The Three Investigators is an American juvenile detective book series. It was first published as ""Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators"" . It was created by Robert Arthur, Jr.. He modeled his series after the popular The Hardy Boys books. The characters known as the "three investigators" are three boys named Jupiter Jones, Peter Crenshaw and Bob Andrews. The original series of 43 books was published from 1964 to 1987 by Random House.