More of an ornament to the nation’s body politic than most White House progeny, Margaret Truman, who died yesterday at 83, had careers as a singer, journalist, biographer, and mystery writer.

A New York hostess for many years and the wife of a New York Times managing editor, Clifton Daniel, she set her popular mysteries in Washington, where she quite literally chronicled where the bodies were buried. She scattered at least 22 corpses across Washington landmarks, creating a virtual necrological tour, starting with “Murder in the White House” in 1980.

Next came “Murder on Capitol Hill” (1981) and “Murder in the Supreme Court” (1982). Having exhausted the three branches of government, she set out for the agencies and leading attractions. The Smithsonian, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the National Cathedral were each blessed with their own Margaret Truman corpse.

The books failed to inspire much enthusiasm among reviewers, but they didn’t provoke catcalls either; there were no indecorous sex scenes and the violence was muted. Drawing on Truman’s deep knowledge of the Capitol’s politics and history, the books were the epitome of “writing what you know” — not that there was any intimation of murder in Truman’s life. In that way, it was not so far from her first literary effort, “The Henhouse Gazette,” published from a chicken coop used as a clubhouse, in the Truman family’s backyard in Independence, Mo.

At the time of her birth in 1924, Margaret Truman’s father, Henry, was a county judge in Missouri. She attended public schools until 1935, when her father was elected to the United States Senate. She began living half of each year in Washington and was enrolled at Gunston Hall, a private girls’ school in the city. She went on to attend George Washington University, majoring in history. When she graduated, in 1946, her father, by then president of the United States, gave the commencement address.

Truman had studied voice since her days in Independence, and in 1947, she made her concert debut over a nationwide radio hookup with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Karl Krueger. A nationwide tour followed. Critics were mostly polite. There were recording contracts with NBC and RCA-Victor records. Her Carnegie Hall debut came in 1949. The New York Times’s critic, Howard Taubman, begged off: “It was not a proper framework in which the talents of a newcomer among American sopranos could be evaluated,” he hedged.

But in late 1950, the Washington Post’s critic, Paul Hume, broke what many regarded as an informal embargo and let Margaret Truman have it, full force. “Miss Truman cannot sing very well,” ran the Post’s review. “She is flat a good deal of the time.” It got worse.

Within a day, Hume, who died in 2001, was in receipt of a handwritten letter from President Truman stating, “I never met you, but if I do you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below.” That was the clean version, and it ran on front pages around the country.

The singing career seemed to peter out after that, although she continued to make radio and television appearances with Milton Berle and Jimmy Durante. Starting in 1954, a new career beckoned as a radio host. She co-hosted the show “Weekday” with Mike Wallace on the NBC radio network.

Having moved to New York, she met and in 1956 married Clifton Daniel, a New York Times foreign correspondent who later became the paper’s managing editor. They had three children. Of their romance — conducted at first in secrecy — Daniel wrote: “We were the kind of people who wouldn’t marry anybody our mothers wouldn’t approve of: a couple of citified small-towners, puritans among the fleshpots.” They settled into a Park Avenue apartment.

The same year she married, Truman wrote her first book, a memoir called “Souvenir.” Written to head off an unauthorized biography, the book sold over a million copies while garnering respectful reviews. The author “is as well-behaved in print as she is in public,” said the Christian Science Monitor. Preoccupied with raising four sons, she did not publish again until 1969, when she wrote “White House Pets,” a historical litany. The writing bug grabbed her, and she wrote respectful biographies of her parents “Harry S. Truman” (1972) and “Bess W. Truman,” (1986) plus books about great women in history and first ladies. Her 2003 volume, “The President’s House,” was an amusing collection of anecdotes including the story of a White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, walking down the street with President Ford. They see an old-fashioned coin-operated scale, and the president puts in a penny to get his fortune and his weight. The fortune says, “You are a marvelous orator and a leader of men. Your future in your chosen career could not be brighter.”

Thomas, looking over his shoulder, says: “It’s got your weight wrong, too.”

Truman was secretary of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, created by Congress in 1975, and sat on the board of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute of National and International Affairs. In 1984, the city of Independence presented her with its Harry S. Truman Public Service Award.

She continued to write, and the last of the Capital Crimes series, “Murder on K Street,” was published last year. Despite her persistence, writing was not her favorite activity.

“I am always glad when a book or a magazine article is finished,” she once told Contemporary Authors. “I promise myself never to write another one, but I shall probably do one.”