Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Lois Duncan - Who Killed my Daughter?

60. Who Killed my Daughter? by Lois Duncan (1992)
Length: 354 pages
Genre: True Crime
Started: 13 June 2014
Finished: 17 June 2014
Where did it come from? From Paperback Swap
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 21 May 2014
Why do I have it? I like true crime and Lois Duncan is a new author for me.

With a promise to see her family later, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette rushed out the door into the balmy midsummer evening. Little did Kaitlyn's mother, Lois Duncan realize that those were the last words she would ever hear her daughter speak. On July 16, 1989, Kaitlyn was shot to death as she drove home from a friend's house along a deserted strip of New Mexico highway. The police concluded that it was a random shooting - even though it showed all the earmarks of a professional hit...

Kaitlyn's brutal murder left her family broken-hearted and grieving, and her mother pondering a thousand unanswered questions. Who would put out a contract on a beautiful young honor student? Was it grief that made Kaitlyn's Vietnamese lover try to take his own life? - Or was it not an attempted suicide at all?

Lois Duncan's search for answers would eventually lead her into the seamy underworld of Vietnamese gangs that stretched across three states. It would lead her to an extraordinary psychic and to a courageous journalist determined to expose the devastating truth. And it would send her on a soul-numbing odyssey into Kaitlyn's shocking double life as she desperately sought justice for the daughter she would always love...even in the face of shattering betrayal and threats to her own life.

Today, Lois Duncan's search for her daughter's killer continues. She will never give up. The best-selling young adult novelist has made finding her daughter's killer her life's mission. After all, a mother's blood vow to her deceased daughter is paramount.

I thought this was a truly heartrending book. I completely sympathized with Ms. Duncan's burning desire to discover the entire devastating truth behind her daughter's still unsolved murder. As an author of young adult suspense novels, Ms. Duncan proves that sometimes the most terrifying and suspenseful events are the ones that actually happen.

Understandably, this was perhaps the most difficult book for Lois Duncan to write, because this is a story that involves herself and her family. Her relentless search for justice for Kaitlyn is a quality for which I admire her greatly. I was certainly aware that Ms. Duncan was an author of young adult novels (Mareena read quite a lot of her novels while she was in high school), but I never realized that her youngest daughter was actually murdered, and that Kaitlyn Arquette's murder was still unsolved to this day.

Despite feeling tremendous sympathy for Lois Duncan and her family for their daughter's murder, I must also admit to feeling slightly angry at Kaitlyn herself. She was eighteen-years-old and got involved in an impossibly dangerous situation - one that ultimately cost her her life. While it is certainly true that young people will do anything for love - and teenagers can and do make mistakes - what Kaitlyn did subsequently endangered her entire family.

This book was certainly well-wriitten, but it was so convoluted that I had trouble sorting out the plot of the murder. I give Who Killed my Daughter? by Lois Duncan an A!

A! - (90-95%)
   
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm a newbie as far as book blogging goes, having been blogging at my daughter's blog for only about two and a half years. Now it's time for me to get my feet wet on my own. Please be gentle with this blogger. Love to hear from you all. Have a great day! :)