Gwen Mulvey

Agent Gwen Mulvey is the secondary protagonist and the leading heroine character in the Peter Swanson novel Eight Perfect Murders. Gwen is an FBI investigator seeking out Malcolm Kershaw when his mystery and suspense story review list becomes a template for a serial killer. She gets personally involved from suspecting Kershaw being directly tied to her traumatic past.
==Biography==
Gwen was the daughter of middle school teacher and tutor Steven Clifton. Clifton was sexually abusing multiple girls at the school, including Kershaw's future wife Claire Mallory. Gwen especially remembered Claire, as although brushed aside as not being as bad as it was, Claire confided in Gwen Clifton's crimes against her, while still maintaining a healthy, caring relationship with Gwen when she visited. Students finally reported Clifton when Gwen was ironically finally in the same middle school, after Claire had graduated. After Clifton was forced to resign, he met Gwen in her room alone, confessing to all his crimes and telling her the names of all the girls he molested. That was the last time she saw them, as he left the house and had an amicable divorce with her mother, who retained custody of Gwen. Gwen grew up to be an FBI agent, and long enough into her career, she found out Clifton was mowed down in a hit-and-run on his usual bike route. She would later admit she wanted to believe he was deliberately murdered out of revenge, to make sense of the killing and eventually find answers for closure. She found out that before his death, Claire died in a similar car accident where she plummeted off a cliff. Eric Atwell, a sponsor and domestic abuser having raped Claire and gotten her addicted to drugs again, was killed shortly thereafter, shot on his jogging route. Gwen accurately put the pieces together, knowing Clifton's and Claire's deaths were tied together, Atwell's murder also being a consequence. She suspected Kershaw's involvement in Clifton's and Atwell's murders, knowing Kershaw hired a killer while he was in Florida. She didn't even suspect he also killed Claire, out of petty spite that she affiliated with Atwell, believing Claire was the problem in their marriage when she was under dangerous circumstances.
When Gwen did research on Kershaw, she found out about his job as a bookstore owner. When she was also investigating open homicide cases in New England, she matched multiple murders to a book review list Kershaw published on his store blog, "Eight Perfect Murders". She remembered Clifton's murder and found it uncanny to one of the reviewed novels, The Secret History, but the serial killer case is what put her into action for investigation. She brought the murders to her superiors, but when she brought up Clifton as being a victim, they told her to not concern herself with the evidence, or at the very least leave the investigation to colleagues in her office. Gwen investigated independently anyway, privately meeting Kershaw several times to tell her her theories on the murders based on the list. In this, she hopes he might show his hand and reveal information on the murder of Clifton and the other victims in the chain of events preceding the spree, in addition to solving the case. She met Kershaw at the shop, at her hotel, at eateries. He provided her with copies of the novels, albeit not used collector's editions, so she might take notes and identify cases. She even had him accompany her to one of the crime scenes in Rockland, Maine, a murdered former customer everyone hated. The presence of a serial killer was all but confirmed from all stories lined up on the woman's bookshelves at the scene. Kershaw was genuinely terrified she'd find out the truth, and they had an unspoken agreement they'd work on the serial killer case with each other, but they protected themselves with details on the people they knew.
By the time Gwen's colleagues found out what she was doing, the bureau suspended her pending review, Agents Berry and Perez taking over the case and questioning Kershaw on everything he knew about the murders and what his alibis were. Gwen met Kershaw one final time, admitting all the personal information she left out, revealing she was caught when a coroner's office didn't call her; they called her office, and her colleagues picked up the phone. She decided to fill him in on him being a suspect, acting like she thought she should still help him, when in truth she deservedly still wanted answers and hit a wall at the risk she'd be fired. Kershaw still investigated on his own, but he only found the killer was leading him to suspects to murder. When Kershaw finally shot the murderer, who he nicknamed "Marty Kingship", to stop Kingship from killing Kershaw's friends, Kershaw called Gwen. He confessed to everything, his crimes and Kingship's, saying he wouldn't turn himself in or stay on the line for long. Kershaw said he hoped she'd keep her job once she provided what the FBI needed to close the case. When she asked him if he killed Clifton, he admitted as much from saying he vaguely recalled the murder in his nightmares. Gwen let Kershaw go on the run, and he later committed suicide to avoid both prosecution and any more trauma.
Category:Book Heroes