Book Report: Killing Mr. Griffin

Donisha Smith
Period 2
3/7/11

Book Report: Killing Mr. Griffin
My book report is on “Killing Mr. Griffin”. The author of this book is Lois Duncan. Lois Duncan is a female novelist who writes suspense stories for teenagers. This book was published by Little Brown on April 1978.
The protagonist of this book is named Susan McConnell. Susan is a sixteen year old junior at Del Norte High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a loner and mostly stays at home to study. She is a hardworking student and is very unpopular. Personally, I like Susan. Throughout the book she was the only one who wanted to do the right thing when the other characters in the book accidently killed Mr. Griffin. The one thing that I didn’t like about Susan was how
The plan involved an innocent decoy named Susan. She was supposed to set up a meeting after school with Mr. Griffin so that the rest of the group which included Mark, Betsy, Jeff, and David could kidnap him. The students, excluding Susan tied up their teacher and hid him in a secret place in the woods on a mountain where no one would find him. Mark wanted him to beg to be let go but he refused. As a result, they threatened to leave him there so he would starve. He still did not give in, so they left him with full intentions to come back for him later. Later, Susan and David came back feeling terrible and wanted to let Mr. Griffin go. To their surprise they found Mr. Griffin dead. Mr. Griffin died because they kept his Nitroglycerin pills from him and because of the stress he experienced severe angina ( chest pain) and didn’t have is pills to help him. Throughout, book these students lied, stole and did many other things to prevent people from finding out the truth that they killed Mr.
Griffin’s car but Susan did not want to be apart of his plan any longer and threaten to report what they did to Mr. Griffin to the police. As a result, Mark tied up Susan and tries to kill her by setting her house on fire while her family is out for the evening. She is finally saved by Mr. Griffin's pregnant wife and Detective Baca. Since, Susan is not actually involved in what took place in the woods with Griffin, she most likely is going to be given amnesty. Mark , however, is separated from Jeff, Betsy, and David and must face three trials, one for kidnapping Mr. Griffin and causing his death, one for attempted murder on Susan, and one for killing David’s grandmother for finding Mr. Griffin’s. The lawyer for the remaining three worked hard to get the charges against them reduced to second degree murder. In conclusion, the story was a thriller. I liked how everybody went through so much to cover their tracks. I was not surprised that in the end they got caught because it was pretty obvious with all the mistakes that they make throughout the novel by leaving footprints and personal belongings at the murder scene. I learned that the teachers who are the most strict and have the highest expectations are the ones who can help you. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend because it was very interesting to