Alfred Hitchcock. They got only translated, not localized. The newer books still take place in Rocky Beach, even though they are written by german authors. Which is kind of obvious, as they often get details concerning US society, politics, police, etc hilariously wrong.
Anyway they even invented some additional inter-chapters intermissions attributed to Hitchcock, given hints to the younger readers. In later work Hitchcock didn’t appear, iirc the license to use his name expired. They introduced another character in his place, Albert Hitfield, private-eye-turned-mystery-author, but I think they didn’t use him that often.
But my details are very likely wrong, i basically just listen to the audio plays, where they often drop characters and sometimes even tighten the plot . from the corresponding books, to keep the cast at a reasonable number and to keep them at about one hour.
Oh, and the two German handymen at Jones’ scrapyard were turned into Irishmen. Otherwise one of the early novels wouldn’t have worked.
2nd oh: They changed some of the names. Jupiter became Julius, Peter Crenshaw became Peter Shaw.
