Anne Perry

Anne Perry, born Juliet Marion Hulme in London in 1938 and died in Los Angeles in 2023, was a British writer of detective and mystery fiction, best known for novels set in nineteenth-century England. Her name is also linked to one of the best-known juvenile crime cases in New Zealand, but her literary career made her one of the most widely read writers of historical crime in English.

The daughter of a physicist, Hulme spent part of her childhood in the Caribbean and South Africa, where she was sent in the hope that a warmer climate would help her health. She rejoined her family in New Zealand when her father became rector of Canterbury University College. In 1954, at the age of fifteen, she and her friend Pauline Parker killed Parker's mother. Both were tried in Christchurch and sentenced to be held at Her Majesty's pleasure; they were released separately five years later. The case became known as the Parker-Hulme murder and inspired Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures (1994).

After her release she returned to England, worked as a flight attendant and spent time in the United States. She took her stepfather's surname and became Anne Perry. Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, appeared in 1979. Her stories, set mostly in Victorian London, combine police procedure with close attention to period detail and social conditions. Her recurring characters, the policeman Thomas Pitt, his wife Charlotte, and the amnesiac investigator William Monk, built a loyal readership.

Her work earned both critical and popular recognition. Her story "Heroes" won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, and she received a lifetime achievement award at the Agatha Awards in 2009. Her legacy lies largely in her revival of the historical mystery, pairing well-researched Victorian settings with characters from across the social scale.