pheebs_reads_ 's review for:

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

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I read this in just over a day, and just couldn't put it down. I had just seen the film 'Heavenly Creatures,' the film based on the Parker Hulme murder. In 1954, Pauline Parker (15) and Juliet Hulme (16) murdered Pauline's mother in Christchurch with a brick stuffed in a stocking. The film itself deeply affected me, and I had the urge to read about the whole story. The movie itself seemed quite biased towards Pauline's part in the murder, believing her to be the one who had imagined the idea, and I wondered if this was reality. 'So Brilliantly Clever' attempts to understand the 'why' of the murder. It delves into the family dynamics from which the two girls came - both sickly children, they did not receive much care from their mothers and never recovered from this. It also spends a lot of time detailing the six-day court case and what happened to the girls after they were found guilty. A previous review of this book said that if you have seen the film the book doesn't add much, but that is definitely not true. The film touches on the case for a few sentences, but no more. The book tries to explain why the girls committed such a terrible crime, and gives some very good information and theories. Especially good is the final few chapters, where modern knowledge of mental disorders are applied to both Parker and Hulme; knowledge that was unknown in the 1950s. It also explores the effect of 'Heavenly Creatures' on the new lives of the two girls 50 years later, and the information about them now. I found the book to be unbiased, and it allows us to make our own decision on the girls' mentality once we have seen the evidence. I think it is an excellent companion to the film, and something that is definitely worth reading for anyone who wants to know about this part of New Zealand's past.