"Don't Look Behind You (Delacorte, 1989) was a book about a teenage girt who was chased by a hitman in a Camarro," says Lois Duncan of her 1989 YA novel. "Later that year, my eldest daughter, who was the model for the girl,...

Lois DUNCAN FANS have always known they could find thrills and chills in the pages of her many novels. And ever since Hollywood brought Duncan's I Know What You Did Last Summer to the big screen last year, more and more readers are...

Contrary to certain opinion, the new wave of novels for adolescents hasn't explored every sensational topic after all; mainly because the adult author doesn't live in a world as corrosively conformist or as criminally cruel as that of the teenager. Breathy novels about drugs, sexual liberation and sub-proletariat gang warfare let off scot-free the majority of young readers, who are virtually all middle-class, who deny drugs are a problem, and who are amazingly prudish about other people'...

Daughters of Eve is a suspenseful novel that invalidates legitimate problems by presenting misdirected solutions. The author raises such feminist issues as wife-beating, inequality on the job, unfairness in high school athletics and the sexist dimension of male/female relationships, but the violence of her solutions implies that it may be dangerous to even recognize the issues. Daughters of Eve is an elite high school group; its ten members are dedicated to sisterhood and sworn to secrecy. The book chronicl...

Seldom has a book left me more apprehensive as to its merits than Killing Mr. Griffin. Good mysteries are always welcome, and today's young reader enjoys a psychological twist. After all, his favorite geography is that of the inner "me." Points in favor of the book include: fairly decent language, the bad guys get their just desserts, and families work out their problems. The teacher's (Mr. Griffin's) philosophy—"students should be challenged to do their best...