The Search for Anne Perry
The Hidden Life of a Bestselling Crime Writer
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Best Seller!
In 1994, director Peter Jackson released the movie Heavenly Creatures, based on a famous 1950s matricide committed in New Zealand by two teenage girls embroiled in an obsessive relationship. The movie launched Jackson’s international career. It also forever changed the life of Anne Perry, an award-winning, bestselling crime writer, who at the time of the movie’s release was publicly outed at Juliet Hulme, one of the murderers. A new light was now cast, not only on Anne’s life but also on her novels, which feature gruesome and violent deaths and confront dark issues, including infanticide and incest.
Acclaimed literary biographer Joanne Drayton was given unparalleled access to Anne Perry, her friends, relatives, colleagues, and archives to complete this book. She intersperses the story of her life with an examination of her writing, drawing parallels between Perry’s own experiences and her characters and storylines. Anne Perry’s books deal with miscarriages of justice, family secrets exposed, punishment, redemption, and forgiveness, themes made all the more poignant in light of her past. She has sold 25 million books worldwide and published in 15 different languages, yet she will now forever be known as a murderer who became a writer of murder stories. The Search for Anne Perry is a gripping account of a life, and provides understanding of the girl Anne was, the adult she became, her compulsion to write, and her view of the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perry's authorized biography would be a great deal duller had a secret from her youth in New Zealand not been exposed with the release of Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures and the ensuing publicity it aroused. While the bestselling mystery writer is undoubtedly a skilled author, readers will be more interested in Drayton's handling of the revelation that, as a teenager in 1954, Perry (then using her birth name, Juliet Hulme) and her friend Pauline Parker murdered Pauline's mother (the matricide on which Jackson's film is based). The discovery of that dark secret makes for a dramatic opening, as Perry's longtime agent and friend, Meg Davis, is contacted by a reporter claiming that Perry and Hulme are the same person. Instead of flashing back to Perry's upbringing and the circumstances that led her to violence, Drayton (Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime) instead turns the focus on Perry's development as a writer. That choice allows her to build sympathy for her subject before returning to 1954 and Perry's awful crime. Drayton is no apologist, and Perry herself has not contested her guilt. While Drayton effectively shows how Perry's experiences as a defendant and prisoner can be seen in her books, she dwells too much on publishing industry matters of advances and book deals. 18 color, 29 b&w photos.