The Riddle in Red

The Riddle in Red by Betsy Allen (1948) This is the second Connie Blair Mystery, and next to the first (The Clue in Blue), it feels a little claustrophobic, maybe just because most of it deals with her new job as a receptionist at an ad agency. Maybe it's a little too close to home. But then, I really liked the first one a lot, so there's a lot to live up to. Again Connie Blair heads out of her small home town, to Philadelphia, and stays with her very cool aunt—this time she's landed a job at pretty fancy-pants ad agency. It starts out with some real true-to-life job stuff—kind of oppressive, but Connie has a good attitude. Soon she gets mixed up in a mystery involving this intense woman who is the head a cosmetics company. It's funny, I just saw a Columbo episode that was centered on the cosmetics industry, and I swear a couple of the characters, including the cosmetics woman (who is also the murderer, played by Vera Myles) are based directly on this book! It was kind of eerie! I won't say what happens in this story (very different than the Columbo) but it is a pretty good mystery, with a satisfying conclusion. The two Connie Blair mysteries that I've now read were both good, and much better written than most of these series book—I mean, kind of strikingly well-written, at least in my opinion (I am, of course, an adult who reads kids' books). So I'm definitely planning on reading the next one—and maybe even the entire series (there are only 12 in all). They each have the name of a color as part of the title, like the Travis McGee books. I'm kind of a sucker for stuff like that.