After 'The Secret of Skeleton Island' changed not only the location of a 'Three Investigators' story, but its entire structure, feeling far more like a 'Hardy Boys' mystery, Robert Arthur brought this series back to its roots for book seven, 'The Mystery of the Fiery Eye', and that's a good thing, but the results, I feel, are mixed. There's a lot of good here but a lot of convenience, too.

Both appear in the set-up. Alfred Hitchcock has another case for the Three Investigators, so he has them come in to meet his young English friend, August August. That's a glorious name to start out, even if he chooses to go by Gus, but there's also a real mystery because Gus has an inheritance and has no idea what it is, beyond it being a fortune. It's from his great-uncle, Horatio August, and it's described in a cryptic note that he'd left with his lawyers. That's even better. Gus is therefore one more supporting character from a foreign land, this one merely from mine, the UK.

The note suggests that Horatio paid for this fortune and owns it, so presumably can safely leave it to Gus, but there's an inherent danger surrounding it that should disperse after fifty years. That's a surefire way to intrigue Jupiter Jones, especially as there are rules around it. It cannot be seized or stolen, only bought, given or found. And that's it! There's no detail around what this fortune is or where it can be found, at least not explicitly. There's more to the note, of course, but it's all just as cryptic as the talk about its malevolence. Thus Hitch calls in the boys.

I tend to like the novels that are built around puzzles, not least my favourite, 'The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot', which is also action-packed. Given that Blackbeard, the mynah bird who helped solve that mystery, makes an appearance here, we can't help but look for comparisons, but this is a little less action-packed and the mystery is structured differently.

It doesn't take them long, for instance, to discover through Bob's research that August's fortune must be the Fiery Eye, a ruby the size of a pigeon's egg of great value that has a long and violent history behind it. Its many owners have generally found it to bring misfortune, so it was eventually gifted by a maharajah in India to the Temple of Justice, located in an imaginary mountain village called Pleshiwar, which is sacred to warlike mountain tribesmen. The last time it was documented was mounted to the forehead of the temple deity there, but it went missing years ago and clearly ended up in the hands of Horatio August. The curse surrounding it lasts for fifty years, which may be already or soon up.

So far, so good, and that discovery was through proper research, but the coincidences soon mount up. For instance, the note says that time is of the essence, but Gus couldn't get over to the States for a couple of months, so it may already be up, especially as his great-uncle's executor has already emptied his house to pay his debts and its owner aims to demolish it soon so that he can build new houses on the land. It gradually becomes clear that a set of plaster busts that bought by some junk dealer must play a part. If only that junk dealer was Titus Jones... oh, wait! It was! And so a magic coincidence means that they suddenly have a lead where they should be none.

Incidentally, these busts are a clear homage to a Sherlock Holmes story, called 'The Adventure of the Six Napoleons', which Jupe calls out within the text. That's very deliberate, as the late Horatio August was a huge fan of those stories and even met Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Given that Jupe was always a young American take on Holmes, with Pete and Bob divvying up Watson duties, that's an appropriate homage and one handled very nicely too.

Of course, others know about the Fiery Eye too, because it's a perfect MacGuffin, and they want it badly. I rather liked the fact that, for the longest time, we aren't given any names for these many seekers, just descriptions. Black Moustache is clearly dangerous. Three Dots may well be too. And Rough Voice and Deep Voice are probably mere henchmen, but that doesn't make them any safer. Eventually we learn names and that humanises them all, but Arthur does delay that as long as he possibly can.

Another aspect I liked here was the inclusion of a fan. There's a need for a ghost-to-ghost hookup again, to locate a particular plaster bust that Titus has already sold by the time they realise it's a key to the mystery, so the details go out and the boys wait for responses. One comes in from a Liz Logan, whose mother has the Octavian in question. They retrieve it with a refunded payment and that would be that, except that Liz wants in on the mystery. As her mother points out, "she lives in a world all her own, full of mysterious spies and sinister criminals."

That makes her a natural pick for a female operative, should they ever need one. I can't remember at this point if they ever did, but that opportunity may have vanished after Arthur's death, as she was apparently based on his own daughter Elizabeth, who confirmed it in an interview. I'm all for additional sidekicks popping in and out of the series, as needed. Of course, there should only ever be the Three Investigators, but that doesn't mean help isn't appropriate. After all, the Bavarian twins, Hans and Konrad, are kind of like sidekicks already, and Worthington is another.

Talking of Worthington, this is the book where we address the time limit attached to Jupe's use of the golden Rolls Royce. He won it for thirty days (of twenty-four hours each, as we've often been reminded in prior books) and we learn here that they expired during the previous volume, as the boys were solving the secret of Skeleton Island in the east. That does mean, I should add, that the first five adventures all took place within a mere month, which makes them rather full of action. I wonder if anyone's crunched the numbers to see how long each of those five took.

Arthur had already floated that Jupe had a plan for this and we learn here that it was to interpret that unusual wording literally. They may have run through thirty days, but not thirty times twenty-four hours. However, the agency is swift to deny that interpretation and that's that, but Gus, once the mystery is solved and he gets his inheritance in the form of a large cheque, thanks the boys by ensuring their future use of the car. That's a worthy thank you and it stops Worthington being lost to the series, as well as keeping the boys mobile. You simply can't get around southern California well enough on bicycles to make it viable otherwise.

I enjoyed this, but not as much as some of the early books. As clever as the mystery is, there are a lot more coincidences needed to get to the solution than I'm willing to tolerate. Gus isn't much of a supporting character either. He's nice enough and his name is fantastic, but he doesn't get close to as much to do as some of his more exotic equivalents in earlier books. Also, all the horror adjacent plots thus far had an extra element that this one mostly lacks. It's there a little in the curse of the ruby, but that's a lot more ignorable than the shocks in books like 'The Secret of Terror Castle' and 'The Mystery of the Green Ghost'.

I'll be back next month with a look at 'The Mystery of Silver Spider', which I remember a little, as it takes the boys as far from California as I recall the series ever taking them, all the way across the pond to a fictional European nation called Varania. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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