Quote of the Day

By this time she had guided Ricky along the Rue de Berri, into a doorway and down some stairs into a restaurant. It was big, much bigger than the other little place where they had dined the evening before; there were crowds of people and waiters dashing about, but the school tour had settled themselves nicely at some tables in a little gallery slightly raised from the main part of the restaurant and there were two places being kept for Ricky and Julie at a table with Fay and Ruth and Barbara.

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 8, The Crook and the Pearls. An example of Jane Shaw's gift for writing extended sentences, with 53 words in the last sentence.

The Restaurant in Montmartre

In Crooks Tour the girls spend too much money on taxis and find that they don't have enough money to pay their bill at the restaurant in Montmartre where they cool off with a citron pressé. The woman who runs the restaurant is very trusting and even lends the girls their fare back to the hotel. The restaurant is called Chez La Mère Geneviève in the book. Dizzy and Alison also visit this restaurant in Anything Can Happen. In this book, it is given its real name: La Mère Catherine.
The citron pressé features a lot in Jane Shaw's French stories. It is very strong lemonade to which the customer adds a great deal of sugar. I had one at a restaurant here in Curitiba with my daughter a couple of weeks ago. Although I normally love lemonade, this stuff was just too much and had me wincing and my eyes watering! In many Brazilian restaurants, a slightly weaker version is popular. We call it limonada suiça (Swiss lemonade). It's delicious when nice and chilled.

Quote of the Day

"Honestly!" said Julie crossly. "Mistresses! They don't listen. We want to tell her about a murder and she just charges off to get the tickets-"

"You don't think," said Ricky anxiously, "that we should abandon Ellie and go to the police instead?"

"Well, it's the same old business," said Julie impatiently. "We don't know where to find the police and we wouldn't know what to say to them if we did find them. No, no, Ellie is our only hope. Come on, we must get her to listen."

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 13, Crook in the Rain.

Printemps

It has already been two years since I took the Crooks Tour. Here is another snap of Printemps, where Ricky is led to believe she has stumbled onto a gang of jewel thieves. There was more about this store on 7 January, 2012, which you can read here.

Quote of the Day

"I expect so," said Ricky, but she spoke doubtfully. However, as a delicious plateful of food fantastically called oiseaux-sans-têtes was at that moment placed before her, she forgot about the picture and turned her full attention to the food.

"Oiseaux sants têtes means birds without heads," said Denise helpfully.

Wendy gave an affected little squeal. "Oh, Denise, what a horrid idea. Fancy eating poor wee birds without heads!"

"Would you rather eat them with their heads?" Ricky inquired with genuine interest and Wendy squealed again.

"I'd rather not eat wee birds at all," she said.

"Och, go on with you, Wendy," said Julie, "they're not birds, they're beef olives, only a jolly lot nicer than the beef olives we get at home."

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 9, Light in the Night.

Crooks Tour (Retro Press Cover & Spine)

The Retro Press cover and spine are the original illustrations from the Collins hardback that was published in 1962. The front cover was totally redrawn for the later Children's Press edition with the laminated boards, and the girls' clothes were updated to suit 1969 fashions, with narrower skirts. The spine illustration depicts a scene from Chapter 2, Crook in the Station, when Ricky mistakes a young man dashing to catch his train for a crook fleeing the scene of a crime.  However, this drawing is a little unusual. First of all, the man is described as being young and fair, but here he looks older and dark. Secondly, as the scene takes place in the early afternoon, it is strange that the man is wearing a tuxedo.

Crooks Tour Retro Press Blurb

Quote of the Day

Ricky, ready to promise anything, bolted her apple dumpling, normally one of her favourite puddings and one that she liked to linger over, and flew to the telephone. She rang Fay, the more hopeful, first, and poured a confused jumble of excitement, hopes, fears and sheer rubbish into her ears.

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 1, Excitement at Last?

Quote of the Day

"Goodness, I do think the French are nice," said Ricky, as they hurtled down through the streets of Montmartre towards the Rue du Mont Thabor, carefully enunciated to the taxi-driver at least five times. "So kind and trusting."

She changed her tune a little when the taxi-driver, not pleased with his tip, shouted furiously after them as they ran blushing into the hotel. "Well, mebbe they're not all kind," she said as the driver's furious yells made the girls wince painfully. "But at least Madame Raoul up at Montmartre is---"

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 7, On to Paris.

Quote of the Day

The hotel-keeper, a jolly little round man, wearing braces embroidered with edelweiss, gave them a tremendous welcome. He talked very fast, inaccurate English, and told them of the many amenities Rosenberg had to offer - the river and the small lake and mountains, so many, so high mountains, why, look there, face to face with them was the mountain called the Eiger, that terrible north wall of the Eiger which for many years no one had climbed, he had a book of cut-outs from the newspapers telling of the many times that men had not climbed it.

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 3, Crook in the Hotel.

Laminated Boards

Last week I received an e-mail inquiring about the different editions of the Susan books and whether the Children's Press editions had illustrations and dust jackets. I never really used to give much thought to the editions. As I live in Brazil, there's no way I can go around charity shops and second-hand book stores to compare editions, etc. When I started collecting Jane Shaw, I was happy just to get my hands on the books and read the stories. But after a while I began to take an interest in the editions. The original Collins books were often lavishly illustrated and even had colour frontispieces. The original Children's Press books from the late 1950s had dust jackets but were often bereft of illustrations. My copy of Susan's Helping Hand, for instance, has a DJ but no internal pictures. My Seagull Library edition of Susan at School has the illustrations and DJ, but no frontispiece. The same goes for Susan Muddles Through. From Susan's Trying Term onwards, all my books are original Collins editions and I don't imagine they were issued in any other format. However, in the mid to late 1960s, several of Jane Shaw's books were issued in cheaper hardbacks with laminated boards. They had no internal illustrations, but the covers are very colourful and lively. I have Susan Rushes In in this edition and also Crooks Tour. The Jane Shaw books issued in this format are:

Susan Pulls the Strings
Susan's Helping Hand
Susan Rushes In
Susan Interferes
Crooks Tour

All of Jane Shaw's books published by Nelson (Penny, Thomas, Dizzy and Alison) were never issued in cheaper editions. Collins, obviously set on getting as much mileage as possible on the stories, also considered putting out the early Susan stories in Armada paperbacks in the 1970s, but for reasons unknown this idea was shelved.

Crooks Tour Retro Press

The Retro Press cover of Crooks Tour. The spine shows a scene from Chapter 2, Crook in the Station, where Julie, Ricky and Fay collar the young man rushing through the train station at Basle. Thanks to Jan Johnson for this nice scan.

Crooks Tour (Children's Press)

The 1969 edition of Crooks Tour, published by the Children's Press. A drawing very similar to the  original drawing from 1962 is used, but the girls have had their clothes and hair modernized.

Quote of the Day

As it happened, they were both sheltered from the rain and at the same time quite hidden from the big door leading into the street. The rain was coming down, like slate pencils said Fay, but the girls were nicely sheltered in their doorway, and Julie was feeling  much better now that the rain was not going down her neck any longer.

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 13, Crook in the Rain.

Quote of the Day

Ricky nodded. "Yes, it's true! Look!" and she opened the blue velvet box and showed the pearls lying on their bed of satin.

"Well, there's a thing," said Julie.

"I should think so!" said Ricky. "But as I came along in the underground or Métro or whatever they call it, I worked the whole thing out-"

Julie had got her breath back again. "Oh, you did, did you-"

"Yes, and this is how I worked it out-"

"Another crook?"

"Well, yes - but honestly, Button, I can't think of any other explanation. You see-"

"Wait until we've had some lunch then," Julie interrupted. "I'm too weak for one of your crook stories at the moment."

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 8, The Crook and the Pearls.

Quote of the Day

And don't give him the story of your life beginning with your French grandmother," said Ricky, "like you usually do. Just tell him where to go-"

Denise looked slightly offended and began to talk to the driver. He seemed to have a certain amount of difficulty in understanding Denise when she told him Rue du Mont Thabor, but eventually he shouted joyfully oui, oiu, oui, he understoond perfectly, Mont-mumble, mumble and he turned his ancient cab with a wild jerk which sent all the girls tumbling into each other's laps.

"He must be another Frenchman who doesn't understand French," said Fay as they sorted themselves out.

"Not at all," said Denise with dignity. "He's just a wee bit deaf, that's all."

From CROOKS TOUR, Chapter 7, On to Paris.

What else were they reading?

My copy of Crooks Tour is a 1969 Children's Press edition. The back cover shows which books were getting some extra mileage with the CP. We can see that the early Susan books are among them.

Taking the Crooks Tour 7

My favourite part of Ricky's adventures in Paris is when the young man hands her the little box of fake pearls and says "Printemps". Believing that she has unwittingly become involved in a jewel heist, she combs the newspapers for news of the robbery. Of course, she finds out later that the young man was handing out adverts for the Printemps department store. She feels a little sheepish, but has no objections to doing a little shopping there! The store was founded in 1865 and is located on Boulevard Haussmann. 

Taking the Crooks Tour 6

This is the train station in Basel, Switzerland, where Ricky and Julie knocked over the young man that Ricky imagined was fleeing from the police in Crook in the Station.

Taking the Crooks Tour 5

During their stay in Paris, the girls pay a visit to the Musée Grévin, a waxworks museum. Many of the statues there today (Michael Jackson, Tony Blair, etc.) were obviously not there in 1962, but one statue that the girls did see was that of Marat, "murdered in his bath while Charlotte Corday looked on in amazement at what she had done".  Below we can see the front of the museum. More pictures of Paris are available at Paris en Photos, which you can view here.