Customer Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in the Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot

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I, too, read all of the books when I was a child. Now that I'm looking for books to give to friends' children, I discover that these marvelous books are out of print! I beseech the publisher to re-issue them asap. The stuttering parrot has remained with me all these years, so much so that when I hear a reference to Sherlock Holmes, it is the stuttering parrot's "to to be" that immediately pops into my mind. On behalf of a bookwormwho wants to share with the next generation, please bring the boys back! The three investigators may not have been classic literature, but they brought me tremendous pleasure.

The Three Investigators series was the best set of mysteries I ever read, in addition to Agatha Christie's. I read all of them I could find. And yet, years later, I decided to look them up and not a single library had them anymore. These books should not be out of print! There is something special in Jupiter, Bob, and Pete's (I think I got the names right) detective agency, and the mysteries are especially unique and intriguing. This book is especially memorable. To-to-to be, or not to-to-to be... And that's not the only parrot that's odd

After solving the mystery of a nearby haunted castle, the Three Investigators have their second case. It's not as exciting, finding a missing parrot, except that the parrot stutters. But the case quickly goes from mundane to interesting, as they find that this case involves 7 birds, all taught to repeat a part of a riddle. And it soon becomes dangerous when they realize that others are interested in the whereabouts of the parrots, and will stop at nothing to get them, including kidnapping. The Three Investigators will need all their smarts and some luck to solve this mystery.

The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot has all the frights of The Secret of Terror Castle, but with a truly puzzling mystery to solve added in. The plot is extremely clever, and draws the reader in expertly with the riddle of the parrots. New investigative methods are introduced, sometimes with good results and sometimes not, but the genius of this series is apparent in this book. I loved it 30 years ago when I read it as a kid, and my son and I loved reading it now. Exciting and interesting enough to keep even reluctant readers coming back for more. And as others have commented, I definitely think there's potential for a movie here.

This was the first series book I had ever read. It got me hooked for life. I was never a series kind of guy. I never read Hardy Boys or the Secret Seven, they just annoyed me. After I read this book I bought every other "3 Investigators" I could find and I followed them all the way through to "The Crimebusters." Robert Arthur had an appiffiny when he created these characters

I received the item much quicker that I had expected. It was exactly what I expected. I would gladly purchase from this seller again.
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...but dated somewhat.

The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot is written pretty much the way juvenile fiction should be written. It's a book that can still be appreciated by adults even though aimed at a juvenile audience. The plot is realistic and logical given the premises of the genre. Dying men, of course, don't usually concoct convoluted puzzles as their last acts but this is a time honored plot device of detective fiction whether adult or juvenile. One can accept that three boys might be commissioned to find a missing parrot and that they would then get caught up in a search for a missing painting. There is no heavy reliance on luck or coincidence that one often finds in juvenile series like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. And although the actual town the boys live in is fictitious the larger setting, southern California, is real and familiar. The original edition used the familiar name of Alfred Hitchcock as a sales crutch, someone who would be quite familiar to boys of the '60s from TV's "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".

But can the book be appreciated by today's kids? I have my doubts in this age of cell phones, computers, and the internet. Kids today have no more idea who Alfred Hitchcock is than they do James Dean. (Hitchcock was dropped from later editions after his death and replaced by a fictional character.) But if you have a 10-12 year old who can stay away from the computer or TV for a few hours at a time you could do a lot worse than suggesting this book to read.

I liked this book because it was very interesting and I didn't want to stop reading it. This was a puzzle kind of a mystery it was cool. I like how they needed to search for the painting.

Well three investigators are called to find missing parrots but end up trying to find a picture worth a lot of money. In order to find the painting they would have to get all the seven parrots and when they talked they would say a clue to where the picture is.

You would have to definitely be a mystery type reader to really get into this book. It's not a hard book at all its king of hard on some parts but that's it. A boy would like this book better then a girl would like it. You would have to be in at least 7th grade to understand the book. If you consider a 182 pages long then it's to hard for you but it goes by fast I read this in a week! This was an awesome book and there was so much action and adventure and a lot of mystery and there also was a lot of cliffhangers.

I used to read my older brother's Three Investigator books when he borrowed them from the school library. I so wanted to live in a trailer with a secret escape hatch like Jupiter had.
I have bought as many books as I could find for my son who is eleven and loves reading about Jupiter, Bob and Pete's adventures. We look in every secondhand shop we can find and are slowly getting the entire series.