Lois Duncan

Early life

Duncan was born Lois Duncan Steinmetz on April 28, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first child of Lois Duncan (née Foley) and Joseph Janney Steinmetz. Duncan had one younger brother, William Janney "Billy" Steinmetz. Both of Duncan's parents were professional magazine photographers who took photos for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

She spent her early life in Pennsylvania, relocating in her late childhood to Sarasota, Florida, where her parents resumed their employment as circus photographers. In Florida, she spent her youth among circus performers, including The Doll Family. Her experience growing up in this environment would eventually serve as the basis of her picture books The Circus Comes Home (1993) and Song of the Circus (2002).

Duncan described herself as a "shy, fat little girl," a "bookworm and dreamer" who spent her childhood playing in the woods. Duncan cited The Princess and the Goblin and The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins series among her favorite novels as a child. She started writing and submitting manuscripts to magazines at age ten, and sold her first story at the age of thirteen. At age fifteen, Duncan was photographed by her father posed at Siesta Key, and the photo appeared on the cover of the July 9, 1949 issue of Collier's magazine.

She graduated from Sarasota High School in 1952. The following autumn, she enrolled at Duke University, but dropped out in 1953 to start a family with Joseph Cardozo, a fellow student she had met at the university.

Early publications

After dropping out of college, Duncan continued to write and publish magazine articles; she wrote over 300 articles published in magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, and Reader's Digest. She published her first novel, Love Song for Joyce, in 1958 under the pen name Lois Kerry, followed by Debutante Hill in 1959; the latter was initially rejected for a literary prize because it featured an adolescent character drinking a beer.

In 1962, Duncan moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico with her two children after divorcing her first husband, Joseph Cardozo, and supported herself writing greeting cards and fictional confessionals for pulp magazines. In 1966 she published the novel Ransom, detailing a group of students held captive on a school bus, which earned her an Edgar Allan Poe Award, as well as marking her shift from romance to more suspense-oriented works.

In the early 1970s, Duncan was hired to teach journalism at the University of New Mexico. "I was hired on a fluke," Duncan recalled in a 2011 interview: Her friend, who was the chair of the journalism department, hired her as a replacement based on her experience writing for magazines, despite the fact that she did not have a degree. While teaching, Duncan enrolled classes at the university, earning her B.A. in English in 1977.

In 1970, she published the historical novel Peggy, chronicling the life of Peggy Shippen, followed by the 1971 children's book Hotel for Dogs, which was later adapted as a 2009 film of the same name starring Emma Roberts.

Suspense and horror novels

Influenced by her own interest in the supernatural and speculative fiction, Duncan wrote various suspense and horror novels aimed for teenagers. Some of her works have been adapted for the screen, the most infamous example being the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer, adapted from her 1973 novel of the same title. After the publication of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Duncan wrote Down a Dark Hall (1974), a Gothic novel following four students at an isolated and mysterious boarding school. In 1976, she published the supernatural horror novel Summer of Fear, which was also adapted into a 1978 film by director Wes Craven.

In 1978, Duncan published the controversial Killing Mr. Griffin, a novel that details three high school students' murder of their high school English teacher. Critic Margery Fisher noted Duncan's "unreserved" approach to writing the novel, in language she described as both "harsh and literal." Richard Peck of The New York Times also praised the novel, writing: "Duncan breaks some new ground in a novel without sex, drugs or black leather jackets, but the taboo she tampers with is far more potent and pervasive: the unleashed fury of the permissively reared against any assault on their egos and authority ... The value of the book lies in the twisted logic of the teenagers and how easily they can justify anything." Killing Mr. Griffin was one of Duncan's major critical successes, and was selected as an American Library Association (ALA) Best Book for Young Adults that year.

In the 1980s, Duncan would publish several more horror novels with supernatural themes, including Stranger with My Face (1981), about a teenage girl's experiences with astral projection, and The Third Eye (1984), also with psychic themes. 1985 saw the publication of another suspense novel, Locked in Time.

Later works

In 1988 and 1989, Duncan published the thriller novels The Twisted Window and Don't Look Behind You, respectively. From 1987 to 1989, Duncan wrote several picture books for young children, some paired with audio CDs of songs for children, including Songs from Dreamland, Dream Songs from Yesterday, Our Beautiful Day, and The Story of Christmas.

After the murder of her youngest daughter, Kaitlyn, in 1989, she would only write one more horror novel, a supernatural thriller titled Gallows Hill (1997). The murder of Duncan's daughter marked a shift in her writing, and she would spend the remainder of her career writing thematically lighter material, mainly children's chapter and picture books. In 1992, she published Who Killed My Daughter?, a non-fiction account of her daughter's unsolved murder.

In the 2000s, Duncan would write two sequels to Hotel for Dogs: News for Dogs (2009) and Movie for Dogs (2010), both children's novels. She would also publish her second collection of poetry in 2007, titled Seasons of the Heart. Her final book, a non-fiction sequel to Who Killed My Daughter? titled One to the Wolves, was published in 2013 with a foreword by Ann Rule.

Personal life

Duncan had three children with her first husband, Joseph Cardozo: daughters Robin and Kerry and son Brett. Her first marriage ended in divorce in 1962. In 1965 she married Donald Arquette, an electrical engineer; they have two children: son Donald Junior and daughter Kaitlyn (d. 1989). Her three oldest children all took her second husband's name.

In 1989 the youngest of Duncan's children, Kaitlyn Arquette, was murdered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Who Killed My Daughter? relates fact and conjecture about the still unsolved case. Duncan has said that her "dream is to write a sequel to Who Killed My Daughter? to give our family's true life horror story a closure. Of course, for that to be possible, Kait's case must be solved." Duncan also founded a research centre to help investigate cold cases, which later became the nonprofit Resource Center for Victims of Violent Deaths. After Kait's death, Duncan began writing children's picture books, saying that she could no longer write about young women in life-threatening situations.

Death

On June 15, 2016, at the age of 82, Duncan died at her home in Bradenton, Florida of undisclosed causes. It was noted by her husband, Donald Arquette Sr., that Duncan had suffered a series of strokes in the years prior.

Honors and legacy

Duncan is credited by many critics and journalists as a pioneering figure of young adult fiction, particularly the teen suspense and horror genres, and has been dubbed the "queen of teen thrillers." As noted by Emily Langer of The Washington Post, Duncan often "plucked her characters from normalcy and placed them in extraordinary, often dark circumstances," in contrast to her contemporaries such as Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume and Robert Cormier.

The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". Duncan won the annual award in 1992 and the young adult librarians now name six books published from 1966 to 1987, the autobiographical Chapters and five novels: Ransom, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer of Fear, Killing Mr. Griffin, and The Twisted Window. The citation observes, "Whether accepting responsibility for the death of an English teacher or admitting to their responsibility for a hit and run accident, Duncan's characters face a universal truth—your actions are important and you are responsible for them."

In 2014, Duncan was awarded the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America alongside James Ellroy in New York City.

Anthologies edited

Audiobooks

Novels

† As Lois Kerry
‡ Works that have been adapted into films

Non-fiction

Picture and chapter books

Poetry collections

Film adaptations