“The BSC members had done a lot of detective work, but that didn’t make us real detectives”…BSC Mystery # 36: Kristy and the Cat Burglar

Memory Reaction

Didn't read this as a kid.

Revisited Reaction

I actually really enjoyed this one, because it ended up being about how the BSC isn’t an actually detective agency and probably shouldn’t be chasing criminals around.  This is the last mystery book to come out, so I guess that’s a fitting end. 

It starts out with Kristy, David Michael, and Karen exploring the woods behind their house that leads to some big mansion on a private road.  While doing this they see the BSC’s cop friend Sergeant Johnson driving by (but he doesn’t see them), then hear a gun shot and an alarm going off.  Kristy and the kids run away, but then a cop tells them to stop.  It is, of course, Sergeant Johnson.  After he sees who it is, he has them wait in his car while a bunch of other cops show up and do their cop thing.

It turns out some rich loner guy, Reinhart Golem, owns the house but is currently out of the country.  Someone lured his security guard away and then stole a bunch of diamonds from the safe.  This person also left a picture of a cat, which is the calling card of some notorious “Cat Burglar” that’s wanted all over the place. We also find out that there’s some tension between Sergeant Johnson and a couple other cops.  According to him it’s because a new guy wants to take the current Chief’s job when he retires, and Johnson (I’m going to stop typing Sergeant every time I say his name, because it’s really annoying) is his biggest competition. Oh, and Cary Retlin apparently lives in the area, so he keeps showing up.

The BSC decides to investigate, because that’s what they do.  They show up at the mansion and find a bullet casing and a red marker (that was supposedly used for drawing the cat picture).  They get caught snooping by the owner, who just got back into town.  He encourages the girls and Cary to solve the crime and even offers up an award.  He keeps encouraging and complimenting them every time he sees them.

We also find out that these other cops are acting like Sergeant Johnson’s a suspect and the BSC has to admit they think he’s one too.  He was at the crime scene right before the alarm went off and has been acting “odd.”  Then Kristy sees a set of markers in his office that’s missing a red one, and look just like the one found at the crime scene.  We also hear that Johnson had investigated Golem about something before, and it didn’t go anywhere.  I guess we’re supposed to think he’s got something against the guy. More importantly, the cops finally find some diamonds in his desk, so they arrest him (in front of the BSC).  But he tells the girls he’s being framed

Kristy starts to believe him, and thinks the evidence is off somehow.  So they do some more investigating and come to the conclusion that the other cop’s framing Johnson.  It’s dinner time so half the girls go to Chez Maurice (the restaurant where Golem eats most of his meals) and Kristy, Abby, Mary Anne, and Cary go to Golem’s house.  It turns out he’s at home, so Kristy’s group starts telling him their theory about a frame up.  But then Cary and Kristy realize that Golem has a lamp that was stolen by the Cat Burglar previously, and figure out Golem is the real thief and was trying to get the insurance money for the diamonds. He was framing Johnson because he held a grudge from the previous investigation.  Golem tries to lock the girls in his house before they can stop him from getting on a plane to Europe, but Abby and Mary Anne manage to get out of the house. 

At the same time the rest of the BSC was looking for Golem at Chez Maurice and happen to see his name in the guest book on the day of the crime.  They realize he was lying about being out of town that day, so they go to the cops, who were already getting suspicious.  They all go to Golem’s and manage to save Kristy, Abby, Mary Anne, and Cary.  Anyway, Kristy feels really stupid for letting Golem manipulate her and the other girls agree, so they decide to stop looking into mysteries for a while.

The subplot’s all about how Charlotte Johanssen read Harriet the Spy and decided to spy on everyone she knows.  It turns out her friends are also spying on her, but they end up doing it together.  At one point Becca and Vanessa hear some negative things Charlotte said about them during one of her solo spy trips.  They fight, then they make up. It’s really thrilling stuff. And we get a little plug about how we should all read that great book.

High/Lowlights

• According to this book Kristy’s house ends with a wooded area that goes past Cary’s house.  I was going to say this didn't match the map, but I guess it could, depending on what else is off the edge on that side.

• At a meeting a job comes in for a Thursday.  Mary Anne looks at the book and says, “Stacey, Mal, or Abby.”  Then Mallory says how she has an eye doctor’s appointment and Abby says she has a special soccer practice.  But, shouldn't Mary Anne already know this? Isn't that the point of the appointment book? Unless maybe both of those things just came up.  But do they not tell Mary Anne about appointments until she asks who’s free that day? 

• During one of Charlotte’s spy missions, they look at the Ramsey’s house and she says that Aunt Cecilia always spends all afternoon cooking dinner for the family. That makes her sound like a maid or something. 

• Johnson brings Kristy in for questioning and takes her into his office where no one could overhear them to talk.  I’m not surprised his colleagues were suspicious of him.

• Cary gets called down to the police station for questioning (as a witness, not a suspect), because Kristy told the cops was in the area during the break in.  They make a point of showing that his father was with him for the questioning, which makes it look even weirder when Kristy goes in alone. Johnson said they don’t need her parents because it isn't an “official” questioning, just a “consultation.” Sure.  That sounds totally legit.

• Stacey warns Charlotte that spying on her friends could make them mad at her, like in the book.  But Charlotte says she’s recording everything instead of writing it down, so no one will ever know.  But of course, when she starts spying with Becca and Vanessa, she accidentally plays the wrong tape and they hear (and get pissed off).

• Charlotte’s bitchy comments about her friends – Becca’s a baby that’s spoiled by Aunt Cecelia, and Vanessa’s embarrassed that her father can’t afford to buy her a nicer bike.  Vanessa defends them both saying Cecelia’s actually strict and her dad offered her a new bike and she refused.  Becca doesn't defend herself, but I guess it’s kind of hard to say you’re not spoiled without sounding like you are.

• You can tell this is a later book, because when the girls are doing research on the Cat Burglar they talk about using the internet instead of just microfilm in the library. 

• After the girls found the marker and bullet casings, I was already to complain about how the hell the cops missed that stuff.  But, they actually reference how weird it’s that the cops didn’t find it.  AND it turns out that it was planted after the fact, so it’s not that ridiculous.  Other than the fact that they didn't know immediately it was a frame up.

• For anyone who cares, Sergeant Johnson’s first name’s James.

• I can’t believe this Golem guy was dumb enough to sign his real name to a guest book in a restaurant when he was pretending to be out of town.  He planned out an elaborate crime that involved tricking his security people and using kids to frame a police officer.  And he has been breaking into houses for years.  But he didn’t think to sign a fake name?  Or maybe eat in that once? He deserves to get caught for that.

• I find it funny that they’re giving the kids a plot that was Mallory’s storyline in TWO super specials.  Okay, Mal didn't get the fight part of the story.  But she did reference Harriet.

• Claudia outfit: “Purple painter’s pants with lots of loops and pockets for carrying tools, red high-tops with purple laces, and a red sweatshirt customized with purple embroidery.” It’s inspired by Harriet.

• Stacey outfit: “She [had] on khaki pants and a white button-down blouse. She [had] a dark blue ribbon in her hair…her shoes [were] brown lace-up boots.”  Pretty tame…I feel like Stacey’s clothes were more interesting in the early books.

• Cary keeps saying he was bird watching when the BSC bumps into him around the mansion.  They think he’s making that up, but apparently he’s actually a serious bird watcher.

• Kristy thinks about how rich Golem must be because he eats most of his meals at Chez Maurice, and she would need to save up for months to eat one meal there.  She does realize even non-rich adults make more than baby-sitters, right?

• Also, haven’t Logan and Mary Anne eaten at Chez Maurice?  They never mentioned up saving for months for that.

• They don’t really explain why the cops went from being convinced of Johnson’s guilt to thinking Golem was manipulating things, even before talking to the BSC.  But whatever.

• Sergeant Johnson shows up at Claudia’s house during a BSC meeting.  Janine comes and knocks on Claud’s door and tells them there’s a cop there to see them, and “if she didn't know better” she’d think they were in trouble.  Do they expect me to believe that the “genius” didn't think there was anything weird about a cop wanting to talk to teenage girls alone?

• While I do love the book ending with them deciding not to play detective anymore, it’s kind of silly that THIS case makes them think it’s too dangerous.  Having a criminal stalk you and try to kill you or having physical fights with thieves doesn't bother them. But almost getting trapped in a room does the job. Makes total sense.

“Why on earth would anyone leave you here”……………BSC Mystery # 28: Abby and the Mystery Baby

Memory Reaction

After my time, so nothing to say here…

Revisited Reaction

Abby gets home from school and finds a baby on her front porch in a car seat.  Like what happens to most girls when they’re 13.  After the initial shock, she basically falls in love with the baby right away.  She IS a BSC member, afterall. They call the police, but Abby’s mom tells them (privately) that she wanted to let the baby stay with them.  And they agree right away. Which is when you know that Mrs. Stevenson knows more about the baby than she’s letting on.  So, the baby stays around, Abby and everyone else coo over him and that’s pretty much the bulk of the book.  Since they don’t know the kids real name, they call him, Eli.

This actually isn’t much of a mystery, but I think that’s why I like it as a mystery book…it’s actually believable for teenage “detectives.”  The BSC wants to see if they can find out who left the baby there.  

Their investigation’s pretty limited.  Mallory and Jessi think it was a woman in some writing group they are in, because she wrote a story about abandoning a baby.  I can see their point, because leaving a baby on someone’s door step’s such a rare and original idea…obviously there’s a connection.  Another suspect’s the nanny that Mrs. Stevenson hires, because Abby thinks she’s weird, and because she once calls him “E.J.”  The nanny says it’s because her nephew’s name is E.J., but the girls don’t totally buy it, because they always let their imaginations run away with them.  The only other clues the girls have are that Maria Kilbourne saw a green car in the area the day the baby was left, and that Abby finds a receipt from a NYC pharmacy on her driveway.  All of this, of course, leads nowhere.

The more interesting action is with Abby’s mother who’s acting a little weird.  First she acts shocked at the blanket that the baby was wrapped in.  Then, she agreed to take in the baby, and insisted on talking to the police and a social worker with no one else in the room.  And one day Abby calls her at work and is told that she was taking off for “family business,” which Mrs. Stevenson denies when she gets home.  Abby ends up searching her Mom’s home office, and sees that she had written the name “Miriam” down on post it note.  This reminds Abby that her mom has a sister named Miriam that the family hasn’t spoken to in years.  Abby and Anna look through old photos to see if they can find out what Miriam looks like, and they can only find one of her baby pictures…where she’s wrapped in the same blanket that Eli was wrapped in when he was dropped off. 

Abby figures out that since her mother ran off without telling them where she was going, that she must have found where Miriam was.  She hits redial on the phone, gets a hospital, and takes off to the city (by herself) to confront her mom.   She shows up at the hospital and finds her mom and aunt talking.  The story is that Eli’s father left her, she was struggling to make ends meet, and she didn’t take care of herself as well as she should (she’s diabetic).  She dropped the baby off at the Stevenson’s and then went to the hospital.  She was out of it/in a comma for a while, which I guess explains why she didn’t make a follow up call about the baby.  But everyone put the past fights behind them and wants to be family again.  Miriam and the baby are going to live with Abby’s grandparents in Florida while she gets back on her feet.  This way if she has to drop the baby off one someone else’s doorstep, she doesn’t have to worry about him freezing to death.

There’s a subplot that’s a bit more prominent than there usually is in mysteries – the BSC decides to say it is “writing month” or something for the kids they sit for.  They encourage all the kids to write poetry/stories, and then host some event at the library where the kids do readings.  It’s a nice idea in theory, but reading little kids’ stories isn’t the most entertaining thing.

High/Lowlights

• So, soon after Abby finds the kid, she goes to change his diaper (the mom had left a bag with some supplies).  And she’s all, “Suddenly, I had the answer to something I was wondering about. It’s a boy!”  The way that was worded just cracked me up for some reason.

• Claudia outfit: “A funky red-flannel minidress layered with a black-and-white-checked thrift-shop man’s vest, black tights, and red high-tops.”  I have two thoughts – first, could they possibly work in more hyphens into that description?  Second, that actually sounds a little like something someone on My So-Called Life would wear.  The only problem is that show was on in 1994, three years before this book was published.  Styles changed a bit.

• When I Googled My So-Called Life to find that link, I saw that the entire series is on Hulu Plus, and I’m now really tempted to spend my weekend watching it.

• Stacey was wearing jeans that “were stonewashed to a perfect degree of faded blue, and torn at the knee in this casual-yet-not-sloppy way. She wore them with a crisp white shirt, a green V-necked sweater, and brown Hush Puppies.”  That doesn’t really sound like a Stacey outfit to me.  Maybe the ripped jeans, but not the sweater.

• Apparently, Miriam left a note in the car seat, which Abby totally missed (but her mom found).  Some detective.

• When talking about the woman in her writing group, Mal’s all, “I know it’s a mistake to confuse fact with fiction,” and it cracked me up because Mal is ALWAYS mixing the two up.

• Miriam’s story makes no sense.  The sister lived in NYC, so she rented a car, drove to CT, and knocked on Abby’s door.  When no one answered, she didn’t know what to do and was feeling faint, so she left the baby on the porch, but then apparently drove back to the city before going to the hospital.  If she was that out of it, why not go to a closer hospital?  I mean, this takes place in February, not the best time for leaving a kid outside.  She really couldn’t sit in the car for an hour to wait to see if anyone came home?

• Also Mrs. Stevenson said that Miriam used her last few dollars to rent a car and drive to Connecticut.  Did she not think of making a freaking phone call?  If she knew where her sister lived, she must have known where she works and that she’s in the city all the time.

• The Stevenson’s borrow a crib from Kristy’s family, one that supposedly belonged to Emily Michelle but was now in the attic.  My question is: Emily hasn’t aged since shewas adopted.  So, how did she outgrow her crib?

• Mrs. Stevenson tells the nanny she hires that the baby is four months old, and Abby notices that she says this as fact.   But this is before she tracks down Miriam, so how did she know about the 4 months part?  Unless maybe it was in the note?  But it sounded like Miriam wrote a somewhat incoherent note, so it seems weird that she would put in that info but forget contact information.

• Abby does attempt to call the pharmacy to find out if the receipt’s really from the baby-abandoner or if it actually came from her mom.  The first thing I noticed was that when she calls the pharmacy she gets an actual person. How retro. Then the rest of the call’s kind of silly – she pretends she’s her mom and asks about her prescription to see if her mom is a customer.  Then there’s a contrived moment where she asks if her maiden name is in the system, which is all so that the pharmacist can say they have an M Goldberg in the system.  Which I guess is a clue, but it’s a stupid one because who’s going to read it and think, “Oh, I bet that means the baby was left by Abby’s aunt that we have never heard about.”

• I don’t know why Abby didn’t think to say…ask her mother if it was her receipt.

• Mrs. Stevenson’s first name is Rachel, and her maiden name was Goldberg.  In case it ever comes up in BSC trivia or something.

• Abby calls Kristy when she finds the baby, because she doesn’t know what to do.  Kristy comes over with her grandmother, and then calls that cop they are always working with.  I don’t know she couldn’t just call the main number at the station.  When they are looking for clues about who’s robbing banks or whatever, it makes sense that they need to talk to him because most cops won’t talk to kids.  But when it’s an actual emergency anyone would listen.

• At a sleepover, the girls are all into watching Eli, and Abby says it’s like the movie “Three Men and a Baby” because they all fought over who got to take care of the baby.  Which doesn’t totally sound like the plot of that movie (at least the majority of it), but whatever.  I remember in that movie the baby was left on the doorstop of where the father lived, so maybe this was supposed to be foreshadowing that Eli was left on their doorstep because they were family.  Cause the girls all think the person just picked the Stevensons at random, because it’s a nice house.

• Eli’s real name is Daniel.  I like Eli better.

• So, Charlotte, Becca, and the Arnold twins are talking about how they are worried about boring people with their writing, so Claudia and Stacey talk them into writing and performing a play.  Because Carolyn’s a science nut, she wants to write about photosynthesis, and that’s what they make the play about.  Good thing they won’t bore anyone.

• I guess Charlotte is over her stage fright/shyness at this point?

• The girls are looking at pictures from Abby and Anna’s Bat Mitzvah, and Mary Anne asks if all their relatives were there.  Abby says, “All the one’s were speaking to.”  Which comes off like a joke, but I guess is a  hint they have a relative their not speaking to.

• Also, when talking about families, Kristy mentions her Aunt Colleen, who was mentioned way back in book 6. 

• Abby totally gets away with going to NYC alone because her mother felt guilty about lying.

• Other stories read at the BSC poetry slam thingy a rap about boogers and puke (the Pike triplets) and a bunch of stories about mystery babies appearing (the kids in Abby’s neighborhood who are obviously influenced by actual happenings).  Oh, and Vanessa gives a bunch of background on poetry.

• Since Eli/Daniel is moving to Florida, Abby thinks that she should figure out a BSC trip there.  I guess no one told her it already happened.

“It had been a merry, scary season”….BSC Super Mystery # 4: Baby-sitters’ Christmas Chiller

Memory Reaction

This was after my time. The fact that I’ve already covered most of the books I actually read, is sort of messing up my format lately, but there’s not much I can do about that.

Revisited Reaction

This book really has three mysteries that only intertwine slightly. But they all take place in the days leading up to another Christmas in BSC-land.

First: Someone’s breaking into homes in Kristy’s neighborhood, trashing them, and leaving messages that say “naughty” painted on a wall somewhere. Someone also tries to break into Abby’s and Mrs. Porter’s houses, but just leaves a note saying “nice.” Of course, the BSC has to jump in and try to investigate. They even volunteer their baby-sitting services to the families who’ve been victimized as an excuse to poke around. They help figure out that it’s a gardener that several families in the area had recently dropped for a different company. And because it’s the BSC, they end up helping the police set the guy up, by having Watson fire the guy, then pretend to go out of town. So the police catch the guy and everyone (except the culprit) is happy.

Meanwhile: Mallory and Jessi are walking home from a rehearsal for their church Christmas pageant, and they find a woman on the street with no memory of how she got there, and no ID or belongings. She’s also pregnant, because regular amnesia isn’t dramatic enough for a Super Mystery. Anyway, this woman (who they’re calling Mary) ends up staying at the Pike’s for a few days. Then she goes into labor. During a snowstorm. The only surprise is that it happens the day before Christmas Eve and not midnight on Christmas. Anyway, Mallory helps track down the woman’s identity by tracing a label in her clothes and sending the picture of a ring to a jewelry store near it. Or something equally ridiculous. It turns out the woman was taking train to travel after visiting some friends in Boston, but before going home. Her husband was in Australia on business, so no one was really looking for her. She got off the train and was mugged or something. But giving birth started bringing her memory back, because otherwise it’d be too depressing for a Christmas story.

Lastly: Stacey and Claudia are visiting Mr. McGill in New York and are being harassed by someone. Weird things keep happening in the apartment building…the lights go out in the hallway outside their door, they get stuck in an elevator, someone dumps red paint in the elevator that looked like blood, etc. Also, someone leaves a creepy note on their door and a picture of Stacey that was taken by someone following her. The worst thing is that Stacey almost falls/maybe was pushed in front of a subway (but was fine, obviously). At first they think it may be Ethan, but they finally confront him. It turns out that his ex-girlfriend, Cybil, lives in Stacey’s building and has been stalking them. She leaves them a note to meet in the basement, and like idiots they go. There’s a whole dramatic confrontation, complete with a power failure, but at the end Ethan just brings her to her parents to get her help. It’s really anti-climactic.

High/Lowlights

• Claudia outfit: "She had braided her long jet-black into a single braid with narrow red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple ribbons woven in. Her short red turtleneck dress had a braided yellow belt, and she was wearing purple tights, yellow scrunch socks, and black Docs. Her earrings were in the shape of Christmas trees, but they were painted in rainbow colors, instead of just green. On some people this might have been too much, but on Claudia...it looked fabulous." - of course it did.

• The funniest part’s that when the police arrest the gardener, the BSC runs out of Abby’s house to watch, and Watson, Mrs. Brewer, and Mrs. Stevenson keep calling out telling to them to stop. As though they’ve finally decided to set limits with their children’s crime fighting.

• However, these same adults don’t have any issue with their kids helping to organize a neighborhood watch.

• Ethan tells Stacey her Dad’s apartment building was built over an old graveyard. Really? Why is everything always built over a graveyard?

• When Mal goes to the police station to give her statement about finding Mary, they tell her to bring her parents. And Mrs. Pike goes! Someone in the Stoneybrook police department actually treats the BSC members like the minors that they are. I’m shocked.

• Most of the BSC goes to Abby’s house for a Hanukkah party and after giving us all a lesson about the holiday, they hang out with Anna. But it seems weird that Anna wouldn’t also invite her own friends to it. I don’t think this is the first time this has happened with an Abby book.

• What’s worse is that when they hear that the Papadakises house was robbed, they all take off to “investigate” and just leave poor Anna behind.

• One weird thing’s that Kristy finds a note in her mailbox that says, “nice” and she writes it off as some girl who may have a crush on Sam or Charlie. But then later, the guy actually breaks into Abby’s house and Morbidda Destiny’s house to leave them “nice” notes. Why the switch?

• Stacey and Claudia go to a coffee bar in the city…they seem young for that, but maybe people do start drinking it at that age now.

• I don’t mean to judge, but what was Mary’s husband doing going to Australia when his wife was 9 months pregnant?

• Two of the homes that were broken into happened when the people were on vacation. Now, this is in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Do most people go out of town the week before Christmas, but come home before it? I usually hear about people leaving for the holiday itself.

• Who uses a gardener in December anyway?

• Apparently Mal and Jessi put random facts about horses in the club notebook, so Stacey and Claudia know that horses in harnesses only appear in Central Park. Or something like that. It makes Mallory and Jessi sound really lame, and maybe that’s the point. But seriously, they like horses so much they can’t do anything without mentioning them?

• A salesperson at Tiffany’s lets Stacey and Claud try on jewelry. That seems very kind of her. Oh, and of course Stacey’s dad has already promised her diamond earrings after she finishes high school. I wonder if he told her that before or after she asked for a diamond ring?

• Mallory mentions saying grace before eating dinner with her family. Now, I remember a lot of scenes with the Pikes eating meals, and I don’t think they’ve ever mentioned saying grace before them. I guess they did that to support this new backstory about the Pikes ALWAYS helping out with their church’s Christmas pageant. Because I don’t think we’ve ever heard them talk about church before.

• Dawn’s in this book, since she’s visiting for the holidays. She says she wants a "bi-coastal" sleepover with all her friends someday. Which has already happened.

• Also, does Dawn think the word “bi-coastal” sounds cooler than it is?

• The entire Prologue and Epilogue of this book is done as a notebook entry from Jessi. It’s really annoying, I hate her handwriting.

• Most of the girls are at a sleepover at Kristy’s when Mrs. Porter’s house is robbed. Watson and Kristy's mom don't let the girls run out and play detective when it happens (in the middle of the night). However, they do go the next day, and I think she’s amused by the girls’ detective act. She keeps smiling as they subtly try and ask questions. It makes me like her a little.

• It was really obvious that Ethan had an ex-girlfriend in the building, and that she was the one behind everything. I wish they had just made her bitchy, instead of out-and-out crazy.

• So apparently, Cybil tells the doorman in Stacey’s building that she’s friends with Stacey and they like to play jokes on each other. But I can’t believe that the doorman wouldn’t speak up when the “jokes” involve dumping paint all over the building’s elevator.

• If you’re wondering how the girls have so much time on their hands…SMS closed for winter break a few days sooner than expected because of issues with the heat. Only in BSC-land can they get extra days off and not have to make them up at some point down the line.

“Have you been reading Nancy Drew again?”…….Baby-sitters Club Mystery # 32: Claudia and the Mystery in the Painting

Memory Reaction

I didn’t read this as a kid.

Revisited Reaction

This somewhat convoluted, so bear with me….Claudia has a sitting job for the son of Rebecca Madden, a woman who’s grandmother was a slightly famous artist named Grandmother Madden. She signed all her work that way, so that’s how she’s known, even though it feels awkward to keep saying that. Anyway, Rebecca inherited her grandmother’s house and its contents after her death a few years ago. Her cousins had been fighting the will, but when they found out there were no remaining paintings as part of the inheritance, they (just recently) agreed to let her have it. Rebecca’s planning an estate sale of her grandmother’s possessions, and Claudia volunteers the BSC to help out. Rebecca’s hoping to make enough to go to art school.

Now, the backstory on Grandmother Madden’s that she was a known artist, but after a show in New York got terrible reviews, she gave up painting, and supposedly destroyed any work she hadn’t already sold/given to others. Then she became an art teacher. Claudia decides that since she can’t imagine destroying her own work as an artist, the same must be true about Grandmother Madden. Because all artists are exactly the same, right? She thinks/hopes she’ll find the paintings hidden in the house. The value of the paintings went up after Grandmother died, which was why the cousins had been fighting the will.

While the girls are working in the house, they run into a couple weird things. First, Mr. Ogura, a guy who works for the company helping plan the estate sale, keeps turning up. The girls think he’s suspicious because more than once he showed up at the house looking for Rebecca at the same time that she has gone to his office to see him. He’s also around when a catalogue of Grandmother Madden’s paintings disappears.

The BSC also thinks Rebecca’s husband, Mr. Cook, is suspicious. Basically because he doesn’t think the baby-sitters are the greatest people around, which I actually found refreshing. He gets annoyed when he sees Claudia going through paintings and dropping something that may have been valuable. Plus, Rebecca’s son Jimmy keeps saying how his Dad doesn’t want Rebecca to go to art school, and doesn’t like him to paint, which does make the guy sound like jerk.

Anyway, it turns out there are actually two Mr. Ogura, a father and a son. Rebecca had been working with the senior, while the junior (that the BSC has been dealing with) is actually working with Rebecca’s cousin to try to find/steal some of Grandmother’s paintings. We find out that Grandmother Madden didn’t completely destroy her work, she just had her students paint over them. Mr. Oruga Jr. and the cousin try to leave with some of the painted over paintings. When Claudia tries to stop them, they lock her in a closet. Mr. Cook shows up and lets Claud out, then they call the police and find Mr. Ogura and the cousin with the paintings. And since Rebecca did so well with her estate sale, she decides she’ll still share the money from the paintings with her cousins.

Meanwhile…Remember how Claudia became an honorary trustee of the Stoneybrook Museum? Well, that plot gets brought back up after about 20 books. The museum’s opening a kids’ art room called the Kaleidoscope Room. It sounds like it’s basically a room where kids can go and try painting/drawing/etc on their own. The woman running it asks Claudia to bring some kids to try it out. She can’t make it, so some of the other BSC members go with some charges. Hijinks occur. This woman thinks the projects should be structured, so she gives them all pictures with the outline of a bear and only gives them brown paint. But Claud and the others get her to see that she should let kids be creative and have more open projects. So, the room opening’s a success

High/Lowlights

• Claudia outfit: “Navy blue pants with wide legs, red suspenders decorated with big sunbursts, a white T-shirt, and over it all, a huge red-and-white-checked shirt. [Her] earrings were also bright yellow sunbursts.”

• Claud’s doing research on Grandmother Madden and uses an electronic card catalogue at the library. I guess that’s a sign it’s a later book.

• They never really explain the deal with Mr. Cook not liking art. The little kid keeps talking about how his dad doesn’t want his mom to go to art school, and doesn’t like him painting. But at the end, the guy says he was just jealous that he didn’t know anything about art, and seems fine with everything. I feel like we missed a scene or something.

• Stacey outfit: “Short plaid [red and black] skirt, clunky [black] shoes, ribbed (black) turtleneck, and [red] vest.”

• Claud outfit: “Overalls and a long-sleeved green-and-blue striped shirt [and] a green-and-blue checked cap.”

• Charlie drives Claudia and Kristy over to the Madden house one day after school. A couple days later he’s giving them a ride home when they decide they want to go to the Madden house…and they make a point of saying they give him directions. Wouldn’t he remember how to get there?

• Rebecca tells Claudia where her key’s hidden so that the BSC can help with the sale one day when she won’t be there. Then a few days later, Claudia just shows up at the house and goes for the key. It seems a bit inappropriate, since she’d only really been given permission to use it that once. But since she saves the day, I guess all’s forgiven.

• The whole reveal about the paintings being painted over’s a rip off of that Mallory book with the diary. I actually specifically thought they wouldn’t do the painting over thing, because it was already done in that book. I guess I was giving them too much credit.

• There’s this other subplot about the kid finding a cat that looks like a cat the grandmother used to own, and it makes me think of another Mallory book. But it turns out that the cousin who was involved had lost her cat, which I guess the grandmother owned. I didn’t really pay that much attention because it wasn’t remotely interesting.

• Grandmother Madden would buy a new cat whenever one died on her, and get one that looks the same and name it the same thing. I’m not a pet-person, so I may be missing something, but that seems a bit weird.

• Claudia outfit: “[She] was wearing a long, full, black skirt with red, orange, pink, yellow, and turquoise flowers embroidered along the hem; a loose pink top; and a necklace [she’d] made out of papier-mâché beads painted to match the flowers on the skirt.”

• The woman running the Kaleidoscope Room’s a bit extreme…it really never occurred to her that kids would want to choose their own colors for painting? Especially since she gave them an outline of a bear, and not all bears are brown.

• When Claudia’s talking to her mother about how she can’t believe Grandmother Madden had destroyed her art, Mrs. Kishi’s all, “well the article says she did, so she must have. Have you been reading Nancy Drew again?” I’m not sure why but it made me laugh.

• Corrie Addision shows up as one of the kids trying the art room, which makes sense since she’s been known to like art and was in the original book about the museum. But I feel like she only shows up every twenty books. And her parents don’t show at the opening, so I guess they’re still missing out on key moments in their kids’ lives.

“I know you love to solve mysteries, but this time you’re going to have to keep working”……. BSC Mystery 33: Stacey and the Stolen Hearts

Memory Reaction

I missed this one as a kid, but I’m kind of sad I did.

Revisited Reaction

This is one mystery that I actually believe could happen to a bunch of 8th grade girls. Pete Black gets Stacey to agree to help him with a Valentine’s Day fundraiser. They’re selling “valentine-grams” where kids write messages that will be delivered with candy on Valentine’s Day. The kids at SMS are all into it, and write all sorts of messages. But one day after school the bag that holds all the cards is stolen. Whoever took them starts making the more embarrassing cards public, by doing things like posting that Cokie wrote 12 cards to her current boyfriend and he sent her none, that one of the girls from Stacey and the Bad Girls sent one to Robert and he’s not into her, and putting photo copies of cards all over the hall, etc.

Of course, the BSC helps Stacey investigate. Their suspects are the people who were in the hall at the time the cards were stolen, including Cary Retlin, Pete, Robert (who Stacey is no longer dating), and a couple Claudia got together when she ran her personals column. They finally get a break when one of the copied valentines also shows the sleeve of the person copying it….someone wearing stripes. They look all over school and finally see that Cary’s wearing a striped shirt. Claudia also remembers that Cary told them he had an alibi for “after school” before he even knew when the bag was taken. When Stacey confronts him, he reminds her he has an alibi (he was at the dentist), but admits that he helped the person who did it, after the fact. He tells her it’s a guy who heard girls talking about sending him “prank” valentines, including a girl he had sent a real one to. The people who were in on these pranks are the ones who were getting embarrassed.

Stacey figures out that this is Alan Gray, and tells him if he returns the cards “anonymously” she won’t turn him in. He does, and they get all the cards delivered to the right people. Then Stacey heads to NY to see her current boyfriend for V-Day.

Meanwhile, the BSC’s working with the local library to plan a Valentine’s Day party for kids. At a bunch of sitting jobs they hear how kids don’t like the holiday because they have to worry about getting cards/not getting cards etc. But they have a “focus group” to find out what the kids do like about it, and plan the party accordingly. It’s kind of ridiculous. Like they need a focus group to tell them that kids like getting cards and having sweets, but don’t like not getting cards from people.

High/Lowlights

• This girl named Andi, who Stacey was friends with when she left the BSC, and who apparently hooked up with Robert before he Stacey broke up, approaches Stacey to talk about Robert. They’ve both noticed how he’s acting a little off and disinterested. It seems really out-of-place, but I think it’s a set up for a later book.

• I feel like the books are really inconsistent about which of the girls bring lunch and which of them buy it. Sometimes Kristy’s always getting the hot lunch, talking about how gross it is, but saying she likes to buy it to be able to talk about it being gross. But then sometimes (like here), she brings it from home.

• Apparently, Stacey recently cut her hair to shoulder length, and seems to have gotten rid of the perm. I wonder if it led to a fight with her friends.

• Pete’s president of the 8th grade, which is why he’s running the fundraiser. The other class officers are going to help actually deliver the cards, but he and Stacey are the only ones selling them. I guess this makes the mystery a bit simpler, but I think it’s weird for them not to have more helpers.

• Stacey and Pete get permission to miss a couple classes so they can sell them during the 6th and 7th grade lunch periods. This makes it even weirder that they wouldn’t get more people to help. I can see letting kids miss one or two classes, but with the system in place here, Pete and Stacey would be missing at least one class a day (or two classes every other day).

• Alan comes up to Stacey and asks if he can get back a valentine that he had bought, and she tells him no. But, I think that’s a bit harsh…it isn’t the postal service, it’s a school fundraiser. Alan probably should have tried Pete first though.

• They also don’t really explain why Stacey’s the one person Pete wants help from. He tries to say it’s because she helped plan a Halloween dance, and was on the Pep Squad (which I guess is different than Cheerleading?). But that seems like more of a justification for Stacey playing this role than a reason to ask her.

• Girls sending Alan fake valentines is kind of mean, but totally a realistic thing for 13-year-olds to do. Plus, Alan probably deserved it.

• Robert teases Stacey for not knowing the difference between a robin and a sparrow, and says how her being a “city-girl” was always hard on him. Which is consistent with another Stacey book, but honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two kinds of birds, and I’ve always lived in the suburbs.

• Pete’s on the suspect list because he made a comment about it not being bad to have the cards all gone. Later Mary Anne overhears him tell his friend that he was worried about a poem he’d sent to Emily Bernstein. But why would Pete have to steal all the cards to take back one he sent? He’s running the fundraiser and could have gotten his back whenever he wanted.

• Stacey calls Cary’s dentist to check out his alibi, and the receptionist tells her that he had an appointment the day the cards were taken. But don’t dentists have the same confidentiality rules as doctors?

• I have a hard time believing that Cary would be dumb enough to let his sleeve show in the photocopy of a valentine he was posting all over school. Also, why would his hand even have to be there? Why not just close the lid?

• Awe…Mathew Hobart has a crush on Mary Anne and asks if she’ll be his valentine. She says yes, but that Logan’s her valentine too. Mathew’s still happy about it.

• James Hobart likes Margo Pike, but just as friends (since, you know, they’re kids). And guess what? Margo likes him! Amazing coincidence. It’s kind of annoying to have this whole subplot about what can be bad about Valentine’s Day (kids feeling rejected), but still make all the kids who like someone be liked in return.

• I’m not sure why the party they have for kids is the day before Valentines Day. Except for the fact that they couldn’t have the subplot end after the main plot.

“Have you ever experienced True Boredom?”….BSC Mystery # 35: Abby and the Notorious Neighbor

Memory Reaction

This was the second to last mystery in the series, so it was quite a while after I stopped reading. Therefore, no memory.

Revisited Reaction

Abby gets sick with bronchitis and has to miss a bunch of school. She’s a pretty active person, so she gets bored with this quickly. While watching some America’s Most Wanted-type show, she becomes convinced she recognizes one of the fugatives. Everyone tells her she’s imagining things, but she tracks down a tape of the episode and decides the person she recognizes as an embezzler is her neighbor. Again, people tell her she’s imagining things, but she convinces Kristy to snoop around the guy’s house to find out more information. Abby finally convinces that cop that the BSC has a totally inappropriate relationship with to look into the neighbor. He does, and because we want to encourage kids to spy on their neighbors, it turns out that this man’s the criminal in question.

He also appears to be a rather incompetent criminal, because despite being on the run, he gets mail at his home from his home town (in Iowa) and keeps pictures his kids drew on the refrigerator with their names visibly signed. And by visibly signed, I mean Kristy can look in one of his windows and see the names. We don’t see all the behind the scenes stuff, but apparently the cops found enough evidence that the neighbor was really the embezzler in question. Abby and the rest of the BSC get to watch, because they just happen to be in Abby’s room at the time of the arrest. The whole thing’s filmed by the TV show that first featured him, and Abby gets a reward from the show.

We also get an incredibly boring subplot about how kids in town are entering this go-cart race. The Pike triplets are making one, and Vanessa’s making one with Charlotte and Becca Ramsey. Nicky feels all left out, but manages to worm his way onto the triplets’ team by giving them some decals or something boring like that. The Rodowsky boys are also making a go-cart, but aren’t sure how. The end up spying on the girls’ team because they don’t want to admit they need help. I think it’s supposed to be cute, but it isn’t. There’s also drama with the Rodowskys because Jackie wants to be the driver, and Shea thinks that’s a recipe for disaster. But somehow Jackie convinces him and actually does pretty well. But they all lose to Bill and Melody Kormon, a last minute entry.

High/Lowlights

• Supposed the neighbor embezzled from his company, “driving it into bankruptcy,” then abandoned his family after stealing his wife’s life savings. But then they tell us he disappeared with more than $20,000 of stolen money. Now, I’ll assume that Abby’s interpretation may be exaggerated because she was sick when she first saw the show, but how’s $20,000 enough to warrant a spot on any kind of show like this? Or enough to hide out in the rich section of a Connecticut suburb? How much more do they mean?

• Just for the record, this book totally acknowledges that the plot’s straight out of Rear Window and other similar movies.

• Abby says she and Mary Anne are both old movie buffs, which isn’t usually mentioned, but I think is consistent with their characters/other books.

• Mal asks if he does anything suspicious like go out at odd hours or “wear disguises.” Does she mean leave his house in weird hats or sunglasses? I mean, really. What does she expect to see? I would think someone putting on an actual disguise wouldn’t do it before they left their house, since otherwise it would be obvious who they really were.

• It seems kind of out of character that the girls just laugh about the idea that the Rodowskys are spying on Charlotte, Becca, and Vanessa because they don’t want to ask girls for help. I would think they’d try and convince the boys it’s okay to go to the girls.

• Abby’s sister, Anna, plays the violin and likes classical music. I get that. But why does everything about her need to be connected to that? She tells Abby how if she was home sick and had time to do nothing she would read a biography on Beethoven, catalog her CD collection, and prepare for her Advanced Music Theory class. She can’t play the violin, but also watch soap operas or read romance novels?

• As I was reading this, I started thinking how if these books took place today, these girls (who are always going to the library to research during mysteries) could just Google the neighbor. So, imagine my surprise when Claudia and Stacey actually use the Internet (on Janine’s computer). I guess these books got “modern” after I stopped reading.

• I always wanted to build a go-cart when I was a kid. In TV-shows and books kids were always having chances to do this, but I never heard of one happening in the real world.

• During their Internet hunt, Claudia and Stacey find a couple pictures of the embezzler that Abby can use to compare to the neighbor. And in only “ten minutes” they have two blurry pictured printed out. Isn’t technology amazing?

• While Abby’s home sick she doesn’t just spy on the embezzler, she spies on everyone on her street, with binoculars. Kristy’s torn between being interested by what Abby’s learned and worried (because Kristy herself is a neighbor).

• Kristy and Abby have this ridiculous conversation about how the pictures on the neighbor’s refrigerator (they can see them through the window) are evidence that the guy has kids who are around 6 and 8. Apparently, they know that all six-year-olds draw houses with smoke coming out of the chimney and eight-year-olds draw horses or rocket ships (depending on gender).

• Throughout this book I kept thinking how Karen is always getting in trouble in the Little Sister books for spying on her neighbors, and here we have Kristy helping Abby to spy on the neighbors.

• So, the show Abby watched was actually called “Mystery Trackers,” so I’ll buy that a white-collar criminal would show up on one (when they wouldn’t on America’s Most Wanted). But stealing $20,000 does not seem worthy of that much attention. Not that it isn’t a bad thing to do, there are just worse criminals.

• One of the things Abby tells Kristy’s that the Kormons are building a go-cart that she thinks will be very fast, even though the rest of the BSC and the other kids entering the race don’t know about this. I guess Kristy offers to help the Kormons, because the day of the race she shows up with them, and has to convince the judge to let them enter (since they got there late). Kristy’s all thrilled and pleased with herself after they win, like she had some stake in the competition, but I’m not sure why.

• What annoys me about this book’s that everyone keeps telling Abby that she’s imagining things and that she shouldn’t be spying on her neighbors. But, having her be right basically invalidates all those comments and encourage kids to “snoop.” I hope this reaction doesn’t mean I’m old.

“I create a mystery. You and the baby-sitter detective squad solve it”….BSC Mystery # 25: Kristy and the Middle School Vandal

Memory Reaction

I actually couldn’t remember if I read this as a kid. I feel like I did, just because the cover looked so familiar, but wasn’t totally sure. I remember the last regular book I read, but not the last mystery. And this one falls right between the last one I definitely remembered and the first one I definitely didn’t read.

However, once I started reading it, I remembered how it ended, so it turns out I guess I did read it. As soon as the mentioned a signature in green chalk I remembered how the culprit was color blind. But it clearly didn’t make that big of an impression on me, since that memory didn’t hit until I’d started reading.


Revisited Reaction

One day in school, Cary Retlin takes Kristy’s math homework out of her bag and erases all her answers. This leads to an argument between the two of them about whether the girls in the BSC are better detectives than Cary and his friends (the Mischief Knights). Cary totally mocks Kristy when she talks about the BSC having “investigations.” It’s kind of awesome. Anyway, by the end of the conversation, Cary has challenged the BSC to a “mystery challenge,” where he’ll provide a clue that the BSC needs to figure out to find another clue, then another, etc. If they solve all 8 of them within 6 school days, Cary will stop bugging them. If they don’t…..Cary will keep the watch he stole from Kristy. Anyway, Kristy accepts on behalf of the BSC, who are all eager to win.

Meanwhile, someone’s playing some serious pranks around school, including graffiti-ing the principal’s car and some other acts of vandalism. It appears as though this was the work of the Mischief Knights….the graffiti is signed with their traditional “MK.” However, they always sign their work in red, and the more recent pranks are being signed in green. This happens to occur while the teachers at SMS are negotiating a new contract. The chairman of the negotiating committee for the school board claims that the teachers don’t have a right to more money when they can’t control the students (evidenced by the prank/vandalism). There are threats of a strike and since it’s June, everyone’s worried that they’ll need to go back to school over the summer to make up for lost days.

Kristy’s convinced that Cary’s involved, and she even tells the principal about it, but Cary turns out to be innocent (of these more recent pranks, anyway). He’s understandable annoyed that Kristy did that, and she feels a little guilty. But they patch things up enough to continue their “mystery.” The last clue tells the BSC they need to determine who’s trying to frame the Mischief Knights, which the girls had been trying to figure out anyway. Mary Anne figures out that this person must be color blind, hence mixing up the red and green. And Claudia decides it must be this one often-in-trouble guy who has a horrible sense of fashion. But to get proof, they ask Cary to break into the guy’s locker, even though getting his help means forfeiting the challenge.

The reason they’re willing to do this is that the strike’s supposed to start the next day, and the BSC thinks catching the person behind all the vandalism will stop it. Once Cary and the BSC have proof, they go to the school principal, who calls an emergency school board meeting to announce the prankster has been caught and will be dealt with. This somehow gets the school board to stop harping on the behavior issues, which helps the negotiations and the teachers agree not to strike.

And since the BSC didn’t win, Cary continues to annoy Kristy. At least until he matures a couple years and just asks her out.

High/Lowlights

• Here’s what I don’t get. This color blind kid uses green chalk to leave the MK’s trademark, because he doesn’t realize that he isn’t using red. But, if he’s color blind, wouldn’t he have seen any previous MK signature as green? So, when he tries to copy it, it wouldn’t matter that he’s color blind because he’d still know what looks the same to himself. And if someone just told him the signature was always red, he should have known that he doesn’t see red the same as everyone else.

• Pranks are one thing, but it kind of sucks to erase all the answers from someone’s homework.

• Cary challenges the girls to a “mystery,” but it’s really not. The clues he give them are mini-logic puzzles that direct them to an area of the school (like the auditorium), where they find another piece of paper with a new puzzle. The last clue’s about an actual mystery, but that’s not until the last day.

• I don’t think it’s totally fair for Cary to say the girls forfeited the challenge by asking for his help. The clue said, “bring me the head of the false Mischief Knight.” They go to him and give him the name of this person. The proof was needed to go to the principal, but it wasn’t a requirement of Cary’s clue.

• Claudia outfit: “Today she was wearing pink jellies, white ankle socks with pink hearts around the edges, and majorly baggy white overalls cut off just below the knee, over a tie-dyed pink, green, and yellow T-shirt.” And this is the girl who calls the color-blind kid a fashion victim.

• I don’t really follow the logic behind how catching the vandal stops the teacher strike. But whatever.

• I love when Cary mocks Kristy for saying the BSC has “investigations.” Because by this point in the series the BSC was taking their detective work a little too seriously.

• So, the challenge from Cary inspires Kristy to have a scavenger hunt for the kids they sit for. Because they wouldn’t be good baby-sitters if they weren’t going out of their way to do fun projects with little kids.

• Stacey outfit: “She was wearing black leggings, side-zippered flat black ankle boots with pointed toes, a silver-threaded T-shirt dress that stopped at mid-thigh, and heart earrings.” I actually like this, but it seems too wintery for June.

• I hate how one-dimensional these girls sometimes are. They’re coming up with themes for these scavenger hunts, and we get the following suggestions: dance, art, and sports. I bet you have no idea who made them, huh?

• The thing about the kids scavenger hunt’s that they have 3 separate ones with two teams each. But in each hunt they have a different list of clues. So, it makes no sense that at the end they try and come up with winners out of all six teams.

• I thought most of Cary’s clue were pretty obvious, and thought it took the girls forever to solve….but I suppose that isn’t totally fair, since I may have been remembering the answers.

• One of the clues references, “toasted gloves and barbequed bats,” which Kristy realizes is about the shed she thought she had helped burn down. What I like about it’s that the other girls all get quiet when Abby goes, “wow, a shed burned down” because they know the whole story, but she doesn’t, since it was before she moved there.

• One of the kid’s scavenger hunts includes an item that “stinks” about sports, which one teams translates into sweat socks. So, they go to Mrs. Porter’s house and ask her for some. Because they know she’s such an athlete?

• I think this may be the first time Mrs. Porter’s been mentioned without getting the story about Karen thinking she’s a witch.

• One of the clues has the girls going to the boiler room of the school. Now, are places like that normally open to students? They acknowledge that they probably aren’t supposed to be there, but I would think it would actually be locked.

• Another clue’s a reference back to when Claudia ran a personals column at the school paper. For someone who just moved to town, Cary has a really good sense of BSC history. He must have read the books.

• I also like that they mention Claudia PREVIOSULY working for the paper, and don’t try to make it seem like it was still happening.

• Kristy worries about ruining fingerprints when she searches vandal-kid’s locker. Because all middle schools run fingerprints?

• Cary’s rather amusing....he has the clues placed in envelopes at various places around the school, and one of them is labeled as “Le Clue.” He also calls them the BSCPD. He’s a big improvement over Alan Gray.

• So, an example of the clues from Cary: “a drop of golden sun; just short of failing; a skater’s figure; not him, you see, but; (where does it all come from?). This translates to “Re; D; 8; Her” or radiator and the school’s boiler room.

“Maybe they didn’t catch all the shoplifters last week, after all”…..BSC Mystery # 14: Stacey and the Mystery at the Mall”

Memory Reaction

I totally loved this book as a kid, because it includes kids living in a mall, and as a kid I always thought it would be cool to spend the night in one. Not because I loved shopping. I just thought it would be really fun to roller blade up and down the aisles and wonder around with no one there. I also had a fantasy of putting in a rope swing and riding from level to level. I’m weird, I know.
In terms of specifics, I mainly remember the girls running through the mall at the end trying to find the kids who were living out my fantasy. Then after the BSC finds them, the girls take the kids to a restaurant while one of them calls the cops. Then the oldest of the kid looks at them all betrayed because of it.

Revisited Reaction

The BSC has a class/project where they have to take part time jobs after school three days a week to learn about being in the workplace. They don’t actually earn any money, it’s just for school credit. The BSC all gets jobs at Washington Mall, although they could have chosen different locations. Stacey ends up with a job at the toy store, probably because it worked kids into the better than if she was at some fashion boutique.

All the girls (and Logan) find out right away that there’s a lot of shoplifting at the mall. And a week or so into the project, mall security catches a bunch of teenagers supposedly behind it. But after that, stealing continues. There are some big things being taken (TVs, treadmills, etc.) and smaller things (towels, childrens clothes, etc.). Someone’s also sneaking into a kitchen in the food court and cooking at night. At one point, Stacey comes face to ski-mask-covered face with one of the thieves in the storeroom of the toy store.

Because these girls are goody-goody, they can’t stop at just working at the mall. They also notice that their bosses sometimes need to bring their kids to work, and that parents sometime leave their kids at the toy store/bookstore/whatever while they do other shopping. So, the BSC decides that the mall needs a day care center. Because of this they meet the mall manager, who’s excited about the idea and gives them (or the daycare) a space at half the normal rent (without a second thought) and they get to help make the thing happen.

The girls start talking about the thefts and decide there must be two sets of people stealing. Their impressive library research skills tell them the mall’s been having financial trouble since the new manager took over (who has been having new community-building events). They decide the mall manager must be stealing because his new policies have been losing money for the mall. They also put together the fact that a bunch of kids that always seem to be around are living at the mall and behind the rest of the thefts.

There’s a fire alarm at the mall one day, and when reviewing security tapes (which Kristy has access to for her job), the girls realize these kids must have done it. They think that maybe they pulled it when they caught the mall manager stealing. Now because this is the BSC, the conclusions they jumped to are actually right…..the manager had threatened them, so they pulled the alarm to find good hiding places.

But anyway, the girls go back to the mall and run all over to find out where these kids are hiding. They think they are in danger now that they now about the mall manager. The BSC finally finds the kids, and get the sob story about how their mom’s in the hospital, their aunt never showed up to take care of them, and their electricity was turned off. So, these kids moved into the mall. The BSC does realize this is a problem they can’t solve themselves and call the police, who bring in social services. The kids tell the cops about the mall manager, and before they have to worry about social services splitting them up, the mother’s magically out of the hospital and ready to go home. And she won’t have any trouble getting back into the apartment the kids had abandoned weeks ago, or paying rent on top of hospital bills, when she likely doesn’t have great insurance or even a job.

High/Lowlights

• You’ll never believe the stores these girls picked to work at. Claudia worked at an art store, Mallory worked at the book store, and Mary Anne worked at a pet store. Aren’t those the most original places for those characters to get jobs?

• Kristy works for mall security. I’m sure the ghostwriters wanted her to work at a sporting goods store, but they needed someone in security to give the girls the inside info on all the shoplifting. And Kristy made the most sense.

• Logan works at the Mexican restaurant in the food court. I can’t imagine how this taught him anything he didn’t already know from working in the Rosebud Café in Stoneybrook.

• Jessi gets stuck working at the movie theater. She says it isn’t her first choice, which I’m guessing means there was no ballet store at the mall.

• During story hour at the book store, Mallory reads the books Stone Soup and Tikki Tikki Tembo, both of which are real books I remember reading as a kid.

• I can buy a bunch of kids living in the mall for a few days, or even a couple weeks. But these kids were apparently living there for (at least) the entire six weeks that the project lasts. And no one noticed?

• Speaking of these kids….they don’t say what their mother’s sick with, but apparently she was hospitalized several weeks before the kids were living in the mall (long enough for their electricity to get turned off). But suddenly, she’s going to go back to being a full time single parent?

• The kids’ aunt was supposed to stay with them, but she never showed up. Now, they had just moved to town so they hadn’t enrolled in school or gotten a phone hooked up. But, are we really supposed to believe their mother didn’t realize what was going on? Especially since the kids only visited a couple of times without any aunt. The mother never wanted to speak to her?

• Also, what’s the deal with this Aunt who never shows up?

• I can’t believe how much I want to rant about a book I liked so much originally.

• I wish I went to SMS. Not only do they have awesome vacations, they have all sorts of cool projects. Going to zoos, meeting famous authors, writing school plays, etc.

• When the girls first hear about the project, Kristy’s worried about the affect it will have on the club. But then they all decide to take jobs at the mall, which means all seven of them (including Logan, Dawn's in California) will always be busy on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Wouldn’t it have made more sense if some of them took jobs in downtown Stoneybrook and worked on different days?

• Stacey’s teacher says that he and the other teachers split up all the jobs and are now assigning their group of jobs to their students. But this seems like a weird way to assign jobs. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to split the kids into classes based on the jobs they wanted? Otherwise, it’s hard to believe that most of these girls all got their dream jobs.

• Shannon says she can take extra sitting jobs while the rest of the club’s working at the mall. But if these girls get so many sitting jobs, how can Shannon cover them all herself.

• Right before the mall project started, Stacey had a class called “Math for Real Life.” As part of this, Stacey got to play the stock market with an imaginary $5,000, and apparently did crazy-well. Re-reading the books now makes me realize that Stacey wasn’t just supposed to be pretty good at math, she’s written as being exceptional at math and great with money in general.

• The way this day care center comes together makes no sense. The girls all mention the idea to their managers and get a list of store owners who want to help run the place. Because these people have enough spare time to do something like that. Then a few weeks later the BSC’s helping to paint the empty storefront where the center's going to exist? I’ll admit I don’t know everything that would be involved in such a venture, but I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.

• They make a big deal about telling us how nervous the entire BSC is about asking the mall manager about a day care. This is because they were told the old mall manager was really mean. But I still don’t buy that Kristy would be so terrified about it.

• The girls all get dressed up so that they can go ask the mall manager about the day care. But why are they the ones asking about? Just because it was their idea doesn’t mean they should be the one talking to him.

• How’s stealing a treadmill and a couple of TVs going to solve a mall’s financial issues?

• Jessi’s working at the movie theater, and is helping at a kid’s birthday party when a fire alarm goes off. Her manager shows up and leads them down a hallway to the exit. But they previously said that the theater was on the 4th floor, so why is there no mention of steps?

• The thief Stacey sees is supposedly the one working for the mall manager. But why would he be stealing from the toy store? That’s not really on the same level as big screen TVs.

• They’d also been making a big deal out of the fact that the thefts have been happening at night and when security cameras were pointed elsewhere. So, why would this guy be going around in his ski mask in the middle of the day.
• The only real outfit we get is what Claudia wore to the painting party. She “had wrapped a neon-pink bandana around her head, and she was wearing a humongous pair of overalls over an ancient striped T-shirt.” That seems like a pretty appropriate outfit for such work, which is much less fun than usual.

• When Stacey and her manager are helping set up the day care, another employee covers at the toy store. Supposedly, she’s a part time employee who only works weekends. That’s the only person we ever hear about working in the store, other than Stacey and her manager. Does this store have no other employees?

• Stacey doesn’t tell her mom about seeing the thief in a ski mask in the store, because she doesn’t want to have to quit working at the store. Nice to see she has such an open relationship with her parents.

• Charlie drives the BSC to the mall when they decide to look for the kids living there, and the girls actually tell him what’s going on. He says they have to call the police in two hours if they haven’t found anyone. That may be the most authority these girls ever deal with in the mysteries.

• When the girls call the police, they show up with someone from “Stoneybrook Social Serves,” but it’s been established Washington Mall isn’t in Stoneybrook.

• On the cover, you can see that Zingys is in the background, which is that store they always talk about as having “wild” clothes. But it looks like there’s a pink jumper on display in the window, which is anything but wild.

“Tell me you didn’t go and solve the mystery without me”……BSC Super Mystery # 3: Baby-sitters Fright Night

Memory Reaction

This is the first time I read this one, so memory doesn’t really apply.

Revisited Reaction

Stacey, Mary Anne, Kristy, Abby, and Mallory are spending a few days in Salem, Massachusetts on one of their school’s cool but unrealistic field trips. They’re supposed to do a history project about whatever they learn there, but the girls really spend the whole trip solving a mystery.

The case revolved around a famous diamond called the Witch’s Eye that’s rumored to have a curse on it. The current owner’s loaning it to a museum in Salem for display, and it’s immediately stolen. Stacey and Mary Anne are there at the time, and Stacey finds a piece of paper with what she eventually realizes is a safe combination. Later, Mary Anne and Abby find a disguise in some bushes outside the inn they’re staying at, and decide the culprit must also be a guest there.

The suspects are Martha Kempner - a famous mystery writer, who’s writing an article on the diamond, Harvey Hapgood – a guy who offered to buy the diamond a day before it was stolen, and Sean Knowles – who the BSC thinks is spying on the diamond’s owner, but is actually an insurance agent. They briefly consider Mrs. Moorehouse, the diamond’s elderly owner, and/or her nurse, but take her out of the running since she didn’t have insurance and wouldn’t benefit from the theft.

So, for the next few days, the girls talk about the clues while sightseeing, going to a Halloween parade, and dealing with middle school drama. Alan Gray and Cary Retlin both play a bunch of pranks on Kristy and Cookie Mason keeps picking on Mallory’s roommate Eileen. At one point, Abby’s waist pack’s stolen, and the room she and Stacey are staying in is broken into.

At the end of their trip there’s a big storm and the power goes out in the inn. Stacey, Abby, Mary Anne, and Mallory realize that since the room doors are opened with electronic key cards, anyone who left their room after the power went out wouldn’t have been able to lock their doors. They decided to just go ahead and enter the rooms belonging to their suspects, to see if their safes open with the combination Stacey found. Martha Kempler’s opens, and the girls realize she must be connected to the crime. Instead of calling the police or telling their chaperones, they decide to go off to stop her from escaping. But it turns out Martha and her partner (Harvey Hapgood) was watching the girls. The final confrontation happens in a dark hallway. It turns out that Martha had hidden the diamond in a ceramic pumpkin in the gift shop, which Abby had bought, so Marha’s trying to get it back. After a ridiculous scene where Abby physically fights with the culprits the police show up and arrest the thieves. In the middle of all this, the diamond “glows,” in what is supposed to be a sign of it having supernatural powers, or something.

While all this is going on, Kristy was off dealing with her prank war with Alan and Cary. Cary had tricked her, as part of a plan to scare her and Alan Gray. Instead, Alan and Kristy scare each other, then team up to get Cary.

Jessi, Claudia, Shannon, and Logan are keeping the fort down back in Stoneybrook. They end up helping the kids put on a Halloween parade, and deal with Jordan Pike thinking he has magic powers. There’s not much else to say about that.

High/Lowlights

• Claudia doesn’t go on the trip because her parents are too worried about her grades, and Jessi doesn’t go because she is in a Halloween dance at Stoneybrook University. Claudia I can understand, but what exactly is a Halloween dance?

• Stacey outfit: “Black jeans, black boots, black turtleneck, silver cropped top over that, black boots with silver side buttons and silver X earrings.” I’m not sure why (or how) she was wearing two pairs of boots, but other than that it sounds decent.

• When talking about the Scarlett Letter, Stacey comments about how awful the movie was. This was written in 1996, so I’m assuming she means the Demi Moore one. You know you’ve made a bad movie when it gets trashed in a kids book.

• Now for a little game….which of the following outfits was worn by Claudia, and which was worn by the poor-fashion-less girl everyone makes fun of? Answer at the end of this post.

1. “Doc Martens with pumpkin stickers, a hand-batiked shirt in orange and black, plus one orange sock and one black sock.”
2. “A huge purple dress, a puffy orange windbreaker, and these really clunky shoes. Her hair stuck out in spikes beneath a wool hat that had a pattern of white snowflakes on a red background.”

• Why would a thief carry around a piece of paper with a safe combination when they’re stealing a diamond? She wouldn’t need the combination until she got back to her hotel room.

• The museum the diamond was stolen from, is part of a complex of museums/historic buildings. A group from SMS is there, with kids splitting up to go to various sections. After the theft, Mary Anne and Stacey are separated. Mary Anne ends up outside and sees that the complex is closing. The police are taking everyone’s name, and they tell her that everyone else from SMS went back to the inn and she should do the same. Now, what the hell kind of chaperons just leaves the area without all their students? Especially when a crime has just taken place.

• As soon as theft occurs, Mallory decides she HAS to have the mystery notebook to write down clues. Writing them in another notebook’s just not an option for her. It seems a bit out of character for her to be so obsessive about it, but whatever. She has Jessi give the notebook to the spouse of one of the teachers, who’s joining the trip a day later. How Jessi gets it to this person, I don’t know.

• Kristy’s upset that she wasn’t around when the theft occurred, or when Abby and Mary Anne found the disguise. So, when she finds what she thinks is a clue, she sneaks off by herself to investigate, hoping to solve the thing herself. It ends up being Cary’s trick, and Kristy ends up annoyed that they “solved” the case without her.

• For part of the trip, Mary Anne’s watching the daughter of one of the teachers on the trip. I guess they needed to have some baby-sitting in there (even though we got some in the Stoneybrook chapters).

• Martha wanted to steal the diamond from the museum, because she had previously tried to buy it from Mrs. Moorehouse, and didn’t want a connection being there. So, why did her partner offer to buy the diamond from Mrs. Moorehouse (in public) right before the stole it? That’s just calling attention to yourself.

• The girls come up with some relatively cute last-minute costumes. (Claudia helped via the phone):

• Kristy wore her collie hat, a necklace made of dog biscuits, and went around with a magnifying glass and a name tag reading “Sherlock Bones.”

• Mary Anne went as a boring cat like she always does.

• Stacey went as Mother Time (all black and numbers painted on her face).

• Abby went as the women’s soccer World Cup (a soccer shirt, and a blow-up globe and plastic cup tied to her arms.

• Mallory was a pumpkin patch, which is more creative than just a pumpkin I guess. She dressed orange, and pinned pumpkins cut out from orange paper all over her, tied with green yarn.

• Apparently Stacey’s so good with math, that when she sees a set of numbers, she instantly memorizes them (which is how she remembers the safe combination after giving the piece of paper to the police). I don’t remember hearing about that skill before.

• Why do these kids always write letters to each other when the person out-of-town will be home in a day?

• During the Alan/Cary incident, Alan’s trying to scare Cary and tells him Kristy’s baby-sitting, but might have followed him. But Cary’s all, “oh no. Kristy’s way too responsible a baby-sitter to put a child at risk like that.” Now really, what 13-year-old boy says stuff like that?

• After Martha’s safe opens, Mallory does some actual thinking and remembers that on the morning of the theft, Martha wore sneakers (to run away quietly), and every other time they’ve seen her she’s been in high heels (that make a lot of noise). So, they don’t completely luck into solving this one.

• I’m trying to figure out how these girls avoided getting into trouble with their teachers for wandering off during the storm and getting so mixed up with the thieves.

• I also can’t believe these girls actually walked into other people’s hotel rooms and tried opening their safes.

• At the end, Mrs. Moorehouse tells the girls how Abby ended up with the diamond because the theft took longer than she thought and didn’t have time to get back to her room before the police came around….so she hid it in the pumpkin in the gift shop. But how would Mrs. Moorehouse know that? The last we saw of Martha was her telling her partner not to talk to the cops and asking for a lawyer. I don’t think she was ready to confess.

• After Martha’s been arrested Kristy suddenly shows up, and the rest of the girls ask how she found them. And she’s like, “oh that doesn’t matter.” Which seems like the ghostwriter’s way of admitting it doesn’t make sense but she put it in anyway.

• Answer to the fashion game? Claudia wore the stickered Doc Martens and Eileen (the fashion disaster) wore the purple and orange ensemble. I think they're both pretty awful.
  

“I used to think Algebra was a type of lingerie”……BSC Mystery 27: Claudia and the Lighthouse Ghost

Memory Reaction

This was just after I stopped reading the books……

Revisited Reaction

The Hatts, old friends of Claudia’s parents are moving back to Stoneybrook and are staying at the Kishi’s. The Hatts are the owners of the Stoneybrook lighthouse, which has been shut down/boarded up for years. Because yes, the town apparently has a lighthouse. There are vague references to something bad happening there a few years back, right before it closed and the Hatts left town. Claudia goes with Mr. Hatt and his daughter to see the lighthouse, and a neighbor sees them and gets pissed that Mr. Hatt’s back in town. Then a bunch of threatening letters made by cutting out letters from magazines show up at the Kishi house.

Mallory and Jessi do some research and find out that nine years ago, a 16-year-old boy named Adrian was pulled from the water near the lighthouse in the middle of winter, and he ended up dying. The coroner noted that he showed signs of a head injury, gotten by a fall from 20-30 feet up. Adrian’s fingerprints were found in the lighthouse, but it was locked up, so it appeared that he had been inside when Mr. Hatt locked the lighthouse, and decided to climb out the window because he was claustrophobic and couldn’t take being locked in the place. The neighbor’s Adrian’s father, and he blames Mr. Hatt for the death.

In the basement of the lighthouse, Claudia finds an old note that says “If you last the night in the lighthouse you will be one of us” and has a picture of a gargoyle. Some investigation reveals that the gargoyle is a statue at the high school and there used to be gang-type groups who acted as his fans, or something dumb like that. The BSC goes there to look at it, and happens to meet the brother of the kid that died. They go back to his house to talk about Adrian, then Claudia steals/borrows a picture of a bunch of his friends.

Meanwhile, the Hatts keep getting notes, and then a smoke bomb goes off in the lighthouse. To send a message to the person doing this, the Hatts let their teenage son, Steve, have a party at the lighthouse, which the parents and the BSC attends. Even though the stairs to the top of the lighthouse were closed off, Claudia sees someone up there, and she recognizes him as someone in the picture of Adrian’s friends. She gets Mr. Hatt, but then the guy tries to climb down the side of the lighthouse. He falls, but they’re able to save him. It turns out that this guy, Patrick was the leader the group Adrian wanted to be a part of. Adrian was supposed to stay in the lighthouse overnight as an initiation, and his friends locked the door to make sure he did it. Patrick was trying to find the note that proved that. It’s kind of convoluted and anti-climactic.

Subplot: Some comet’s going to be visible in Stoneybrook. It’s not Halley’s Comment, but it seems to be comparable. All the kids can’t stop talking about it and the BSC has a comet viewing party. Some of the kids think the comet will make them sick or cause other negative events, but Kristy gets them to calm down. I may have liked this subplot if I read it when I was a kid, but now it just comes off as annoying.

Highlights/Lowlights

• Did you ever notice how all sorts of landmarks pop up in Stoneybrook for certain books? A country club? An arboretum?
  

• Janine seems kind of out of character in this one. She’s pretty bitchy to Claud. She’s also having problems with her boyfriend, and is flirting (sort of) with Steve. It’s not unrealistic, but she just seems more immature than usual.

• Claudia comments that teachers get excited when they see Janine’s IQ score. But would teachers see Janine’s IQ scores? I didn’t think that kind of information was typical for a school record, but I could be wrong. Or maybe Janine’s IQ was documented because it’s so high?

• Claudia says that her parents love Janine, but tolerate her. I think it’s kind of sad if she really feels that way.

• The comet story’s boring, but also typical BSC. Of course they have a viewing party. No parents would have wanted to see this rare event WITH their children. And it’s certainly logical to gather as many people in one place so that each person has the least time looking through the one telescope.

• What’s interesting, is that this book takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but it isn’t Christmas-themed or anything. Claudia says that Steve’s party’s a Christmas one and mentions shopping, but that’s it. And that makes me think of that mystery with the old diary where Charlotte talks about a book with a similar treatment.

• Janine has to move into Claudia’s room while the Hatts are staying with them because the two Hatt daughters “refused to be separated”…meaning they couldn’t have one girl stay in Claudia’s room and one in Janine’s room. But they kind of have a lot of nerve making that demand when they’re asking the Kishis to host five people for a minimum of two weeks. Especially, if those are two weeks in December when most people are busier than usual.

• Claudia outfit - “I was wearing a white high-collared dentist’s shirt and a loose-fitting Chinese silk jacket, cinched at the waist by a bright-orange scarf, over tight black flared pants. My hair was gathered on top of my head with an orange bandanna.”

• For anyone who ever wondered about the birth order of the Pike triplets, it was Jordan, Adam, Byron. For some reason I always assumed it was alphabetical.

• So, Janine and Claudia hate sharing a room (shocking, I know). But at one point, Janine decides to do some schoolwork at a Wednesday at 5:30. So, Claudia has to turn on call forwarding and meet with the BSC in the living room. But then, Mr. Hatt needs to use that room, so the girls have to keep roaming around the house with a cordless phone. But, anyway, my point is that I don’t think it would have been unreasonable for the Kishi’s to tell Janine she needed to stay out of Claudia’s room for a half hour.

• I think Claudia mysteries are usually good ones, but this one fell a little short. Mainly cause there isn’t really a lot of mystery about it. However, Claudia did call 911 as soon as she saw smoke in the lighthouse, and manages to get Mr. Hatt as soon as she sees the guy at the top of the lighthouse. The girl may suck at school, but she does stay calm in emergencies.

• Janine eats a bunch of Claud’s candy while rooming with her. Which I think is some nice continuity about her personality from one of the early books.

• I don’t really get the motivation for this guy to send notes to the Hatts. He said he wanted to find the note he’d written to Adrian years ago. I don’t really see how sending the notes helps his situation. He should have just broke in and tried to find it himself, without drawing attention to himself. Claudia found the note by accident, so it couldn’t have been too hard to find. And he’s had nine years to work on it.

• The BSC helps the Hatts paint the lighthouse, and Stacey wears a black cashmere coat and silk scarf. Claud has to tell her to change. Would she really be that clueless about it?

• Because this is a mystery, the BSC have a few other suspects for the notes to the Hatts get, but they’re really lame...Adrian’s father, Janine’s boyfriend (because he’s jealous of Steve, or the Hatt daughters (because one of them had been using scissors).

• At the party, Claudia says that people are hanging out outside as well as in. However, like I said, it takes place in Connecticut in December. It’s usually not the time for outdoors parties.

• Kristy leads the rest of the girls over to the guy whose son died and starts talking to him about it. Cause strangers love that.

• I think the whole mystery of why Adrian was in the lighthouse was pretty much obvious when Claudia finds the note, but the girls don’t piece it together until the end when they catch Patrick and he tells them. But maybe it just seemed clear to me because it reminded me of an episode of the “Littles.”