Murder, she wrote. And committed.

  • I got all weirded out by find­ing out about a mys­tery writer recently. So now I don’t know whether I can keep read­ing her books or not. And I don’t know if that’s just me, or if it’s the kind of thing that other peo­ple would understand.

    I had read a mys­tery by Anne Perry recently and liked it so much, I wanted to go find out a bit more about the author. The book — “A Christ­mas Guest” — seemed so authen­tic in its Vic­to­rian fla­vor, I wanted to know whether she was fak­ing or not. So when I looked her up in Wikipedia, I was pleased to read …

    Anne Perry (born Juliet Mar­ion Hulme in Black­heath, Lon­don on 28 Octo­ber 1938) is an Eng­lish author of his­tor­i­cal detec­tive fic­tion, as well as a con­victed mur­derer (see also Parker-Hulme mur­der).

    What?

    Hon­estly, my first thought was that the entry on Wikipedia had been hacked into by some prankster. Wikipedia, after all, is an open sys­tem. Any­one that wants to can post infor­ma­tion, and surely this was a case of some­one just goof­ing around. So I clicked on the link of the so-called ‘Parker-Hulme mur­der’ and went other places on the inter­net to fact-check.

    Nope. It wasn’t a prank. When 70-year-old Juliet was 15, she and her best friend, Pauline, killed Pauline’s mother.

    What hap­pened was that the two friends had formed one of those incred­i­bly close rela­tion­ships that young girls some­times get into, even pop­u­lat­ing a fan­tasy world full of inter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ties and con­coct­ing sce­nar­ios that they acted out all night long. It’s  the type of thing you can see inno­cently por­trayed in “Lit­tle Women” and “The Secret World of Henry Ori­ent,” and I think almost every girl can remem­ber some­thing like it.

    In the case of Juliet and Pauline, their respec­tive par­ents didn’t approve. They wanted to break up the pair, and so when Juliet was going to South Africa to cure her tuber­cu­lo­sis and Pauline wanted to go along, Pauline’s mother, Hon­ora, said no.

    And so they killed her. Their girl­ish lit­tle plan was to take Hon­ora on a walk and, when they were in a remote spot, whack her with a brick and tell every­one she had fallen down. Only … well, there’s a lot that young girls don’t know about killing peo­ple. With­out going into detail, it turned out to be much harder to kill her than they had thought, and their weak story became unbe­liev­able. They were tried, con­demned and went to jail for five years. One of the con­di­tions of parole was that they would never have con­tact with each other again. And though that’s an odd con­di­tion, and though it’s been 50 years, the two have hon­ored that con­di­tion and never seen each other since that time.

    All of this, by the way, caused a huge scan­dal, as you would think. And it became the basis for the movie “Heav­enly Creatures.”

    But I’m find­ing that it’s trou­bling me. After I found this out, I couldn’t enjoy Anne Perry’s mur­der mys­ter­ies again. I kept telling myself, look, she did her time. It was all half a cen­tury ago. And there was absolutely noth­ing in the books to sug­gest that the author had first-hand knowl­edge of what it’s like to kill some­one. But she did, and it changed things.

    But I can’t get rid of the feel­ing that it just spoils the illu­sion of mur­der mys­ter­ies. I think of them as absolutely inno­cent read­ing. They rarely have the smut quo­tient that ruins so much mod­ern fic­tion for me, and the ones I like aren’t vio­lent. It’s just some problem-solving, really, with an eccen­tric detec­tive, tea in the draw­ing room and clues found in the attic. All good fun.

    So what do you do when the nice lit­tle facade is pulled back and you remem­ber that actual mur­ders end some lives and ruin oth­ers, break up fam­i­lies, have reper­cus­sions that go on for generations?

    Am I just being strange that I can’t pick up her books now? I really don’t know.


    Related posts:

    1. Abor­tion is mur­der, but that’s a woman’s right(?)
    2. Cat­man do
    3. “Pil­lars of the Earth” — yuck/ahh/wow!
    4. Bush tea and the snif­fles with Mma Ramotswe
    5. Don’t go see “The Golden Compass”

    January 11th, 2009 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 01.11.2009

    I read my first Anne Perry last year and had been told prior to about her his­tory. I was fami­lar with the movie, but have never seen it.

    I agree, it kind of makes you feel a bit creeped out. But, I also cling very strongly to for­give­ness and repen­tance that our church teaches.

    The book I read, in case you are curi­ous, was “A Breach of Promise” — it was for an online book club.

  • Grace

    For what it’s worth, I think she’s a good writer. For the rest of it, I’ll just have to wait it out.

    The prob­lem isn’t a mat­ter of for­give­ness, or at least that’s not the way it feels. I don’t judge Perry for what hap­pened so long ago, espe­cially since I can’t think of any way (except in the mys­te­ri­ous realm of human con­nect­ed­ness) that her actions can be said to have affected me.

    It’s more a mat­ter that when you read someone’s book, you’re tak­ing in a part of them. When I went off to Perry’s Web­site, she gave no men­tion of the mur­der in her biog­ra­phy. That omis­sion is telling, it seems to me.

  • s-p

    Inter­est­ing reac­tion. But I’ve read lit­er­ary fic­tion and most of the most famous authors actu­ally lived most of their fic­tion… adul­tery, drugs, wan­ton sex­ual encoun­ters, etc. I guess, where does one draw the line and what does it say about us that we aren’t creeped out by “lesser sins”.

  • Nancy

    So what do you do when the nice lit­tle facade is pulled back and you remem­ber that actual mur­ders end some lives and ruin oth­ers, break up fam­i­lies, have reper­cus­sions that go on for generations?

    Pre­cisely. Hav­ing had two child­hood friends mur­dered (one in the OKC bomb­ing) I have lit­tle stom­ach for mur­der mys­ter­ies, in print or on tele­vi­sion. The detec­tive or the crim­i­nal become the cen­ter of atten­tion in these sto­ries and the vic­tim not only loses their life but are also for­got­ten. One of the things I love about Ortho­doxy is that peo­ple are remembered…sometimes for cen­turies after their death. And in a world filled with vio­lence and chaos, remem­ber­ing is some­times the only thing we can do.…and we should do it with all our hearts.

  • kristins­dot­tir

    From what I’ve read and heard from Anne Perry (I’ve seen her in per­son at an author’s read­ing, too), I think she is doing her best to repent of what she did back then. She is a mem­ber of the Church of the Latter-Day-Saints, so obvi­ously she does not have the ben­e­fits a repent­ing Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian would have. That said, I find her fic­tion very thought­ful. I wish I could put my fin­ger on a par­tic­u­lar pas­sage I read that impressed me … but … it’s lost.

    If you like her writ­ing, though, I’d rec­om­mend try­ing more of it.

    I like the way some crime fic­tion deals with moral issues. I’m think­ing of writ­ers like Louise Perry and Karin Fossum.

    I’m not express­ing myself very well today …

    Any­way, I do remem­ber being freaked out when I heard this about Perry’s past, too …

  • Grace

    k:
    Very late reply­ing to this com­ment. Sorry, I lost track of things there for a bit.

    Thanks very much for the input. I really did want some­one to pro­vide a lit­tle miss­ing infor­ma­tion. I’ll hang in there with her.

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