Anne Perry

Anne Perry was a British crime novelist best known for historical detective series set in Victorian England. Born Juliet Hulme, she was convicted as a teenager in the 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case.

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Thomas Pitt: A Victorian police detective who investigates crime in Anne Perry’s Thomas Pitt novels. Pitt’s cases anchor Perry’s series about policing and class in Victorian London.
Parker–Hulme murder case: The 1954 murder of Honora Rieper in Christchurch, New Zealand, by teenagers Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme. Hulme, later known as Perry, was convicted in this case as a teenager.
Agatha Christie: An English crime writer known for detective characters including Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie’s detective fiction provides a major tradition against which Perry’s historical mysteries are read.
Crime fiction: Fiction in which a crime and its investigation, perpetrators, or consequences drive the plot. Perry’s career belongs to a genre whose treatment of guilt resonates with her biography.
Charlotte Ellison: A central character in Anne Perry’s Thomas Pitt novels who becomes Pitt’s wife and investigative partner. Her social position gives the series a viewpoint beyond the police investigation.
Juliet Hulme: The birth name of British novelist Anne Perry, who was convicted in New Zealand as a teenager. This name links Perry’s later literary career to her early life and conviction.
Dorothy L. Sayers: An English crime novelist and essayist best known for the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Sayers is another prominent British crime writer whose work blends detection with social observation.
Historical fiction: Fiction set in a past period, using historical settings and conditions as part of its narrative. Her novels make the Victorian past a working environment for crime and social conflict.
William Monk: A Victorian private detective with amnesia who leads one of Anne Perry’s historical crime series. Monk’s uncertain past makes identity and memory part of the series’ mysteries.
Christchurch, New Zealand: The largest city in New Zealand’s South Island and the setting of the Parker–Hulme case. Perry grew up in Christchurch, where the crime that defined her early biography occurred.