SOURCE: "Ann Perry Is a Master at Creating Fascinating Characters, Moral Dilemmas." in Gazette Telegraph, April 30, 1997.

[In the following essay, DuVal discusses Perry's writing style and use of characterization in her novels.]

British mystery writer Anne Perry is a master at creating fascinating characters and dramatic moral dilemmas. It's territory she's explored in her life, as well as her art.

As a teen-ager, Perry helped a friend murder her friend's mother. She served time for it. and doesn't talk about it in her interviews and book tours.

It's hard to believe this poised, compassionate woman was once convicted of a crime. She has said in interviews that she can't remember the extent of her involvement, and the fact is, she has led an exemplary life since.

But it's a tantalizing clue for readers who marvel at how Perry is able to create such realistic situations and characters in her novels. Her characters are taken, bit by bit, from herself and from people she has known. And she must deal with many people in the course of her daily life, whether it's the workmen who are helping remodel her home in Scotland or the hordes of fans who flock to her book signings.

"I like something about almost everyone," she said during a recent stop in Colorado Springs.

Perry, 58, is the prolific author of two dozen Victorian-era mysteries. She writes two series—one featuring a husband-wife team of policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife, Charlotte: the other centered around a darker character, Inspector William Monk.

Although she's a master storyteller, it's her finely drawn characters and her penchant for dealing with social and moral issues that keep readers coming back.

"I think a mystery can be anything you want it to be—a light romp or a serious exploration of issues," Perry says. "I choose the latter." Her books have dealt with rape, child labor, incest, usury, political corruption, censorship, treatment of the disabled and insane, and many more issues that plagued society 100 years ago—and still do.

"I often get my ideas from current events," she says. "We haven't solved most of those problems yet, have we? It would be lovely to think we've gotten past racial bigotry, child abuse and such."

When she takes on those issues in the Victorian setting—a much more secretive time—they become "that much more shocking," she says. "In many ways, it makes it a much better mystery, a better story, set in those times. Today, everyone seems compelled to talk about their darkest secrets on the television.

In her latest novel, Ashworth Hall, Perry deals with the question of home rule for Ireland. The story is so balanced it's difficult to tell where Perry's personal allegiance lies. What's obvious is that she can see both sides of the question and, ultimately, abhors the violence that the issue has bred.

Perry says she tries very hard to understand both sides of an issue. "If I think about it long enough, I can almost always see the other person's point of view," she says. "I have a hard time saying, 'this one's right and that one's wrong.' It's hardly ever that clear, is it?"

She also seldom paints a picture of a character as purely good or unremittingly evil.

"Do you know anyone who is? I don't."

She believes there is good in the worst of us, wicked tendencies in the best.

"We all have things we have to be forgiven for," she says with a wry smile. Perry could well be referring to the dark secret of her own past, which became public three years ago. As a teen-ager, Perry helped a friend murder her friend's mother. She served time for it, missing much of her later formal education because of it.

But what she missed in school, she made up by reading on her own. She loves the writings of G. K. Chesterton, and poetry from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

"I like the discipline, the form and formality of that poetry," she says. "A perfect sonnet is such a gem."

To ensure her own writing meets her standards, Perry often reads what she has written aloud. "It's my ambition to say something in exactly the right words," she says.

Perry, sporting a short, easy-care haircut, is impeccably dressed in a natty navy wool pants suit with cream trim. It fits her trim, 5-foot-7 frame well. She bought it in New York, and says she loves to shop for clothes in America.

"I wear a size 10, right off the rack," she says. "It's wonderful. At home, I have to have everything altered."

She also enjoys the fan base she has built in the United States and meeting her readers on book-signing tours.

"I like people," she says.

"One of the best training grounds for me has been the church," she says. A longtime member of the Mormon Church, she has been very active in it. "You see the same people week after week and you get to know them pretty well."

As Relief Society president for the church, for example, she had to go into homes of church members who were having a difficult time.

"I was responsible for the temporal welfare of other women in the church. I had to bridge the differences in lifestyle and background, and be nonjudgmental, to deal with people on a meaningful level," she says. "It gave me a much wider insight into other people's lives. It enhanced my own spiritual life and made me not only a better person, but a better writer, I think."

Her compassion for others shows in her books. In Weighed in the Balance, for example, she reintroduces a young woman from a previous Inspector Monk novel. The young lady was physically damaged by her father in an incestuous relationship, is in constant pain and can never bear children. In this book, she meets a young man who has become a paraplegic as the result of an illness, and a romance blooms.

It's as if Perry couldn't abandon the character after the first book. She had to resolve her situation and give her some happiness.

"It's true, there's a bit of me in each character, and when I write about them, I become them for a short time," she says.

Her characters are complex, intriguing people. Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, for example, come from very different walks of life. "I created them so that I could have permanent characters to give me the masculine and feminine points of view, and the upstairs-downstairs points of view," she says.

It gives her a much broader spectrum from which to explore each mystery, she adds.

"Women notice little things that men don't, and tell things to each other they'd never tell a man," she says. "Men see things women don't, too. This way, it's a much more complete story."

With her Inspector Monk character, she added an unusual twist. Monk lost his memory in a carriage accident, so he's constantly trying to unravel the mystery of his own past as well as the current murder he's working on.

"I wanted someone who would have to explore themselves as someone else saw them," she says. "If you judged yourself as harshly as you judge others, you'd be horrified. Eventually, he'll bring that compassion (he gains in judging himself) to others."

Hester Latterly, a friend of Monk's, is a nurse who served in the Crimean War.

"Hester is what I might have been if I'd lived then—if I'd had the courage," Perry says with a laugh.

Her characters have flaws. They're real. They make mistakes. "We don't do things without a reason," Perry says. "When we do them, it seems like the rational thing to do at the time."

Though she knows it's risky, Perry would like to try her hand at something other than British mysteries. She's currently working on a book that defies categorization, "a fantasy of sorts, a woman's journey of self-discovery. It has a religious, ethical tone—I don't know, I hope it does well."

She also wants to write a mystery set during the French Revolution. But she won't abandon her thoughtful characterization and her examination of moral issues.

Sensing a sympathetic ear, readers tend to tell Perry about their personal travails.

"About the best thing that ever happens to me is when people tell me they were going through a tough time—a bereavement, or an illness—and reading my books helped get them through it," she says.

"I'm always amazed at people's strength. There's a spark of something in us. People have an amazing amount of courage, sometimes."

"It's true, there's a bit of me in each character, and when I write about them, I become them for a short time."