I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Four teenagers are heading home after an evening of fun.  Driving down a mountain road, the car hits a young boy on a bicycle.  The teens panic; Barry, the driver, is eighteen and considered an adult.  If they report this, he’ll do jail time.  The four agree, somewhat reluctantly, to keep the accident a secret, but Ray and Julie are deeply troubled about it. Ray insists on at least calling 911 to try to get help for the boy.

That was a year ago.

Julie, once a bubbly cheerleader, has become a more somber, studious girl.  Helen’s life has only changed for the better: she’s a TV personality with her own apartment away from her struggling family. Football hero and only child Barry has finished his first year of college and is looking forward to a backpacking trip to Europe, away from his doting parents. He’s also more than ready to put some distance between himself and Helen.  They aren’t sure about Ray.  He left town after the accident, headed to California.

Then Julie gets a letter with no return address.  “I know what you did last summer” is all it says.  Is it a prank—or a threat?

Back in the day, mystery titles for children were mostly those featuring sleuths such as Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Hardy Boys, or the Three Investigators.  There were a few others, including a personal favorite, Brains Benton. From there it was on to adult authors like Agatha Christie.

Then a few authors began writing books that were edgier, books about real teens who found themselves in dire situations. I Know What You Did Last Summer came out in 1973 and created quite the stir. These teens had committed a crime! They mention smoking pot! They drink beer! (None of which is portrayed.) They have a stalker who means bodily harm!

This was definitely not a Nancy Drew book.

Naturally, this attracted the attention of Hollywood who optioned the novel for a movie.  Duncan was thrilled. When the movie opened, she was in the theater with her popcorn ready to see her book on the screen. She did wonder why there a man with a hook.

She soon found out.

She didn’t even eat her popcorn.

Former teen librarian Pam Neal said Duncan wrote an apology to all her fans, regretting that her suspense novel had become an urban legend slasher film. In an interview Duncan said she was “horrified.” The violence was sensationalized, which was particularly painful because Duncan’s daughter Kaitlyn had been shot to death by an unknown person just a few years before the movie.

Now the rebooted version of the I Know What You Did Last Summer is in theatres and from all reports it bears even less resemblance to the book than the first movie did.  I decided it was a good time to go back to the source material, so I picked up a copy of the book, albeit a slightly altered version.  In 2010, Duncan revised her book a bit, adding mentions of things like cell phones and GPS which didn’t exist back in 1973. She changed the war in the background to Iraq instead of Viet Nam, and made a few other changes to suit the times. Of course, that was fifteen years ago; there are a few things that seem slightly dated now but not so much that it took me out of the story.

Overall, I think the book has held up well. While more modern books may have grittier plots, the core parts of the book—the characters and the suspense—still work for me. This was a groundbreaking book in YA literature, one that led the way for such authors as Joan Lowery Nixon, Holly Jackson, and Karen McManus. It makes me sad that the novel is so little known.

As for the movie, I’ll pass.

Who Killed My Daughter? by Lois Duncan

Reviewed by Jeanne

Lois Duncan is a long time author of well-written juvenile and Young Adult novels.  Most are suspenseful-- thrillers even-- often with some supernatural elements, and were always a cut above the usual teen mysteries. In fact, she was recently named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.  Her best known titles are Killing Mr. Griffin and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and both are two sterling examples of why one should not judge a book by its movie--especially not the latter title.  

In 1989, Duncan suffered a tragic loss when her daughter was killed in an apparent random shooting.  As the shock wore off, Duncan began to question the official account of her daughter’s death and started making inquiries of her own.  Duncan’s investigations took her into some very dark areas.  She hired private detectives, talked to people who dealt in fraud, and even engaged psychics.  Chillingly, it appeared that some of the plots of Duncan’s books mirrored things that happened in Kaitlyn’s life not long before her murder.

While I’m not an avid reader of true crime stories, I do read them on occasion.  I picked this one up because I was an admirer of Duncan’s fiction and had been shocked to learn of her daughter’s murder.  I found it to be a compelling book that dealt not only with untangling clues and a mother’s grief, but with the supernatural as well.  Duncan consulted psychics and mediums.  She tried to maintain a healthy skepticism, but occasionally things she learned fit all too well with the physical evidence.  She dealt with her own grief and anger and her growing obsession to learn what really happened to her daughter.

Among the revelations was that Kait’s boyfriend had been involved in several staged car accidents for insurance.  These "accidents" weren’t just small potatoes insurance fraud:  they were part of a multi-million dollar organized crime ring.  Kait was aware of this; had she been about to blow the whistle?  Or was there something even bigger going on?  

Even stranger was that police officers took an interest in the case would suddenly lose interest.  Promising leads were given, but apparently never followed up on.  Could the police be involved? Or was it more a matter of incompetence and a cover-up?

It’s been a good twenty years since I read Who Killed My Daughter? but parts of it remain vivid.  It’s a true crime story, but it’s one that avid true crime readers might not enjoy in part because there is no resolution. Duncan deals with her own grief and the grief of the family as the various members try to cope in their own ways.  The supernatural aspects are handled well, I thought.  Duncan is so desperate for information that she’s willing to try anything no matter how far-fetched, but she is all too aware of how easy it can be to dupe people in her situation.  There’s a spiritual component to the book. But most of all, it’s a giant puzzle: there are so many threads of evidence, things that might be important—or might not, theories, conflicting witnesses, suppositions, and dead ends. 

Had this been one of Duncan’s novels, there would have been some sort of closure; but this was real life and easy solutions are hard to come by.  In most true crime books, evidence is presented, sometimes weighed in favor of the author’s theory, but there is almost always a favored theory. Not in this book; at the end, Duncan is still asking for leads, for anyone who knows anything to step forward.  

The case has remained open in the intervening years.  Duncan has appeared on various TV shows and continues to do interviews, asking for any leads. She and her husband have a website to aid other families with unsolved murders, helping them to formulate statements and to use media to draw attention their cases. She has written very little fiction in the intervening years, and only one YA novel, but has done a couple of non-fiction works—including one on psychics. Her most recent is a follow-up book, One to the Wolves:  On the Trail of a Killer, with a foreword by the late Ann Rule and it’s going to go to the top of my TBR pile. 

I do recommend Who Killed My Daughter?   It’s not a book for everyone, but it’s a powerful and personal book about those left behind after a violent crime, especially when that crime remains unsolved.