Here we go! I've been looking forward to getting to this series! Barbara Ann is one of the harder to find series and I was very excited 5 years ago to build a collection of all four books. Unfortunately I ended up not liking them. The books have good premises but the execution is terrible in my opinion. Barbara is a very one dimensional character and she lacks a personality.
I don't know who Ruth Grosby was but upon my previous reading I felt she must not have been an experienced writer and that based on her writing she might have been an older woman.
The last (and first) time I read this book was five years ago so lets see I'm my opinion has changed at all.
Fifteen year old Barbara Ann Wilson is excited for the upcoming school trip to Colorado. She announces it to her parents and asks them for the $250 fee. Her parents inform her that they're struggling financially as her fathers architecture firm has been losing business to a new firm, Howard and Johnson. The rival company has been winning over clients with designs that are almost complete rip-offs of Mr. Wilson's designs. As he's begun to believe someone is stealing his work he hires a detective to investigate it.
Meanwhile Barbara happily takes a day trip with nine of her friends to a cabin owned by the family of her best friend Beverly. After an afternoon of eating and playing horseshoes Barbara, her boyfriend Bob, and a girl named Jane all go for a walk. After they've gone quite a ways from the cabin Jane sprains her ankle and Barbara walks to the only nearby home to ask for assistance.
It is a run down farm house who's occupant will barely open the door for her and refuses to give help. Barbara has a rather strange belief that this house and her father's copied architecture designs are somehow related.
The detective hasn't been making much progress, mainly because Mr. Wilson will not let him suspect or investigate any of the employees. One night as Bob and Barbara are driving to a dance she sees a light on in her father's office from the street view. Rushing up to try and catch a culprit in the act she just finds Tony, the janitor. Barbara is disappointed this mystery has not been solved yet as she's desperate to go on the school trip so she decides to take things into her own hands.
On a Saturday she sneaks into the office of Howard and Johnson to look for any evidence she can find. In the wastepaper basket she finds a scrap of blueprints with her fathers business stamp on it but before she can flee with this evidence the two men appear. Barbara reveals all she knows so the men decide to take her to the farmhouse and hold her until they can secure $25,000 from an upcoming building contract and then flee.
While she is in the men's car being driven to the farm house she manages to drop three identifying items out the window; a compact Bob got her, a monogrammed fountain pen, and a handkerchief with her initials on it. At the house she is treated fine but securely locked in. This is when she finally realizes Johnson is Tony the janitor.
Meanwhile Mrs. Wilson has been frantic over Barbara's continuous absence. After calling all her friends and the hospitals her and her husband still cannot find even a trace of their daughter. However Beverly's family has gone to their cabin for the weekend so the worried parents hold out hope that Barbara had made a last minute decision to go with them. Bob offers to make the two hour drive there to find out.
When he's almost there he notices an object in the road; Barbara's compact. He then finds her pen and further on her handkerchief. Then he notices a flashing light in the distance. It's Barbara flashing S.O.S in Morse code with the light in the bedroom that she's been locked in for the night. Bob uses his flashlight to signal back to her than races back to the closes town to call Mr. Wilson who rushes out with three police officers.
At the farmhouse Bob climbs a tree that extends close to Barbara's window and throws her a rope which she secures to the bed frame and climbs across to Bob. Then the police offers burst in the house and take the culprits by surprise. Barbara goes home and falls asleep excited for her school trip
- The small bits of sexism in this book are minimal and I wouldn't even point them out if it wasn't for it being more prominent in the books that follow in this series. Barbara and her mother are bad at math while Mr. Wilson and Bob are good at it. While at Beverly's cabin the 5 girls are told to wash the dishes by Beverly's mother, when the five boys want to help she tells them no, they need to go relax while the girls do the cleaning. After Barbara has been kidnapped she is expected to help the other woman wash the dishes which I found strange in general.
- I found the baseball game to be really boring but I can't stand the inclusion of sports games in any books.
- I can't help but feel that Ruth Grosby wrote herself into the part of Barbara's mother, Mrs. Wilson. Granted, I don't know anything about Ruth Grosby but I find that a lot of authors from this time and genre were in their 40s/50s so it's not too much of a reach to think Grosby might have been and therefore related to the character her age.
Anyways the reason I think Grosby wrote herself as the mother is because Mrs. Wilson is written strangely. Her descriptions are very complimentary, way more so than Barbara's descriptions and Barbara is the main character. She's also included in the book in places that, in my opinion, she shouldn't be. Whenever Barbara's with her friends Mrs. Wilson is constantly butting in and then the book gives a whole description about how much everyone likes Mrs. Wilson, about how she's so popular among the young crowd, and about how young people like hanging out with her more than with peers of their own age.
- The chapter sizes are rather wonky. It went from A 30+ page chapter to a 7 page chapter. Since I like to sit down and read a chapter in a few moments of free time this made it difficult.
- Barbara instantly believing the farm house was somehow tied to her fathers copied blueprints was absolutely ridiculous. She had no reason to think this what-so-ever.
- Mr. Wilson hires a detective to investigate the copied blueprints but then gets upset when the detective does detective work. He gets upset when the detective even suggests it being any of the employees and refuses they be questioned or even informed an investigation is happening. Why not have everyone questioned including himself and his business partner, Mr. Radcliff. Also if word gets out there's an investigation and everything with the office is being watched then that might deter the thief.
The detective also tells him to start locking the blueprints up at night and keeping them within the office. Why were they not doing this after the second time they were stolen let alone the third or fourth time. Barbara father is an idiot.
- When Barbara is caught by Howard and Johnson in their office she tells them why she's there and that she's found evidence against them. She should have lied. Since they know who she is she should have pretended to be there to ask them to let her father get the building contract so she could go on her school trip or something like that, just appear kind of childlike and harmless. By this point she knew the men were mixed up with the shady farm house and working criminally but she still decided to antagonize them while alone with them in a private office in an empty building.
- When the men kidnap Barbara they tie a handkerchief around her mouth so she can't yell while they're in traffic yet she's sitting upright so people would still be able to see a gagged and bound girl in the car. Makes no sense.
- When Bob traces Barbara to the farm house the men hear him when he is just standing in the yard but when Bob throws pebbles at a window, climbs a tree right outside the house, tosses a rope twice, talks to Barbara, has Barbara climb across the rope, and both run away through the yard none of it is heard.
Overall this book isn't as bad as I remember it but it also wasn't great. Even though I literally just finished it minutes ago there's nothing that strongly pops up in my mind when I think of it, no stand out scene or event. Just all feels rather blah and blends together.
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