to say, the serial killer. It certainly counts as a proper mystery,  with deductions and everything, even if it’s not that taxing to sort out for the most part.

One other thing that I noted is that the book never forgets that the Investigators are children – teenagers, yes, but still children – such as in the sequence when, just as our heroes are about to search for the treasure behind the villains’ backs, Pete announces he can’t go because his dad needs him to cut his neighbour’s hedge.

At this point, there are two authors alternating the writing – M V Carey and William Arden – and while I’ve usually preferred Carey’s books, this is a fun entry into the series. Now if only someone could release the whole series, although there are huge legal loopholes, apparently…