Free Republic

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of former President Harry Truman, died Tuesday. She was 83. Daniel died in Chicago following a brief illness, according to a statement from the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence. She had been living in an assisted living facility for the past several weeks and was on a respirator, the library said. Daniel, a longtime resident of New York City, was also the author of mystery novels, many of them set in Washington D.C.; books on the White House; and biographies, including books on her father and her mother,...

A BIZARRE PHENOMENON first observed in the 1940s became a crime-fiction epidemic by the 1990s. Famous entertainers, athletes, and presidential relatives began sitting down at the typewriter to bang out mystery novels. Or so they would have us believe. In truth, nearly every one of those celebrities made a deal through an agent or book packager, collected a nice advance for the use of the name, and left to a professional ghostwriter all the actual writing. Ghostwriting is a time-honored practice, and most readers surely realize that movie stars and baseball players have help with their memoirs--just as all politicians...