Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Juliet Marion Hulme

Last night I broke the news to my wife that I had bid on a batch of 10 Anne Perry novels. Four or five hardcovers and the rest paperbacks. A mixture of her William Monk, Thomas Pitt and WWI series. For $10 or $11 I thought it was a steal. For whatever reason I decided to Wikipedia Anne Perry. Wow. I knew Wikipedia was good for something. Anne Perry was born Juliet Marion Hulme in London, was sent to South Africa as a child (for health reasons) and then moved to New Zealand at 13 to be with her family. Perry/Hulme then became part of one of New Zealand's most notorious murders along with Pauline Parker. If you've ever seen the Kate Winslet movie Heavenly Creatures , Kate Winslet portrayed Perry/Hulme. The young women killed Parker's mother in cold blooded murder. They only served five years in prison and as part of their sentence they were told they could never contact one another again.

Perry/Hulme is now 70 years old and lives in Scotland and has written dozens of murder mystery novels. Strange. I had recently begun her novel No Graves as Yet which centers around two brothers trying to unravel the suspicious death of their parents. There is more to the story than that, but I just can't get the real Perry/Hulme out of my head. How can I? I wouldn't read the books of a man that was a convicted murderer, why should I read Perry's novels?

I'm stopping No Graves and I'm going to begin a book by someone that doesn't have a killer instinct, only a killer imagination.

It's a good thing I didn't win the auction on eBay.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, I was pretty shocked when I first heard about that too. It's strange how she just practically got away with it huh?

Iliana said...

Isn't that a crazy story? I had seen the Kate Winslet movie a while back and I wonder if that has had something to do with why I can't seem to get into her books. I know a lot of people love them and I would think I would too, especially her victorian mystery, but I tried one and just didn't care for it.

Anonymous said...

I have boycotted her books. I am an avid reader and when I first found out about the Perry/Hulme connection I decided that I would not spend a moment on reading a book by a murderer.