Killing Mr. Griffin
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| Killing Mr. Griffin | |
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| Author | Lois Duncan |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | drama/fiction |
| Publisher | Little Brown |
| Publication date | April 1978 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 243 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-316-19549-9 (first edition, hardback) |
Killing Mr. Griffin is a novel for young adults by Lois Duncan. It is about a group of teenage students at Del Norte High School who plan to kidnap their strict English teacher, Mr. Griffin. The novel ranked number 33 on the American Library Association's list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000. [1]
The book was adapted to film in 1997, sharing the same title as the book.
[edit] Story
Brian Griffin is a strict and proper high school Math teacher who never accepts late homework and is extremely tough on students, and gives projects every two days. His students want revenge, so a group of them decide to kidnap him. Mark Kinney is the most often singled out by Mr. Griffin.
Mark lives with his aunt and uncle. He and his friends, David Ruffles (president of the high school's senior class), Jeff (a basketball player) and Betsy (the head cheerleader) decide to kidnap Mr. Griffin as a prank to scare the teacher and "teach him a lesson."
Susan McConnell, one of the students involved in the kidnapping plan (acting as the decoy), is a good student in Mr. Griffin's class. She engages him in conversation concerning an assignment after school. She walks with him to the school parking lot, where Mark, David, and Jeff kidnap Griffin. They drive him to a secret place in the mountains. Mark wants Mr. Griffin to beg them for his freedom, as Mark had to beg to be able to retake Mr. Griffin's class when he was caught plagiarizing his term paper, but Mr. Griffin refuses, so Mark abandons him there, blindfolded and bound. When Susan and David return to check up on Mr. Griffin, they find him dead. They learn that Mr. Griffin had a condition named angina pectoris. Usually, he would have taken a pill to deal with the condition, but was unable to, being bound and having his pills destroyed by his captors, not knowing what they were for.
Except for Susan, they place Mr. Griffin in a shallow grave. David takes Mr. Griffin's class ring from Yale, because it reminds him of his father. Susan does not go to help, because the group is afraid she might have a nervous breakdown. Mark concocts a story for Susan to use in the event that she is questioned. Griffin's wife Katie pays Susan a visit at her home, and Susan, using Mark's story, tells Mrs. Griffin that her husband was with another woman that evening. An upset and angry Kathy accuses Susan of making the story up, and then leaves after it's clear she can go no further.
Days later, Mr. Griffin’s body is found by one of Mark's ex-girlfriends who was having a picnic with another guy; they inform the police.
David’s grandmother finds the ring belonging to Mr. Griffin. She mistakenly believes it belongs to David's father, who left David’s mother a long time ago. The ring's presence makes David's grandmother think that David’s father is alive and that David has already seen him. The conspirators know they need to hide or destroy the ring since it is evidence of their crime. However, the grandmother will not return the ring to David until she sees her son (David's father).
Desperate, Mark kills David's grandmother (whom she refers to as "the boy with the funky eyes") to get the ring. Susan then threatens to tell the police all that the group has done. Mark attempts to silence her by binding Susan and setting her house on fire. However, Susan's deliverance comes from Kathy Griffin, who recognizes the Chevy in Susan's driveway as belonging to her dead husband when she sees Susan's house on fire. Though the car had been repainted, Mrs. Griffin recognizes the patched upholstery.
The conspiracy unravels, and the police are contacted, with all of those involved other than Susan facing varying degrees of criminal charges. The novel ends with Susan's family telling her that Mark should be blamed for manipulating her along with the other students, because he is psychopathic.
