When I was growing up, Lois Duncan was one of my favorite writers. She wrote novels of suspense, books where young girls were often in trouble, but there was always an element of care taken in the writing of the story and towards the characters themselves. These books were on my heavy rotation reading list.
Years later, Duncan wrote Who Killed My Daughter?, a nonfiction book about the murder of her daughter. She wrote about how what happened echoed many things that she had written about before. She wrote of her frustrations in dealing with the police. Her daughter's murder remains an open case.
Duncan and her husband now help other families who are in similar situations. Lois offers her services as an interviewer and as a researcher, and her husband offers help with dealing with various documentation including the police report. They also have a website where they have posted their research in their daughter's case. I greatly admire their work.
I also read that Duncan is now updating the books that I enjoyed so long ago. She says that she's modernizing some of the language—some of the phrases that her teenagers used would now be woefully oldfashioned—and she is also introducing our modern technology into her previous books. I have not ever heard of a writer embark on a project like this before, but I'm happy that she is doing so. These are very thoughtful books that, I think, caution readers of real dangers that are in our world, but then she also surrounds that with a great deal of care and concern. I think they are wonderful books to read.
Who Killed My Daughter website
