Margaret Truman Daniel Dead

Margaret Truman Daniel died today at 83 after breaking the mold of First Daughter and embarking on careers in singing, acting, and writing, the Los Angeles Times reports. The go-getter braved opera critics as a singer in the 1940s and '50s before acting alongside Jimmy Stewart on radio and television. Her career cooled after she married a future New York Times editor, but she wrote biographies—one of father Harry—before turning to mystery-writing on a whim.

Long vexed by Washington's scrutiny of her as a child—she was likely the first White House daughter to feel modern media's spotlight—she found some revenge in her capital-based books. "That's why she writes" them, her grandson quipped, to "kill off" people in Washington. Unsure at first, critics warmed to her 20 whodunits over time. A New York resident, Daniel died in Chicago after a short illness. (More Harry Truman stories.)