Anne Perry on Coming to Terms with Her Past

British mystery writer Anne Perry is the author of 19 crime novels based in Victorian England. It was recently discovered that, forty years ago, Perry took part in a murder. She was 15 and on medication for an illness she had at the time. She went to jail for five and a half years. Her newly released 20th book, "The Sins of the Wolf" is about a nurse imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit.

For decades, Perry, who died April 10, kept secret the fact that she was one of the teenage girls involved in the murder depicted in the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. Originally broadcast in 1994.

A reissue of four of the detective writer's 1950s novels excavates the dark depths of California's suburban decay. Maureen Corrigan praises Macdonald's "psychological depth" and "penetrating vision."