M#15 Kristy and the Vampires

Summary

Derek Masters is filming a movie called Little Vampires in Stoneybrook, and naturally, the family needs a BSC member on set with him all day. Lucky Kristy, who had been expecting a boring summer, is the one who gets the job. At first, being on a movie set is exciting. There's a lot for Kristy to learn, and getting a behind the scenes glimpse of it all is pretty cool for her. She's also impressed by Derek's acting talent; he keeps upstaging Carson Fraser, the star of the project. Then, the accidents start to happen, and they all seem to involve Derek. The first couple are just due to apparent clumsiness on his part: stumbling when he gets out of his car, dropping a lamp. The third accident, though, is far more serious. Derek, who usually does his own stunts, is due to perform one where he falls through a pane of glass. The propmaster ordered special breakaway glass for the shoot, which won't harm Derek when he falls. Then, Todd Masters (Derek's little brother) accidentally kicks a rock into the glass and breaks it. That's when everyone discovers that the glass was real, and Derek would have been badly hurt if the stunt had gone ahead. The propmaster is sure he ordered breakaway glass from Rockaway and Sons (a local glass company), and has no idea how the real stuff got there. It doesn't matter; he gets fired anyway.

Kristy is pretty determined to figure out how the glass got switched. She convinces one of the movie staffers to show her where the receipts for purchases are kept, but she doesn't uncover any clues. The next day, another stunt is supposed to take place, but this time, Derek is taken out of it in favor of a stunt person. He's pretty bummed, since it involves flying on wires. It's a good thing (for him) that he didn't do the stunt, because as they're hoisting the stunt woman up on the wires that Derek WOULD have been using, they break and she falls. She's okay, just bruised and shaken up. Kristy calls an emergency BSC meeting so the club can try and figure out who might be out to get Derek. First on the list is the star, Carson Fraser. He's not happy about all the attention Derek is getting, and the girls think he (or his creepy agent) might be willing to go to great lengths to change that. Second on the suspect list is Zeke, the prop guy who was fired. He'd have obvious motive to want to sabotage the movie. Third is Sheila Mayberry, publicity person extraordinaire. She's said quite openly that ANY publicity for the movie is good poublicity, and she's been eating up all the accidents that have been happening. The BSC thinks it's possible that she's causing the mishaps in order to have more to write about.

Not long after the meeting, Kristy seizes the chance to "inspect" Carson Fraser's trailer to see if she can come up with any evidence. There's nothing much there except some postcards he's writing to a friend of his, plus some roses and note from a rather enthusiastic fan of his who had been hanging around the set all day. There's definitely nothing that would prove that Carson had anything to do with Derek's accidents. NONE of the sleuthing that the BSC has done has gotten them any closer to solving the mystery, until Kristy overhears a conversation between Sheila Mayberry, a reporter from Variety, and that fan of Carson Fraser's who's note and flowers Kristy had seen in his trailer. The girl's name, as it turns out, is Lindsay Rockaway, and she's a member of the family who supplied the glass. That's when Kristy starts to put two and two together. Lindsay is a BIG Carson fan; maybe even big enough to try and harm Derek for stealing her favorite actor's spotlight. She also would have had access to the glass that was supposed to be used for that stunt. On a whim, Kristy follows her. She's distracted for a moment and ends up losing sight of Lindsay, and when she catches up again, Lindsay is looking awfully disheveled and dirty. Kristy follows her downtown to a convenience store, where she watches Lindsay buy a soda. On the way out, something falls out of her pocket; it's a car repair manual, and the page on brake malfunctions is dog-eared and highlighted. Uh, oh...

Kristy races back to the movie set, worried that Derek might be in danger. At first, she doesn't see Derek, his driver, or the car that they'd been using. She's worried that she's too late, but then, she sees them. Kristy tells the driver what she suspects, and he gets out of the car to investigate. Sure enough, the brake line had been cut, and if they'd tried to drive anywhere, there would have been major trouble. By that time, quite a crowd had gathered around...including Lindsay Rockaway. Kristy accuses her point blank of the crime, and she confesses. She's taken into police custody, and is shipped off to a rehab facility for trouble teens.

Also, Claire Pike is terrified of vampires, so NONE of the Pike girls can go to the set to watch filming. She gets over it by dressing as a witch in order to scare the vampires right back.

Rating: 2.5

Thoughts and Things

• This movie set had the worst security I've ever seen. Half of Stoneybrook could just come and go whenever they pleased, to the extent that it sometimes disrupted filming. No one really questioned it when Kristy wanted to look at those receipts, and if there had been better security (not to mention people to test stunt equipment), this book wouldn't have even been necessary!
• Carson Fraser=Robert Pattinson. :)
• I kind of love that Mallory gets picked by the director for a walk-on role after what happened to her in CA. What a boost for her self-esteem!
• Look at the cover...I can't believe that Richard let Mary Anne out of the house wearing a skirt that short and tight!
• Kristy says in the beginning of the book that it's a couple of weeks after the end of school. I guess it really depends on your definition of a couple, but that's approximately when the last book was taking place, too. Stacey's definitely not on vacation in this one, though.