I attended the same school as murderer Juliette Hulme (Anne Perry) but over a decade later. My friend Rachel though was in the same class and writes powerfully of the Impact of a murder on an individual schoolgirl, [her]self
and the smallish trauma [that] still affected [her] for years
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Jean MacDonald Thanks for sharing this, Miraz. It is an unresolved conflict for me, my love of mysteries and my abhorrence of actual violence, so it resonated. I did read Anne Perry novels for a bit, but her characters didn't grab me. I'm not sure when I learned who she was. And we watched Heavenly Creatures in the NZ film class I saw. That's a great film.
Miraz Jordan @jean I don't have that conflict myself but fortunately have never been anywhere near a real-life murder (that I know of). I like my murder fiction to be bloodless and innocuous though and can't read the torturey stuff or lengthy descriptions of gore and whatnot. For me the fictional murder itself is an abstract concept really and then I want some semblance of realistic detecting. It's like space travel, I guess, all the whizzing around at warp speed or teleporting is a far cry from anything in my real life — it's an abstract or remote concept — and then I want somewhat realistic tales of people doing stuff.