How did this coming to repentance manifest itself? What did she do? Cry a bit? Pretend to pray? Admit she’d murdered someone. Promise to compensate the family she’d helped destroy? Apologize to the surviving Reiper family? Hulme lied in her first statement to the police. She’s a prfessional liar by trade, she constantly reinvents the past to make herself less culpable. Every interview she has she says something different about why she murdered Honora Reiper. Nothing she has said, does say or will say can be trusted.

Exactly how did she ‘come to repentance’? And how do you know exactly – were you there? If not, it’s just heresay. And more Hulme lies. She done nothing to show remorse or repentance.

Repentance is a change of thought to correct a wrong and to gain forgiveness from a person who is wronged and a deterination and a resolution to live a more responsible and humane life. It typically includes an admission of guilt, a promise or resolve not to repeat the offense; an attempt to make restitution for the wrong, or in some way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.

You say she came to repentance, but Juliet Hulme has not tried to correct a wrong, has not gained forgiveness fro the person she wronged, has made no promise not to repeat the offense, has not made any attempt to make restitution for the wrong, nor tried in any way to reverse the harmful effects of the wrong where possible.

I see no proof or evidence in Hulme’s actions to back up any idea that she has repented. The millionaire writer’s deliberate decision to ignore the surviving Reiper family’s financial struggles and debts (which she caused) as she pays out a few million to have her garden re-landscaped is cruel beyond belief… Repentance! I don’t believe it!

Thank you Anne Perry and may God bless you so much for impacting my life. And to imagine I found that treasure in a heap of old books that were being sold for a song on the street. The devil always tries to keep us down but he will never succeed.

Doyle pulls no punches in his harsh depiction of Utah Mormonism found in the first Sherlock Holmes novel: A Study In Scarlet.

And if I recall correctly, the KKK also gets a negative depiction in one of the Holmes short stories. So I guess Doyle does actually become a social critic in the Holmes stories sometimes.

Perry became a Mormon, in the U.S., shortly after leaving prison. She is described as devout.

I was very surprised to discover it, much as I was equally surprised to discover that science fiction and fantasy author Orson Scott Card was a devout Mormon. I was an avid reader of his works for a while too.

I think that Perry integrated her preachy tendency into good story-telling much better during her Victorian mysteries. In those novels (as with Orson Scott Card in some of his novels), you can mistake Perry for being anti-religious because she will depict religious hypocrisy so unflinchingly. Only in light of the revelation of devout Mormonism does this unflinching criticism clarify itself as being not anti-religious per se, but as part of a Mormon perspective on other Christian religions.

I think Perry may be growing more preachy, and more conservative (less of a social critic), with age. Too bad.

In Anne Perry’s Victorian novels she depicts an upper class that is largely quite lacking in empathy. But her protagonists in those novels, especially in the Charlotte Pitt novels, are not that way themselves. They feel deeply for others and are, in fact, actively concerned with social justice and not just criminal injustice. Many of those Pitt novels emphasize particular social issues, such as antisemitism, women’s suffrage, etc. Most depict the mistreatment of the “lower” classes.

Compared with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels there is an enormous difference. Holmes cares only about criminal matters and extremely little about social injustice. At most, one might hear a condescending exclamation of “poor devils!” out of him now and then.

One can easily miss the hellish aspects of Doyle’s Victorian London. Perry makes the hell unavoidably plain. To me, it is Doyle, not Perry, who depicts Victorian London with a lack of empathy. People feel nostalgia for Doyle’s London, not horror.

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I also loved Perry’s touching depiction of married life in the Thomas/Charlotte and the Monk/Hester relationships. I could hardly stand Monk and Hester before they got married. But marriage to each other seemed to improve both of their dispositions greatly. Of course, it did not escape me that perhaps only someone who never married, as was the case with Perry, would depict married life in such an idealized way.

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I admit, however, to finding Perry’s WWI novel-series (and the novel Tathea) unreadable.

I wonder if she had any real meaningful relationships in her life post-prison?