The series "The Three Investigators" was developed by author and journalist Robert Arthur at the beginning of the 1960s. He asked Alfred Hitchcock to publish the series under his name to make it more known. Therefore, it was assumed that the famous director was also an author of the series. However, this is not true - he did not even contribute a single word. Robert Arthur himself wrote ten books of this series.

The publisher of these books wanted to keep the pace of two issues per year. Robert Arthur soon realized though that he would not be able to keep up to this speed due to his constantly worsening physical constitution. Therefore, he started looking for a successor who wouldcontinue the series according to his model. The first new author, who contributed a book tothe series, was Dennis Lynds whose volume "The Mystery OF The Moaning Cave" was published in 1968. According to Lynds, Robert Arthur liked the book very much and said that you could think it was written by himself.

When Arthur died on 02 May 1969, Lynds (using the pseudonym "William Arden") together with Kin Platt (as "Nick West") took over as authors for the series. The books "The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon" and "The Mystery of the Nervous Lion" by Platt are often criticized since he just copied passages from Arthur's books one to one or only slightly modified them.

In 1971, Mary Virginia Carey took over from Platt as author of the series. Lynds and Carey continued the series together in the following ten years. In 1983, Marc Brandel became part of the team.

In the mid-1980ies, Random House began looking for a new concept for the series due to falling number of sales. They decided to produce several playbooks, a product which was very popular during this time. What made them special was that the reader could directly influence the plot.

Random House already had a playbook series in their children's literature section, so the playbook series of "The Three Investigators" were simply included there. This is why the "Find Your Fate" books (between 1985 and 1987) had the numbers FYF # 1, 2, 7 and 8. They were all written by new authors; except for "The Case of the Savage Statue".

In 1987, Random House decided to cease the series.

In 1989, Random House launched "The Three Investigators Crimebusters". The concept of the three detectives had changed a lot; they were noticeably older, had driver's licenses and girlfriends.

The authors had to strictly adhere to certain rules about the character of "The Three Investigators" while writing the books. They were not allowed to change the environment of the three detectives either.

The Crimebusters series was ceased in 1991; some sources say due to low number of sales, others say due to legal dispute with Robert Arthur's heirs. Therefore, two books, "Brain Wash" by Peter Lerangis and "High Strung" by Gayle Lynds, were never published in English and for a long time were considered to be lost.