Anne Perry is O.G.

Original Gangsta

I watched Heavenly Creatures last week and it really freaked me out.  Screaming, bloody people do that to me. Watching it before bed was probably not the smartest thing I've ever done.

But one of the things I learned about this is that Edgar-winning mystery writer Anne Perry is, in face, Juliet Hulme, who, other than being played by Kate Winslet was, in 1954, convicted of beating her best friend's mother's head in with a brick wrapped in a stocking.

She writes crime novels now.

Poser

Let's just say, hypothetically, that I had a professor who, if rumors are true, did hard time.  Let's call him "The Grimace" because, well, that's what he looks like.  And let's also say that this professor published a book of crime stories.  But he, unlike Perry, won't talk about it.  Absolutely refuses.  And I suppose I can see why--although it's a great platform for a mystery writer and being a wuss about it only proves my point that Anne Perry is O.G.  Sure, she doesn't go around bragging about bludgeoning a woman to death, but it's there on her wikipedia page for the world to see.  No sense hiding from what someone can track down.

She knows murder because she's murdered someone.  Her novels have an admitted raw intensity because she knows what it's like to take a human life.  It's not what I would recommend as a course of action for a mystery writer, but damn if it doesn't--in some weird way--make me admire her just a little bit more.  Maybe because she's not such a weenie about admitting it.