Posted on by TracyC

Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Haunted House

Cam Jansen

#13 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Haunted House by David Adler, 1986, 1992.

Cam’s Aunt Katie and Uncle George take Cam and her friend Eric to an amusement park.  When they stop to buy food at the refreshment stand, Aunt Katie realizes that her wallet is missing.  She isn’t even sure exactly when it disappeared.  Cam thinks that someone stole her aunt’s wallet.  Who could have taken it?

Cam thinks at first that it might have been a couple of boys on roller skates who ran into her aunt earlier, but it wasn’t them.  Cam notices that another woman is complaining about a lost wallet and realizes that she had gone through the haunted house just before they did.  Someone in the haunted house is taking people’s wallets!

When they all go through the haunted house a second time, Cam figures out that a man dressed in black has been stealing people’s wallets.  When they went through the haunted house the first time, he jumped out at them, and they thought that he was just a part of the attraction meant to scare them.  She spots the man leaving the haunted house and tells the park’s security guards.  Everyone gets their wallets back, and the park’s owner gives Cam four free passes to the park for a month.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds

Cam Jansen

#1 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds by David A. Adler, 1980.

This book is the first in the Cam Jansen series, introducing readers to her amazing photographic memory. Cam’s real name is Jennifer, but when people discovered her photographic memory, they started calling her “The Camera,” which was later shortened to Cam. When Cam wants to remember something, she says “click,” which she says is the sound that her mental camera makes.

While Cam is at the mall with her friend, Eric, and his baby brother, Howie, a jewelry store is robbed.  The thief got away with some diamonds.  Although the police caught the man who ran away from the scene of the crime, the people who witnessed the crime say that he was not the thief.  As Cam goes over the pictures in her mind, she realizes that something strange is going on.

Partly, Eric and Howie give Cam the clue that she needs to solve the mystery. Cam is an only child, but as she watches Eric taking care of Howie, she realizes how much stuff a baby needs. Howie has an entire diaper bag full of supplies. However, a couple who left the jewelry store earlier appeared to have only a baby in a blanket and a rattle. Cam realizes that a couple with a real baby should have been carrying more than that.

The man and woman with the “baby” were the running man’s accomplices. It was that man who actually committed the crime.  The other man who ran was a distraction.  The couple carried a doll and pretended it was their baby.  They hid the diamonds in the baby’s rattle.  Cam realizes that they were strange because they didn’t have a diaper bag or anything else with them that parents would normally carry around for their baby, like the bag that Eric’s mother has for Howie. 

Cam and Eric follow the thieves to their hideout and then get the police, although there is a tense scene where Cam is caught by the thieves, and she must hide with Howie until the police arrive.

The book is currently available to borrow online for free through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Snowy Day Mystery

Cam Jansen

CJSnowyDayMystery

The Snowy Day Mystery by David A. Adler, 2004.

One snowy day, Cam Jansen and her friends are on the school bus outside of their school.  Because of the snow, a lot of parents have decided to drive their kids to school, and with all the extra cars, it’s difficult for the bus driver to pull up and let the kids out.  Cam and her friend, Eric, pass the time while they’re waiting with a memory game.

Their game proves useful later, when one of their teachers discovers that someone has stolen three computers from one of the classrooms.  There are footprints in the snow outside the classroom window, but the window was locked from the inside after the theft.  Whoever took the computers must have actually entered the school and passed them to someone outside.  But, computers are big and heavy.  How did they get them away without anyone seeing them?

Cam and Eric begin to investigate, and Danny, a classmate with a habit of telling really bad jokes, tags along.  Part of the solution to the mystery has to do with all of the extra cars in front of the school that morning.  The thieves’ car would have blended in with all of the others, except that they were doing something that none of the other cars were doing, something that Cam realizes that no car would have had a reason to do.  Cam saw the thieves leave herself and is later able to describe the car to the police, but the unusual thing about it doesn’t occur to her until she thinks about where the thieves parked their car.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.