The Mystery of the Ghost Train

The Mystery of the Ghost Train: A Three Investigators Novel

  - Thomas Hudson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The blurb of this book says:

In this Fan Fiction homage to the series of The Three Investigators, the final title, never published and the original manuscript never located, has been written based on the title only along with a specially-commissioned front cover. This may be entirely different from the direction the original author, Mary V. Carey, had in her mind, but is a complete mystery story written in the same tone as the rest of the series and the multiple authors responsible for having done that. 

I was very excited to chance upon this on Kindle Unlimited as The Three Investigators has been my first favorite mystery series, and continues to remain dear to me. However, this felt like a betrayal of my fond memories of the series which I have read many times in childhood, and still read once in a while.

The kid detectives, are suddenly 15 year olds. And joking about girlfriends and dates. Which never happened with the slightly younger boys in the original series. It may be natural for 15 year old boys, but it is not what I expected. Yet this is only a minor grouse.

Further, in the original series, Pete and Bob did not ditch their leader even when they disagreed with the risky action he planned to take. In here, there were at least a couple of occasions where they did so. There wasn't much of logical reasoning either, which was a significant feature of Jupe's character.

The biggest problem was the behavior of the boys. They are rude and disrespectful, particularly Jupiter. And he displays a terribly sexist attitude towards women. This really killed the book for me.