Thoughts before reading:
Definitely never read this one before... but I swear there are still books coming I read as a kid!
The basics:
One afternoon Dawn's out shopping with Carol when she witnesses a crime: a guy in a clown mask running away from a store he just robbed with a bag of money. (Yes, sadly I'm not kidding.) She gives a statement to the police after they arrive, but he isn't caught. There's even talk of canceling Halloween if he isn't found in time, so Dawn and her friends decide to solve the case! The We Love Kids Club also decides to have a Halloween party for their charges, just in case they don't get to trick or treat.
In other news, the Palo City Dewitts are helping out a boy named Timmy, whose family has fallen on hard times. He's over at their house a lot, and the girls usually end up sitting for him when they watch the Dewitt boys. Dawn also sees his dad around, and he seems like he has anger issues. (He's yelling at a dog for daring to go into his yard.)
Dawn tracks down the mask type worn in the robbery by asking clerks in Halloween stores. One tells her details about three different people who bought that same clown mask. From there, the girls start tracking down those people. One owns a local business and bought the mask for his daughter, another is a kid on the high school track team. They follow the latter, Tom, but cross him off the suspect list after seeing him constantly stopping to help people.
The girls hear on the radio that the clown robber has struck again. This time he robbed a hardware store. The clerk fell and got hurt, and the thief got away once more.
On Halloween day, Dawn sees the car from the robbery, a black Chevy with a Frank's Franks bumper sticker, in Timmy's garage. (Could this be any more predictable?) Stunned, she flees across the street and tells Mrs. Dewitt, who calls the police. Timmy's dad is arrested, and trick or treating is back on.
While out trick or treating that evening with clients, Dawn sees the robber in the clown mask and black attire, digging in Timmy's backyard. Panicked, she runs to the Dewitt's house and calls the police again. Miraculously, the robber is still in the yard when they arrive, and is arrested! It's a woman, the same one they saw working the counter at Frank's Franks while investigating the bumper sticker. She's actually Timmy's mom, and was robbing stores because she doesn't make enough money to support her son.
Back in Stoneybrook, the Barrett-Dewitt kids tell their parents they don't want to move to Greenvale, where the adults had been planning to buy the family a house after the wedding. They end up finding a nice, but small, house in Stoneybrook instead.
Timeline:
It's October but Halloween hasn't happened yet in California, so we've gone a little backwards in time from the last book.
Misc. thoughts:
*Carol's becoming part of the family, and Dawn/Jeff are liking her much more.
*Dawn literally says she's solved crimes before and is a great detective, like this is a totally normal preteen hobby. Her friends react like it's completely common too, and basically respond like "Ok cool, let's solve the robbery!"
*The criminal the girls are chasing after in this book has a gun, no less. This is definitely not a game...
*Timmy's mom turning to crime because she doesn't make enough money to support him is equal parts sad and ridiculous, honestly. I didn't even know how to feel about this book, it was mainly just bizarre.
*Ghostwritten by Ellen Miles
*There's an error in the kindle summary for this book, where it says, "Stoneywood's trick or treating is called off". LOL, well, it's STONEYBROOK, but Dawn isn't even there. She's in Palo City.
Books mentioned:
None
My rating:
2 stars, another Scooby Doo mystery. This book was just bad, and painful to read.
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