Margaret Truman Daniel dies

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of former president and famously proud father Harry Truman who became an author of popular murder mysteries, died on Tuesday at age 83, the Truman Library said.

Daniel, a long-time New York resident, died in a care facility in Chicago from complications from an infection contracted recently, said library director Michael Devine.

After living for decades in the same New York apartment, she moved to Chicago to be closer to the eldest of her four sons, Clifton, Devine said in a telephone interview from the Independence, Missouri, library.

Margaret Truman did not let being the president's daughter keep her from pursuing first a singing career and then one as a mystery writer that took off after her father's death in 1972.

It was her singing and his fatherly protection that ignited President Truman's well-known temper, leading him to write one of the most famous presidential letters in history.

After Washington Post music critic Paul Hume panned one of her vocal recitals -- "Miss Truman cannot sing very well" -- Truman responded from the White House that the review was "poppycock" and the critic was a "frustrated old man" who was "off the beam."

"Some day I hope to meet you," the president wrote Hume, ignoring the fact the critic had called his daughter "extremely attractive." "When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!"

Margaret Truman continued her musical career for several more years, and became a radio and television host.

Later she turned to writing books. First they were books about her family and life in the White House but beginning in 1980 she established her own genre, Washington-based mystery novels.

The titles of these 19 novels, many still in print, all included a famous landmark in the U.S. capital such as "Murder in the White House," "Murder in the Supreme Court" and later, when a political scandal had made it one of the most well-known buildings in the country, "Murder at the Watergate." "Murder on K Street" was published last year.

"The reviewers praised her descriptions of the Washington social scene, and the places she described were dead-on," Devine said. "She bumped somebody off in just about every public building in Washington."

MOVE TO WASHINGTON

Margaret Truman was born February 17, 1924, in Independence, Missouri, and moved to Washington a decade later when her father was elected to the Senate.

By the time she graduated from George Washington University in 1946, her father had become president and he delivered the commencement address and handed her diploma.

She took her first voice lesson when she was 16 and made her concert debut singing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on a nationwide radio hookup in 1947.