Customer Reviews

Connie Blair: The Clue in Blue

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I've read the first 2 books (Clue in Blue, Riddle in Red) and I found both to be a fun read. Great stuff for young girls who want to know what it was like living in the late 40s and early 50s.

To the person who wrote the bad review, you have to remember the period. Just for grins, check out some of the educational short films that were shown in schools around the country. FWIW, Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a few that they poked fun at.

"Girls, you, too, can go to college and become a (clothes designer, dietician, childcare manager, etc)". See a pattern, folks? And the movies usually ended with a stay-at-home mom. The emphasis is how much a college education will help them with motherhood more than anything else. Women's careers often ended with staying at home with the kids. Period.

So with Connie, she never marries, because then she'd have to be home with the kids and that would never do! :) And of course, college can get in the way of sleuthing, so a work environment seemed to fit the bill for Betsy Cavanna, the actual writer.

Get with the period, readers, and have fun with the old series books. Laugh a little and appreciate (and sigh) over the changes in our culture.

...and who's to say that they didn't have it right back then?

--an educated and happy, stay-at-home, mom

I thought that it was good. Connie Blair has a Aunt who invites her to stay in the city with her and work as a model at the store her Aunt works at. She gets mixed up in the mystery unintentionanally. It was suspenseful too. I would recomend ti to anyone who wants light reading.

While the story, written in the 50's may be dated, I found relating to this character quite easy. My main enjoyment is that all the books are void of much of the violence that is so prevelant in todays television, books and computer games. I could relate to Connie Blair when I first read them in 1967, when I was 8, and I still do. If you are looking for a good, quality book for your child, you can't miss with these books. I only wish they would come back in print.

Connie is a nice girl from a small town with a twin sister and a father who owns the local hardware store. She gets the opportunity to go to Philadelphia to live with her glamorous aunt, who is a buyer for an upscale department store. Connie is only 17, and even for the period in which this book was written (about 1950), it isn't very realistic. Connie gets a job at the department store as a model (the store hires young girls to walk around wearing the clothes the store sells) to help her aunt find out who is stealing from the store. The mystery isn't much - Trixie Belden has the same plot device in The Mystery of The Queen's Necklace, and the characters in that book are much more interesting. Connie Blair is quite dated, and the writing isn't engaging. The cast of characters (Connie's aunt, sister, parents, revolving group of boyfriends, a variety of employers) are one-dimensional, and the book is dismissive of higher education, and not just for women. The author has a real chip on her shoulder about college, and it shows.