I first read this book when I was in junior high school. It really was great youth literature for a future lover of horror and suspense. I just didn't know it then, despite the title.
We've all had a really hard nosed teacher like Mr. Griffin. Unyielding, a stickler for the rules and regulations, nothing you could do or say could please them. They were out to get you, in the arrogance and vainity of youth you can only have hate for this man who's bringing your grades down, preventing you from participating in extra activities (ex. sports), and just doesn't respond no matter how much you try to appeal to their human side. Looking back, as these kids will no doubt do, he was just doing his job, disciplining you for the rat race that is the adult world. And what a great cast of characters, the prime examples of vain, self centered kids who are really out to get Mr.Griffin.
Susan is the center character, the lonely, awkward outsider who feels left out at home and school, who is in his class trying her best to do her best. It's such a struggle to have to face a regular school day. All the while she is looking at the beautiful people, the popular kids who she really wants to be accepted by. They might like her if they just gave her a chance. I remember that feeling so well. Mr.Griffin's class is hard for her, but she seems to be ernest enough that she is the one and only benefiting from his stringent ways. In her class is Jeff, the basketball star, who resents Mr.Griffin because he won't give him a break on game nights and if he doesn't maintain his grade in his class he might be suspended from playing. His girlfriend Betsy also has her problems with Mr.Griffin, because she can't use her natural "look how cute I am" feminine charms on him when she can on everyone else. David, the student body president and all around "nice guy" doesn't really not like Mr.Griffin, but he is resentful of the one poor grade he is getting that will keep him out of scholarship running for the colleges of his choice; and thinking about the father who abandoned him and his mother, leaving them with his frail grandmother who they are the primary caregivers to makes David feel another kind of hate for this tough teacher. And Mark. Silent, cunning, snake charming Mark sits in Mr.Griffin's class, stewing in his own juices. Mark, deciding to take out his revenge for a cheating instance he was caught in the year before, rounds up David, Betsy and Jeff to kidnap Mr.Griffin. They're just going to scare him, he says. And they'll use Susan, the lonely girl, as the decoy. Sure enough, Susan, wanting to be part of them, agrees to this, and Mr.Griffin is taken away to a remote wooded location.
Of course, it all goes terribly wrong. Mr.Griffin has a heart condition that he wasn't able to take his medication for, and when Susan later returns to the kidnap hideout to free him, he's dead. What are they going to do now? Tell one lie to cover up another. Ditch cars, evidence, bury the body. They're time and luck is going to run out, especially for Susan, because she was just the plant. The one honest person who will turn on them.
A great suspense story. You can feel the building tension between the kids, feel the police coming in closer and closer and knowing that they can't keep lying. And the sadness. They didn't know Mr.Griffin could have a wife at home, pregnant with their first child and awaiting the happy arrival. He couldn't have been human, he couldn't have had a family or enjoyed normal things that other people do. He only got joy out of making them suffer. Mr.Griffin was trying to teach our youth, going down to the high school from the university level so he can better educate. Shame on them. |
Killing Mr. Griffin Books In Print, Audio Books.