Twin sisters Connie and Kit are excited over the arrival of their young Aunt Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a stylist for Champions department store in Philadelphia and has agreed to help the twins and their friends put on a fashion show, including borrowing outfits from the department store.
After her arrival, as the girls begin fitting the outfits, Elizabeth realizes one item is missing; an expensive beaver fur beret. Although she tries to appear relaxed Connie can tell her aunt is very worried about the missing item. She later confides to Connie that this isn't the first time something in her care has gone missing.
The fashion show goes well and Connie loves the experience as a model but Kit does not. So when Aunt Elizabeth mentions that she's short one model for the department store everyone agrees Connie should take it and that night the two women head back to Philadelphia.
Elizabeth is still concerned over the missing hat so she goes to the closed department store on Sunday to search her office. Connie wanders around the empty store and stops in the mirror-lined hat shop to browse. With the sudden feeling of being watched she looks up into the mirror and sees a man disguised in a large women's hat behind her. Before she can scream he knocks her unconscious.
She awakes with Elizabeth and George, the watchman, with her. They don't believe her story of the man in the hat and tell her she must have simply fainted from the summer heat and knocked her head on a display counter.
Back at Elizabeth's apartment Connie is introduced to Larry Stewart, a boy who works in the window dressing department at Champions. He listens to and believes her story.
Monday is her first day of work. Her job consist of walking around the store wearing clothing from the College Miss section. When she goes into the empty model's dressing room at lunch she finds a stock girl named Grace in the room crying. Connie tries to console her but upon learning Connie's aunt is the store stylist Grace flees the room.
Towards the end of the day Connie is approached by floorwalker Mr. Kurt who is also new. Connie finds something off about the man and mentally describes his manner as "oily".
After work Connie and Larry go out a date to the movies and while walking home they talk of Connie's career goal of working in advertising. Larry says him and Elizabeth have advertising contacts through work. They go up to the apartment to discuss this with Elizabeth but inside they find the place in disarray and some mysterious person fleeing through the backdoor. Strangely enough nothing has been taken.
The next day at work brings another missing item, this time from the jewelry department. Mr. Champion believes the items are being stolen by an inside person and hires a private detective who is to stay unknown.
Connie runs into Grace on the way home and learns that her little sister is a recovered invalid who has no desire to leave her house. Again, at the mention of aunt Elizabeth Grace flees.
The next day at work the missing necklace from the jewelry department is discovered in Elizabeth's bag. Connie becomes more eager to find an answer to this mystery, especially after she learns the necklace was found immediately after Grace had fetched the bag for Elizabeth.
Connie visits Grace's home where she learns that Grace borrows items from work to show her sister but returns everything she takes. She had returned the fur beret in the display department hoping someone would find it but no one has yet.
The next day Connie arranges a plan for her and Grace to retrieve the hat after hours and return it to the hat department, then confess her borrowing to Elizabeth. Once down in the display department they dig the hat out from behind a pile of display props that have since cover it.
Just as they find it Mr. Kurt enters the room with one hand suspiciously in his jacket pocket. He menacingly demands they hand over the hat but Grace tells Connie not to give it to him because, as she later learns, Grace had given him the necklace which then showed up in Elizabeth's bag.
Connie manages to hook her foot around the leg of a small display table and kick it at him while Grace uses this confusion to run and turn off the light. The door swings open and in comes George and the undercover detective, Mrs. Morton. Mr. Kurt then leaves while the detective sits down and listens to the girls' story. Connie begins thinking and comes to the conclusion that Mr. Kurt was the man in the mirror who knocked her out.
Knowing that Mr. Kurt will sneak back into the store to take the fur beret the detective, Connie, Elizabeth, Larry, and a policeman hide in the store and catch him in the act.
It turns out Kurt was working with a hat maker in Paris to sneak out stolen jewels which were hidden in the designs and Kurt was to retrieve them.
Just as the book ends Larry tells Connie he's gotten her a job interview at an advertising agency.
- The fashioned mentioned in this book fascinates me. The book was written in 1948 but this copy was published in 1966. The suit that Connie models in the fashion show would look very different depending on which edition of the book you're reading. Here's an example of a fashionable suit for each time period:
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| Left: PenelopesHopeChest Right: CustomStyle |
- I've always pictured Elizabeth's apartment as looking like Mary's from the Mary Tyler Moore show.
- I like Larry. I think it's intriguing the way he's in between Connie (17) and Elizabeth's (28) age and originally is romantically interested in Elizabeth. She's not interested in his affections, I assume because he's younger, and pawns him off on Connie.
- I think that the whole story of Kurt and a Parisian man's plan to smuggle stolen jewels into the country is kind of dumb. It's too elaborate and not believable.
- An author of a book discussing feminist female examples has tried to claim that the Connie Blair series is sexist. This makes me extremely frustrated because I would absolutely argue that Connie Blair is the most feminist of all the female detectives, much more so than Nancy Drew who is regarded as a feminist icon. Here are some examples in this book alone to support my claim:
- Elizabeth is 28 and is a proud career woman. She is successful at her job and very respected. There is not a single mention in this book about her lack of a husband or children. She is someone who Connie and Kit admire.
- Kit enjoys her family's hardware store and is ecstatic when her father offers her a job working there. She doesn't just love it because it's her family's business but because she finds genuine interest in hardware equipment and the work it does. Kit dreams of someday running the store.
- Mrs. Morton is a female detective. She's very good at her job and when she gives orders to a man it says "her voice held authority he couldn't help but respect". She is also a "Mrs" so we can assume she is both a wife and a detective, something that Nancy Drew claims is not possible.
- Connie herself insists she doesn't have any current interest in boyfriends, love, or marriage as she's too interested on a future career to focus on any other large life decisions. Although she has a job as a model, and is successful at it, she dreams about working in the advertisement business rather then just wearing pretty clothes all day.
- Not only does this book show independent and strong women it also speaks out about gender stereotypes. Larry Stewart and Chipper White are men who works in the display department, they have to create visually pleasing displays and advertisements which includes styling outfits. Connie remarks she didn't think men like Chipper (i.e. manly) would do this kind of work. He counters back that its unfair that men who did this are stereotyped as "sissys" and gives Christian Dior as an example of men working in fashion.
Overall this is a good book. I think old fashion department stores are very fascinating. They use to be so much more glamorous and magical so that setting was fun, especially with a character who also gets to be behind the scenes. Even though this is a good book it's also slightly bland when it comes to the mystery. The beginning with Connie getting knocked out is quite spooky but the ending kind of fizzles out. I thought this the first time I read it as well but I was very happy to see the rest of the series, especially after book three, gets stronger.
Oh! I almost forgot to mention that the title isn't ideal. After giving it some thought I believe that the Clue in Blue is referring to a blue thread found on the missing necklace which helps Connie realize Grace was the one to take it. It's a very small and weak part of the story and not worthy of the title.
