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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Novelist's True Crime Story, July 21, 2004
I read this book after listening to Lois Duncan speak earlier this month about her continuing search (15 years on) for the persons who murdered her daughter. This a compelling account of mother facing the unthinkable. I am somewhat astonished by the reviewer who critizes the book for not revealing the true killers. Readers hope for a clean ending will be disappointed; those requiring it will miss the point. Lois had always written of law enforcement as heroes, competent and tireless pursuers of justice. In reality, she got resistance, not assistance from the police. Lois loses not only a daughter, but also her trust for our justice system.
There are two reasons the book stands out and is worth reading. First, Lois writes well. Hers is not the only family to become victims of unsolved crimes, but she tells the story we don't often hear -- precisely because it does not have a neat or hopeful ending and reminds us that, in the end, we are all at the mercy of our fellow human beings. The second reason this book is different is because of the use of psychics. I am quite skeptical, generally, and wondered at first whether Lois and the psychics used each other: Lois to feel better; the psychics to self-promote. But the useful information that inexplicably emerges through the psychics is uncanny and too plentiful to be the product of sheer chance or coincidence. It really requires one to consider one's views on the nature of life and death.
If you want a thought provoking looking inside and mother's nightmare, then read this book. If you want a happy ending, then do not.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must read!, November 4, 1999
Who Killed My Daughter is a wake-up call on young murders, better yet on all murders. This was an excellent book that both made me cry but also stand back in total admiration for Lois Duncan. From beginning to end, this book held my full attention, and I was always anxiously awaiting the upcoming events. One reason I was awaiting upcoming events was that Lois Duncan showed how a person could survive the most tragic events in a life. After reading the tale of her struggle to find her daughter's murderer, I thought about the ways people deal with obstacles in life. The police insisted that her daughter, Kate's death was a random shooting, but Lois wouldn't take "random" for an answer. Not once did she ever throw her hands up in the air and give up. She persevered until she felt confidant with the efforts made to find a killer. When she couldn't get any response out of the police, she went to the FBI. When she couldn't get a response out of the FBI, she hired a private investigator. Whenever a lead came up and nobody else cared, when her private investigator failed, Lois took care of the lead herself by doing her own investigation. I give her a lot of credit for this determination because not only was she still grieving over her daughter's death, but she also was discovering bad secrets about her daughter while keeping after the case. Lois found out that her daughter was involved in insurance scams along with her boyfriend. Despite this bad news, Lois kept on working on the case. I don't know if I would be able to be this strong. I would want to take pity on myself and drown in my own misery. The only people she put her total trust in were herself and her family. She is a strong person, and someday if anything bad happens in my life, I hope I can be as strong as Lois was. Though I admire her strength, the authority figures made me angry. To see that everytime they received details about Kate's death, they never looked into them just made me sick. The police put this case on the back burner because they didn't want to fund all the investigations that would have to take place to solve the murder. Instead of the police looking into these situations, they wanted to declare this event a random shooting. This is an easy way out, but what about justice? I know if I were to be murdered, I would want my parents to know who killed me. In order for them to have peace back in their lives, they would have to have justice. This is what parents' need at a time when their lives are already in complete turmoil. I would want the police to work in total cooperation with them. I understand that investigations cost a lot of money, but more dead bodies from the murderers would mean a greater loss then the money used to catch the killers. Though this book made me angry at times, the reading widened my opinions on psychics. I was a skeptic of psychics before, but the way these people in the book knew information was amazing. Lois went to many physics throughout this story, and each one knew many details of the murder. They gave Lois a lot of information to fill in the gaps of Kate's murder. One told Lois where the accident took place, the motive, and the cars that were involved. This was astonishing because the police records matched their stories perfectly. After reading this novel, I believe that police should use psychics for information on these cases, especially since they knew the details before the police did. If the police in this book had given credit to them, then maybe they could have gathered more information on the case. Overall, this book was a fantastic tale of a family's struggle to find a murderer, an actual look into the justice system, and a breakthrough on psychic abilities. I've never read any of Lois' other books, but after reading this one, I might read another. I'm just very surprised that she can still write murder mysteries after this tragic event happened to her.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An author of youthful thrillers describes her own horror, April 16, 2000
This review is from: Who Killed My Daughter? (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (School & Library Binding)
Lois Duncan was my favorite author as a young reader. She always kept you going with twists and turns, great plots, believable characters. This book about her daughter Kaitlyn's "random" shooting astounded me. When I first saw the book I "had" to have it because to write a true crime book about your own child, especially an unsolved murder, and an author of such talent, I knew it would be a wonderful -- and terrible -- book. Poor Ms. Duncan never gave up after the Albuquerque, N.M., police told her it was a random shooting. The mother did her own digging and learned Kaitlyn might have been involved in some Vietnamese gangs. She turns the case to private investigators and finally to psychics, who help her uncover what she suspected all along. This was no random shooting. Anyone interested in how police often have tunnel vision and won't follow up leads after they come up with their own beliefs should read this book. Lois Duncan tells reader in her thriller style how this very real terror could happen to you.
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