"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" Susie tells the reader (Sebold, 2002, p.5). In Alice Sebold's novel "The Lovely Bones", Mr. Harvey brutally rapes and murders Susie Salmon and is never caught. It is essential to the central themes of the novel that Mr. Harvey is never caught. This is because the book, with a few dramatic exceptions, zeroes in on the intangibles surrounding Susie's death, such as the way in which those close to Susie grieve and the new relationships that form around her death. Catching Harvey would make the novel a mere murder mystery and dimini…
