An Ode to Lois Duncan
I think I was 14 before I discovered that I could buy books at school. I don’t remember what the program was called, but it was very similar to (if not the same as) the Scholastic program I run at my school now; flyers come out, you pick the books you want, mum provides a cheque and the books come to your classroom. One of the books that I ordered (and that arrived so promptly) was something called Summer of Fear, and it had quite a disturbing cover, as you can see. I was past my Nancy Drew phase and well into Agatha Christie by this time and looking for mysteries in any form. This sounded very mysterious; a visiting cousin, that even looks a little like our heroine, starts to gaslight her. Everyone loves said cousin, so no one believes our heroine. Great fun!!
Summer of Fear was my first; my first Lois Duncan. After reading it, I then, in true obsessive fashion had to find everything the woman had ever written. Killing Mr. Griffin followed Summer of Fear, then I Know What you Did Last Summer.
Then everything else she had written. All psychological thrillers before “gripping psychological thrillers” were a thing, or even a genre. I had all of Lois Duncan’s books (and still have them) and even hooked my brother on them. He used to snatch them from me as soon as I finished them. Now, again, this was the 80’s so there was no Amazon to tell you when the next one was coming out, no author website to keep you up to date on the author’s life. All I knew was that around 1990, new Lois Duncan books stopped. I looked every time I went into a bookstore but by then I’d moved onto Stephen King, so I wasn’t too concerned. I never thought to look in the adult section though. Maybe I should have after finding Judy Blume there. But this wasn’t like Judy Blume.
It was ten years later that I found a new Lois Duncan on the adult shelves. It was called Who Killed My Daughter. I can still remember reaching up to take it down to read the back, not believing that it was a true story. Seems there was a very good reason Lois Duncan stopped writing. She became somewhat obsessed with finding her daughter’s killer yet years later the case remains unsolved. Of course before the internet there was no way of knowing what had happened. Now, I can go to her website and read all about her career and what it felt like to try and write about teen killers when her own daughter had been killed. Back in the late 80’s I just knew there were no new Lois Duncan books.
Lois Duncan died two years ago, the mystery of her daughter’s death unsolved. I can only imagine what impact it must have had on her writing. To this day I have a love of the “gripping psychological thriller” which I attribute to her. I can go back and read Killing Mr. Griffin and enjoy it as much today as I did as a teen. A good indication of the legacy left by this gifted writer. I only hope she has found the peace she wasn’t able to find after the death of her daughter.
I had a different post planned for today but the death of Sue Grafton has left me feeling sad and nostalgic. For decades I have loved her stories, eagerly anticipating the next chapter in Kinsey’s story. Z is for Zero was set to be published within the next two years, and I was already wondering what Grafton would write next. Now the alphabet ends with Y and Kinsey’s story will remain unfinished.
Drew. In my teen years I quickly progressed to more “adult” books with Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton (I’ve always hated the age-labelling of books but that’s another post). I finished Grafton’s A is for Alibi and was forever after enamoured with her detective, Kinsey Millhone. Kinsey is flawed, independent and resourceful; and I wanted to be her. I even went through a spell of wanting to go to detective school; train to be a PI like Kinsey and Nancy Drew before her. That never happened but still I lived vicariously through Kinsey with B is for Burgler, C is for Corpse and, most recently, Y is for Yesterday.
I then sought everything I could find about Shakespeare, theatre, Elizabethan England and the Tudors. Strangely enough I didn’t study Shakespeare in high school until my final year and I wonder if that might not have cemented my love of the Bard. Honestly I don’t think I could have been turned off, but I can’t help wondering if a bad first experience with Shakespeare is where all the haters come from. Students who are presented with the Bard too early, before they can appreciate the genius of the language and the bawdiness of the comedy. Or a teacher who is indifferent to Shakespeare but forced to teach it, resulting in everyone being unhappy.
There was a secret place under the basement stairs at my aunt’s house. In this “secret” place were boxes and boxes of books, all sizes and colours. Huddled under those stairs, I got lost in the adventures of Joe and Frank, Freddy and Flossie, Nan and Bert, Trixie Belden and, my very favourite, Nancy Drew. Nancy was a teenager who had great friends, a fantastic car, unlimited funds and Ned. Each book immersed me in her world of adventure and with Nancy I began my love affair with mystery books. I loved trying to figure out “who done it”.
I wanted to be just like Carolyn Keene when I grew up. Yes, I thought she was a real person. You see, when I was young, you couldn’t just Google a name and find out all about them. And there was no reason for me to believe she wasn’t a real person. I was an adult before I found she was just a name for a stable of authors who wrote from a publisher’s outline. I was a bit let down I have to say. It seems it wasn’t an unheard of phenomena either. Franklin W. Dixon (Hardy Boys) and Laura Lee Hope (Bobbsey Twins) where also pseudonyms, crushing my hopes of every meeting them some day. I wonder if there are any more I should know about. Does James Patterson really write a book a month (she said sarcastically)?
I had all of these 1960’s/60’s Nancy Drews; the real ones with the list of books on the back. Until recently, I didn’t realize that most of them came from that original collection I had discovered under my aunt’s basement stairs. Even more importantly I didn’t realize this treasure
My Childhood Bookshelf 