Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph

The Baby-Sitters Club Mysteries #16

by Ann M. Martin

A new passion for photography has Claudia snapping pictures everywhere she goes, including the Stoneybrook Bank, and when it is discovered that a robbery took place at the bank on the very same day, Claudia thinks her photos may contain evidence.

Genres: Mystery, Middle Grade, Childrens, Fiction, Young Adult, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

117 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer.

Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.

Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.

Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.

After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...

Reviews

[FIND ME ON STORYGRAPH · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is my first time reading this book!

in yet another dumb mystery by dumb mystery aficionado/ghostwriter Ellen Miles, claud is taking a photography summer school class and is somewhat obsessed. the bsc and bsc kids decide to make a present for dawn, a book inspired by A Day in the Life of America, in which a group of people photograph things/happenings all around stoneybrook on a single day and compile the best ones. when claud hears about a bank robbery that happened on the same day that she was photographing that bank, she tries to find evidence in her photos.

highlights:
-claud's photography teacher is named mr. geist. I'm just picturing this:

-a classic case of teaching the reader the basics of photography, developing, darkrooms, etc. claudia is so excited about it that she makes it interesting.
-the barretts have gotten a veritable menagerie of nonallergic pets in the wake of having to get rid of pow (see Claudia and the Perfect Boy), which is very cute

lowlights/nitpicks:
-janine ruins claudia's prints by going into the bathroom that's being used as a darkroom. this immediately after claudia says she is going to the darkroom. janine may be a total doogie howser, but she's an idiot.
-there are references to the barretts and dewitts that indicate that cynthia and franklin haven't gotten engaged yet. this means that in spite of the fact that this came out the same month as Dawn and Whitney, Friends Forever, this one MUST take place first. oops, read 'em out of order!
-how convenient that claud happened to find the facade of the bank so fascinating that she took many photos of it on the exact day that the robbery occurred!
-finally claud discovers that one of the bank managers is carrying a pocketwatch in the photos, and she sees that the time on it never changes so she realizes it's a fake. how did she accomplish this feat? thanks to the magical phenomenon of ZOOM AND ENHANCE! no joke. ellen, how in all your photography research for this book did you not discover that zoom and enhance is not grounded in reality?

claudia outfits:
-"Staring back at me was a medium-height Japanese-American girl with almond-shaped eyes and long, black hair held back by a pink, star-shaped barrette. She wore a silky pink tank top with a man's white shirt tied casually over it, white jeans, and flip-flops decorated with more pink stars."
-"I dressed quickly, in jeans and my Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt."
-"That day I'd worn one of my favorite outfits to school: a lacy white shirt with big ruffled sleeves over a deep green leotard, with a short blue-jeans skirt and my favorite shoes (at least my favorite shoes that summer): big black chunky boots."
-"Since I knew I was going to be in the darkroom, I threw off all my good clothes and pulled on an old pair of shorts and my ancient green Sea City T-shirt."

snacks in claudia's room:
-milky way beneath the pillow on her bed
-fritos (n.s.)
-three musketeers (n.s.)
-hershey's kisses in a box of pastels
-mallomars (n.s.)
-popcorn (n.s.)

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's STILL summertime in stoneybrook. this is the longest summer ever. & the warped timeline is really starting to freak me out. mallory & jessi meet & become friends at the beginning of the sixth grade year, & join the babysitters club soon after. but this is the summer both before & after they attend the sixth grade. ahhh! it's scaring me!

anyway, claudia is in summer school. even though she finished up summer school earlier in the summer, before she joined the other members of the babysitters club in sea city back in super special #10. but she was not in summer school in book #76, when she vacationed for two weeks on fire island with stacey & her dad. & what about back in super special #8, when she joined the thomas family & the babysitters club in shadow island? & the forthcoming super special (#14) in which the thomases & the schafers & the babysitters club (including abby) caravan across the country in RVs...?

okay, moving on.

claudia is in summer school. in addition to a remedial math course, she is taking photography just for fun. she loves it. her dad even helped her convert the bathroom she shares with janine into a darkroom so she can develop her own photos.

this leads to someone in the club (or maybe it was buddy barrett) suggesting that the sitters get together with a bunch of charges & make a photo album for dawn. the theme will be "a day in the life of stoneybrook". the kids will borrow cameras or buy cheap instant cameras & fan out across town to photograph the interesting events of a single day in order to entice dawn into coming back to stoneybrook. it's not that interesting. & this plot has really not aged well, what with the advent of digital cameras & everything. oh well.

so they take photos. it's a sunday. claudia joins one group of kids downtown. she kind of goes nuts taking photos of the facade of the stoneybrook bank. mary anne thinks claudia is being silly, taking photos of boring building, & jokingly snaps a few photos of claudia taking photos.

a few days later, at a babysitters club meeting, there is a breaking news bulletin on the radio. apparently someone has robbed the stoneybrook bank of several hundred thousand dollars. police & bank officials are baffled because there wasn't, like, a heist or anything. i'm wondering if this is really the kind of thing they would announce on the radio. aren't they afraid it will cause a panic & that people all over stoneybrook will rush to close their accounts & stuff their money under their mattresses instead?

the sitters are like, "what if the robbery happened while we were outside the bank taking photos?" but they agree it's pretty unlikely, since it was a sunday & the bank was closed & everything. a few days later, there's a news report on the radio announcing that the money went missing on sunday between 1pm & 4pm--while the sitters were there with their cameras. pretty fucking convenient, huh? claudia rushes to develop her photos but there is nothing suspicious in them. just a dude in a suit & a woman with a baby carriage.

the sitters decide the the guy in the suit & the woman with the carriage are their only suspects right now. they decide to stake out the bank to see if the culprit returns to the scene of the crime. they spot the woman with the carriage right away. she is all shifty & angles the carriage away from them so they can't check to see if there's actually a baby in it. claudia actually suggests that it might be full of moneybags instead, prompting a, "that's pretty unlikely," from stacey. i'll say. anyway, finally claudia distracts the woman by dropping quarters all over the street & whips the blanket off the carriage to discover...a baby. the woman catches claudia in the act & is pissed & storms off. way to go, claud.

that leaves suit guy. shannon learns that the dude is the vice president of the bank & his name is mr. zibreski. they tail him to lunch but he doesn't say anything incriminating, like, "i robbed my own bank." a dead end.

a few days after that, claudia remembers that she shot a few more photos of the bank that day, which are on an unfinished roll of film in her camera. she rushes to develop it, but someone opens the darkroom door & wrecks the film. claudia is blinded by the hallway light & doesn't see who it is. she rushes into the hall, but the person is already gone. no one is home & all the doors are locked.

dun dun dunnn!

of course claudia thinks that somehow mr. zibreski knows she's watching him, knows she took his photo, knows the photos have something incriminating on them, figured out where she lives, got inside her house without having to disturb anything, knew where her darkroom was, knew she was on the verge of developing the incriminating photos, opened the door & wrecked the film at the very last moment, & then spirited himself out of the house without leaving a trace.

*sigh*

the sitters take their photos to the police, but the police are like, "you want us to arrest someone for walking by the bank at the approximate time the robbery took place? hit the road, you little vagrants." all except sergeant johnson, who is all, "if you find anything more incriminating, like mr. zibreski holding a suitcase full of unmarked bills, let me know." he also tells them that mr. zebriski is being investigated, & then gives them details about how the investigation is going (not well). because THAT'S professional.

the kids finish up their photo album for dawn. claudia stops by to help make some last-minute decisions about what photos to include...& finds a mysterious series of photos in which a woman in a jogging suit is withdrawing an enormous stack of bills from the bank ATM machine during the time the robbery happened. if they are hundreds, it is easily enough money to account for all the money that went missing. claudia thinks she may have cracked the case.

but she keeps coming back to the photos of mr. zibreski. finally she takes photos of some of the detail in the photos & blows them up big. she notices that mr. zibreski is wearing both a wristwatch & a pocket watch. & the pocket watch doesn't seem to work. claudia deduces that it doesn't work because there is a safe deposit box key hidden inside it, & that the missing money is in the safe deposit box.

the babysitters take these photos & claudia's theory to sergeant johnson, who just so happens to be interrogating mr. zebriski. he actually allows the babysitters into the interrogation room, where claudia lays out her theory. mr. zebriski cracks & confesses to everything, hands over the key, & tells them which box it's for. apparently he was obsessed with his "retirement years" & was stealing money to live on when he's old. o...kay. because that totally makes sense, right?

no word on what the fuck was up with the crazy photos of jogging suit lady & her ginormous stack of money. or how exactly the bank deduced that all the money went missing between 1pm & 4pm on sunday when in fact mr. zebriski has been stealing it in dribs & drabs for god knows how long. basically, once the mystery is solved, the entire plot of the book falls apart completely.

but dawn loves her photo album & says her "heart is in stoneybrook." shut up, dawn.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

rounded up from 3.5 because i love sweet claudia so much. this was fun! i don't think i read this one when i was little. it was fun watching the girls solve the mystery but at my big age i couldn't help thinking if i were in the same situation, i would have told my mom everything because i was too scared and i feel like these girls would have too.

[Tiffany Spencer]

Claudia and the Clue in the Photogragh.
Claudia tries to take a picture of her family at breakfast, but Janine protest. Her parents make her put down the camera and eat. Claudia has to go to summer school for math, but her parents made a compromise with her and also let her take a class she liked. She choose photograpy. Her teacher is Mr. Geist whom she thinks is one of her best teachers. She’s using her dad’s old Minolta. Photograghy is now her new obsession.

So far she’s learned how to use a real camera, exposure and shutter speed, composition, textures, forms, tones, and dark room developing. In photography class that day, the lesson is focused on portrats. Claudia is inspired by Mr, Geist’s slides. She thinks about developing a roll of film that Stacey modeling clothes.

Claudia’s father has helped her create a darkroom in the bathroom, While Claudia is preparing the pictures, Janine accidentally opens the door and lets the light in. After Claudia gets upset she apologizes repeatedly. Claudia hopes some of the negatives can be salvaged. But the film is mostly ruinted. She dcides it will just b easier to reshoot the roll. Inspied by Mr. Geist’s lsson, Claudia deides to photograph each member of the BSC. She uses black and white film, It’s a busy meeting. It’s summer so lots of parents need sitters.

Maryanne tells the others that the Baaretts miss Dawn and want to make something to make her homesick. They all brainstorm, but don’t come up with anything. After the meeting, Claudia takes a selfie of herself and titles her project “A Portrait of the BSC: My Best Friends”. Maryanne babysits for the Barretts. They end up going to the Pikes where Claudia and Mallory are sitting. They all start to brainstorm about what to do for Dawn,

Some of the ideas they come up with are: a banner flown over Dawn’s beach, buying her a plane ticket, arial photos of Stoneybrook, and a singing telegram. Others are a mural and a cookie package. Claudia comes up with the idea “A Day in the Life of Stoneybrooke.” They’ll borrow camras, and take photos all over the town. They’ll put all the photos in an album. Maryanne calls Dawn that night to tell her the kids have come up with a surprise for her. She also calls Claudia to plan.

Claudia uses a book called “A Day in the Life of America” as a guide and realizes she needs to do some serious coordination. The book used 200 of the world’s top photographers to get it all shoot in a day. After a Krishes game, they all split into groups. Kristy and Shannon photograph a picnic. Jessica and Mallory go to a barbershop to photograph the triplets haircuts. Claudia and Maryanne go downtown with the Baretts, Charlotte, and Beca.

Some of the things the kids take pictures of are a wedding party, a red sports car, a candy shop window display, the Rosebud Café, and mannequins in a stoe window. Claudia becomes fascinated with photographing the Stoneybrook bank. She’s never noticed all the details (carvings, marble pillars, brass revolving doors, and shadows). She finshes one roll and starts on a second, Maryanne has to pull her away.

At a BSC meeting, there’s a radio announcement that it was discovered at the Stornybrook bank that hundreds of thousands of dollare are missing. Police have ruled out transaction errors, robbery, abd firced ebtert, Claudia wonders if she might have accidentally taken a picture of a clue. When she develops the photos they show the banks façade, a mother with a baby carriage, and a man in a suit, but nothing suspicious.

Stacey and Claudia take the Newtons and Charlotte and Becca for a walk downtown. Stacey needs to go to the bank to drop off penny rolls. The kids start to talk about the missing money, and act like detectives. Claudia explains to them what safe-deposit boxes are. Stacey recognizes the man in the suit from one of Claudia’s photos. They have ice-cream and then go pick up the photos.

At the BSC meting, thre’s a radio announcement that the robbery occurred between 1 and 4 pm on Sunday. The banks cameras were disabled. Police have confirmed it was an inside job. They ralize this is when Claudia and Maryanne were taking pictures outside the bank. The man in the suit becomes their main suspct. Shannon says he woks at the bank and would know how to disable the cameras. Maryanne notices even tho it was a hot day he was dressed in a suit.

Janine interrupts them and tells them that they have no real evidence, Everything hey’ve said is purely circumstantial. Claudia tells them the number the radio gave out that asked for information regarding the crime, but when she calls, they dismiss her. They take the picture to the police, but are told it wouldn’t stand up to anything in court. Sergeant Johnson, who knows them a little more, reviews the photo more carefully and says the man might just live near the back. He promises tho they’ll follow up on the lead.

The BSC plans a stakeout to scope out suspicious activity since no one took their photos seriously. They decide some of them will watch from the outside. Some of them will go in. Shannon decides to go inside and ask questions about opening up a savings account. Stacey spots the woman with the baby carriage. They go up to her and speak, but she’s brief with them, won’t let them see the baby, and rushes off. Rather than thinking she just oh I don’t know, doesn’t want STRANGERS BREATHING ON HER BABY, Kristy thinks this is suspicious. Ktisty suspects the carriage might be full of money bags. I can’t decide it this would be a bold move to hide the money in plain sight or a dumb one to keep parading around the bank.

Shannon finds out that the man in the suit is the VP and his name is Mr. Zibreski. They trail him to Thelma’s Café and sit in a booth behind him. Another man named Fank joins him. They mention the robbery, but don’t say anything incriminating. Then they start to talk about things untreated. While looking over some photos, Claudia remembers there’s a roll of film she hasn’t developed. While she’s in the darkroom, there’s a burst of light that ruins the film. But no one is home.

She tells the BSC, and they make wild guesses that it might be Mr. Zibreki. Maryanne realizes she also has another roll of film with the bank. When Claudia develops the film, she notices one of the windows in the bank has a light on even though it was Sunday and the bank was closed. At the bank, they again see the lady with the baby stroller. Claudia creates a distraction by dropping a roll of quarters. Then snatches of the blanket. Under the blanket is a baby. The mother was just being protective.

This confirms in Claudia’s mind that the thief must be Mr, Zibreski. By coincidence, they then see him staring at them out the window. Claudia, Maryanne, and Stacey decide to go back to the police station. Sergeant Johnson looks through the photos carefully again. He confesses that they’ve been investigating Mr. Zibreski. They’ve searched his apartment but found nothing. His alibi didn’t match where he was. In other words, they have no proof. So again, the photos are only circumstantial.

Claudia suggests they try to come up with a timeline. So, they sort the pictures by the clock in some of the shots, the direction of shadow, and the lighted window. From this, they can determine a chronological sequence. They are able to come to the conclusion that Mr. Z entered the back beween 1:00 and 1:30. Claudia hides the phots that night under her most unfavorable clothes.

While helping the kids organize the album for Dawn in the reject pile, Claudia sees something that makes her rush out. Claudia runs home and studies the pictures. She notices the ATM in one of the pictures. There are five pictures of the ATM, and one woman stands out. She notices the piles of the money she’s taking out growing and growing. So, Claudia thinks maybe she rigged the ATM to give her unlimited money.

Janine tho quickly shoots down this theory by telling the BSC the largest amount you can withrwaw from an ATM is 20.00. Even if she took out the maximum amount it couldn’t have been more than a thousand dollars. The amount in the photos doesn’t add up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Claudia takes the pictures, enlarges them, and hangs them on her walls. Then she takes new pictures of the enlarged pictures and zooms in on specific areas. Then she adds these to the walls.

The BSC come over and examine the photos. Claudia notices that in one picture Mr. Zibeki is looking at his wristwatch and in the next he’s looking at the bank clock. But he also has a pocket watch. Jessi notices the time on the pocket watch never changes. Claudia realizes he might be hiding a key inside it. A key to the safe deposit box. At the police station, Sergeant Johnson brings them into the rrom where Mr. Zebreski is already being questioned. Their suspicions are confirmed. There’s a key in the pocket watch. So, the case is solved.


Rating: 6. I think it’s sad that 13-year-olds can solve this case and trained police officers can’t. If they checked his apartment, did they not think to check his things (accessories) thoroughly? I mean…

[Leigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

These mysteries are wacky and yet boring at the same time. Amazing how that works. Anyway Claudia is taking a photography class as part of summer school. This leads into the b plot which involves making a picture book for Dawn in California. Anyway while they are out taking pictures Claudia becomes fascinated by the bank and it's structure and snaps away. Later on they learn a bank robbery took place on the same day as they were there and Claudia is convinced that she captured the crook. She didn't not really. This one was wild. The police even credit them with single handedly solving the case. The picture book plot was fun though so there's that.

[V. Arrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how much Claudia loves Nancy Drew, and Dawn calling her "the girl sleuth of Stoneybrook" warmed my heart.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think perhaps this book fueled my interest in photography in high school...

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know, I know, it's pretty hypocritical of me to say this is my favourite BSC Mystery - this is right up there in terms of the BSC being better than the police. (Such as Sergeant Johnson offering up important case details to the girls - "Oh, he's a suspect, but we searched his house and nothing! His alibi is weak though lol." - or allowing the BSC to be in the interrogation room with the (guilty) lead suspect to present their evidence against him - isn't that kind of an extreme safety and privacy issue?)

But, again as I've said before, I love when Claudia gets a time to shine and finds new interests that she excels at. I enjoyed the photography plot, I enjoyed the way that all the intricacies about photography were described to the reader without being boring. Claudia was a great narrator for this book, because the creative outlet was right up her alley. I also thought it was neat how the mystery was solved, even if it was the old "zoom and enhance" - which I don't think would work as well as they seemed to imply it would, as to see details engraved in a ring (but I digress!) - and I remember it blowing my young mind how it was figured out.

I'm not even going to mention the "Janine busting into the closed bathroom-darkroom and ruining Claudia's prints" subplot because not only is it a little silly (especially with how Claud thought it was the main suspect) but it really discredits Janine's smarts that she continually does this - she might understand quantum physics, but can she understand privacy? (Though I still love her in this book. I love when Claud and Janine get along!)

[Gabriella Mastrelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Revisiting this book many years later, I must say that as an adult, I'm able to appreciate its qualities much more than when I was a kid. However, this also means that I am baffled by some details that I didn't pick up on when I was younger.
Firstly, I love how of its time this book is. The BSC buy "those new disposable cameras", creating a photo album as a gift for Dawn in a time where photography in general is more novel and not a casual part of every day life and they send her clippings from the local newspaper in the post in order to keep her in the loop.
Claudia is by far the most interesting BSC member and her creativity and perhaps scatterbrain nature are the catalysts to solving this mystery. It's a decent enough mystery and Claudia's narration lets us feel part of the intrigue.
However, there are some things that as an adult have stumped me:
- Why are 13 year olds allowed to take part in a police interrogation?
- If it is Janine who accidentally opened the door of the dark room, is it really feasible that she could run downstairs and bolt out of the house without Claudia noticing at all?? That seemed like a bit of a plot hole.
- The lack of sympathy towards the culprit! An underpaid, aging bank employee is anxious about being left destitute in old age so squirrels away stolen money. Although not the right thing to do, it was so odd how Claudia described his pitiful situation and then follows it up with "I'm glad that he will be going away for a long time". Callous!

[chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this really quickly since it’s 117 pages long and there was so much happening that i didn’t really get bored of it.

My thoughts and predictions on what was going to happen were constantly changing but the mystery wasn’t actually very predictable in quite a lot of parts which is amazing considering i am SICK of reading predictable mysteries.

I love how in these books there are SO many likeable characters, I love every single person in the BSC and even a lot of their clients.

NOTES ABOUT WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT:
Claudia had just recently got into Photography and has learnt a lot about it thanks to her teacher, Mr. Geist who Claudia looks up to throughout the entire book. She was learning about how to show a lot about someone just by a single photo of them. So when her friends were coming over for a meeting, she shot a photo of each of them while they were walking through the door to show how they react visiting her. She also notes how she couldn’t take Dawns picture ( another one of her friends and Mary Anne’s stepsister ) because she was visiting her dad and younger brother Jeff in California. Mary Anne talks about how much she and the kids that they babysit miss Dawn and they want to do something to make her miss Stoney brook and maybe decide to come back soon. It takes them quite a while to think of something to do for her, but eventually they think of making sort of a remake of the book “A Day In The Life Of America”

[Courtney Gruenholz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this mystery at Half Price Books and figured I would get it since there are a lot of BSC mysteries I haven't read.

Claudia is easy to relate to since she is not good at math, loves junk food and has a passion for art.

She's in summer school for math related problems but her parents are letting her take any other extracurricular, so Claudia is taking photography. The only problem with it is that her makeshift darkroom is the bathroom where her older sister Janine can come in at any time and ruin her pictures.

Along with the other members of the BSC and the kids they sit for, Claudia is using this new passion to make a photo album for Dawn who is in California. Taking pictures all over town, Claudia is fascinated by the architecture of the Stoneybrook Bank.

The news the next day before the BSC meeting breaks with a story about money having gone missing from the bank! The police have no lead but believe that it had to have been an inside job since no alarms went off.

Claudia is sure that the pictures she took may have a clue to help out the police.

A sort of far-fetched plot but it proves just exactly how focused Claudia can be on something she actually enjoys and since she is a big Nancy Drew fan, she is good at solving mysteries.

I'll round this one up to three stars.

[Amanda]

I'll get on a roll with these books and just rip through a few of them in a night and then I'll hit the wall with one and not read them for weeks. Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph is such a book. I really don't like the mysteries. I honestly read most of this and it just blended in with so many other mysteries. Like haven't we already had a bank mystery?

I will say this has a truly mesmorizing cover that deserved a far better book. I would love to hang this oil portrait of Claudia over my fireplace.

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book when it came out, I thought it was cool she was into photography, like a continuation of the interest she took in it in the book Stacey’s Lie, where she built sandcastles, took photos of them and sold some prints at a small art gallery.

Anyways, Claudia happened to take pictures of a bank at the same time a robbery took place. They solved the mystery at the end after taking pictures of pictures to look for more details. I would recommend this book, as well as the other Claudia mysteries.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really do not remember reading this one as a kid. So it's possible that I didn't. The mysteries were definitely not my favorites, because even back then I thought they were more ridiculous than even the basic BSC plots were. This one was especially bad, so either I totally shut it out of my mind or just avoided it all together.

I could probably go into the plot and talk about how insane this was, but I will spare you. And myself. Mostly myself. I can't rehash this, I just can't.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the more preposterous mysteries (since the police truly have no leads or clues, so if it wasn't for Claudia the thief probably would have gotten away with it) but I don't even care because I still LOVE this book.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I took a photography class one semester in high school primarily because I remembered this book and how cool it sounded to develop film. (It actually really was cool, to be honest. I'd agree with Claudia that it seems like magic.)

[Sayo -bibliotequeish-]

As a kid my best friends sister had the whole BSC series on a book shelf in her room. I thought she was so grown up. And I envied this bookshelf. And would often poke my head into that room just to look at it.
And when I read BSC, I felt like such a grown up.
And while I might have still been a little too young to understand some of the issues dealt with in these books, I do appreciated that Ann M. Martin tackled age appropriate issues, some being deeper than others, but still important.

[Liesl FIND ME ON STORYGRAPH]

I actually really liked the mystery in this one! But I have two big hang-ups:

1.) Why did Seargeant Johnson let the BSC members into the room where the police were interrogating the bank guy? I know the BSC were able to provide evidence, but I don't think that they would be allowed to do that in real life?

2.) Does no one in the Kishi family KNOCK before entering the bathroom when the door is closed? What if someone is in there? Do they not care? That's a mystery that needs solving, IMO.

[Madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way the actual criminal investigation is handled in this is nuts, but I remember thinking the descriptions of the old-school photo developing process were really cool, as was Claudia's murder wall.

[Devon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally I'm *so* down for a Claudia book, but this one was a let-down. There was a double whammy for me--too much intense focus on the main mystery, and the side story was a lot of "we miss Dawn" nonsense again. Ick. This one was on the boring side.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does it concern anyone else that Claudia doesn’t know how to spell Darkroom? I get that she’s not a good speller, but come on.
I remember having this book when I was younger. I wish I had remembered how boring it was.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Challenge: Reread a childhood favorite

[aem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still cute series

[Christina]

Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: https://www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blo...

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful mystery! Maybe dated with cameras but still a fun re reading.

[Lianna Kendig · Rating 3 out of 5]

(LL)
This was a fun story even if the premise was a little ridiculous and the ending was a little too much. Lots of good information about developing film and photography.

[Scarlett Silk]

This book was suspenseful and amazing!

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this! Art AND mystery-solving. I think maybe I like Claudia's mysteries best of all. 😊

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

too unrealistic, both in how photography works and police procedures.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must have read this one a long time ago. I didn't remember the story too well, but the cover is so familiar.

[Melenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved these books as a child