When you consider how long the Baby-Sitters Club series ran, it's suprising that the topic of child abuse hasn't come up earlier. This book, of course, deals with a new family where the father has everyone terrified. He's all peaches and cream with the baby-sitters, but he has strict rules for the children (touching the outside of a briefcase is enough to send him cranky), and the children have some suspicious marks on them. Claudia realises that things just aren't adding up like they should, finally turning to her mother to help her.

I read the book a little while ago, and it's not completely memorable now. But one thing that did stick out was how much I liked Claudia's mother in this book. Claudia's point of view usually makes her mother out as the big meanie, but here we see a much more adult approach as her mother takes control and helps 'save the day'.