SOURCE: "Haunted by Homicide," in Maclean's, Vol. 108, No. 13, March 27, 1995, p. 61.

In the following essay, Wickens discusses the problems that have plagued Ann Perry since the revelation of her involvement in a 1954 homicide in New Zealand.

Anne Perry is nothing if not persistent. For years she led the sort of hand-to-mouth lifestyle that has become the stereotype for the struggling artist. She began writing historical fiction when she was in her mid-20s, enduring 13 years of rejection slips before a publisher finally accepted her first novel in 1979. Even after that, she continued to support herself with odd jobs, from limousine dispatcher in Beverly Hills, Calif., to a series of clerical positions in her native Britain. "It was just six years ago that I made enough money from my writing to finally pay income tax," she said while in Toronto earlier this month to promote her 20th murder mystery, Traitors...