Anne Perry and the Crime of the Century by Peter Graham

Anne Perry and the Crime of the Century by Peter Graham --- 341 pages

The true story of two teenage girls who murdered the mother of one of them in 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand. It became New Zealand's most notorious crime and subsequent trial, at which the girls were both found guilty, even though they were minors at the time and despite the efforts of their legal counsels to convince the jury that the girls were mentally ill and needed psychiatric care, not punishment.

Peter Graham, a child at the time of the murder, became fascinated with the case when he qualified as a barrister in 1972 and went to Christchurch to work as an assistant to the man who had been part of the defense team for one of the girls, Juliet Hulme. There he had the opportunity to hear about the case firsthand from several barristers who had been engaged in both the defense and the prosecution of Juliet and her friend, Pauline Parker. It was Pauline's mother who the two girls bludgeoned to death, because they thought she was trying to separate them. He decided he would someday write a book about the crime, although it was over thirty years before he finally did so.

The murder and the subsequent trial became New Zealand's most famous crime. Public interest peaked when it became the subject of New Zealander Peter Jackson's first internationally acclaimed film, Heavenly Creatures, in 1994. At the time of the film's release there was intense media speculation about what had become of the two girls, who had been released from prison after five years and had subsequently dropped out of sight.

Pauline Parker, discovered living under a different name in a small town in Kent, was so unnerved by the renewal of public attention that she retreated to a remote island in Scotland, where she lives a reclusive life, refusing all contact with the outside world. Juliet Hulme also re-invented herself, but in a very different way. As a result of the Jackson film, the world learned that Juliet Hulme had become the best selling author of psychological murder mysteries set in Victorian and Edwardian England, Anne Perry. Also, coincidentally, living in Scotland, about one hundred miles away from her former friend. The two women, to the best of all knowledge, have never met since they left the courtroom as convicted murderers so many years ago.

For fans of true crime and fans of Anne Perry, this is a riveting tale.