A somewhat unusual classic mystery, set at Christmas but not at all cosy. Meredith turned the traditional whodunnit on its head in a fascinating way.

A classic crime story that benefits from repeat reading. Fun and fiendish, I'm glad these stories are being given a new lease of life for a modern audience.

Adrian Gray,an unpleasant patriarch of an equally unpleasant family invites his six children (and their partners) to the family manor to celebrate Christmas. He is not a very loved or likeable man and his family have solid reasons to murder the old man. And one of them does murder Adrian Gray on Christmas Eve. The identity of the murderer is immediately revealed. This is not a who,how or why done it. The story revolves mainly around the exposure and evidence seeking to convict the culprit. It has definitely a modern,not Golden Age at all,twist about it but it took me an eternity to finish it and some parts just dragged on. True,my mother passed away in December and that really didn't help me to keep focused...
Therefore it is really very difficult to give an unbiased opinion on this classic mystery...

Thank you to Netgalley, the Publisher and the author, for the opportunity to read this book in return for a review based upon my honest opinion.

This book was a classic mystery, but not a common whodunnit, it was different and attention catching, although dark and it stayed with me for quite some time after reading it. A crime story that happens at Christmas, not your usual time of year for this type of book and most Christmastime mysteries are on the cutesy side, this one was not for sure.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I no longer am interested in this book and will not be reviewing it. I believe it's not in the author or publisher's interested for me to skim over the book with little interest and post a halfhearted review, and therefore I will not review it.

While I didn't love this book, I can't say anything particularly negative about it. It just wasn't in my wheelhouse, so to speak. The writing style was engaging and set a good pace but I did find myself getting characters confused from time to time because there are quite a few who have no outstanding characteristics to remember them by. Not my favorite read, but not horrible. I know someone who enjoys a good mystery historical fiction would like it!

This was quite different from most murder tales. Right up front in the first paragraph we know who is murdered. We are shown the murder and who did it. The mystery in this one is will they get away with it! I almost gave up on the book as the characters were so unlovely! Lots of characters and descriptions and getting to know them and the family dynamics and this family is not a pleasant family. But I hung in there, mostly because Tracy @ Bitter Tea and Mystery reviewed it right about that time and her review spurred me on.

It really was a character study with a murder thrown in. And in the end there were, as Tracy said, redeeming qualities to some of the characters. I’m glad I finished it.

Excellent read. A Christmas time murder mystery, who could ask for more? Very well written with great character development. Highly recommend.

It has taken me a while to write this review because I needed time for the book to settle before I could decide how I felt about it. One of its strengths, and weaknesses, was because it isn’t a conventional crime story. We learn who the murderer is fairly early on with the rest of the novel spent watching from the wings to see if they will get caught. Now considering the book was written in 1933 this was a brave move, although this author was quite established under another pen name Anthony Gilbert. However it does mean that for people like me who don’t particularly enjoy the thought of anyone going unpunished, especially for murder, it makes the read a little bit more traumatic than I expect the author intended.

Anyway back to the story. We have a patriarch Adrian Grey, an elderly and not particularly nice man, who has his children to stay for Christmas 1931. There are six children in all, and some of them have bought their partners, and although a grand house like King Poplars should have room enough for them all to rub along nicely, it appears not. One of his children, or their partners kills Adrian Grey. Not such a happy Christmas after all!

Could it be Richard the politician who needs some hard cash to make a little problem disappear? Surely it isn’t younger daughter Amy, the one who stayed behind to keep house and resent any reckless use of her tightly budgeted household? Or Isobel who made an unwise marriage and has returned home with whatever bloom she possessed faded until she is almost the background? Or the son-in-law Eustace who is financier who seems to have dragged the old man into a bit of bother money-wise? Or younger son Brand? He’s the one who is different and ran away to Paris to become an artist and whose blousy wife and mucky children were most definitely not invited to join the Christmas cheer. Surely it can’t be Ruth the happily married daughter who appears to want nothing from her curmudgeonly father? Well we do know it was one of them, and to be honest few of them have enough positive traits to outweigh the negative ones.

As it happens we are put inside the head of the murderer at the point of the killing and know who has done it, what they did to hide any evidence and how they acted post discovery. And this is the bit I liked, this witnessing a fairly unpleasant brood as they try to hide, or minimise, any motive they may have, or in plain speaking are willing to throw each other under the bus if it keeps them in the clear.

A Portrait of a Murderer on balance was a more interesting than an entertaining read. It shone a light on the fading prospects of those who were clinging to their upper class status at a time when everything was changing and fast. Adrian Grey was far from the only wealthy landowner who was having to cut his cloth a wee bit tighter after all.

I’m quite glad I chose to read this out of season, it would probably have put a bit of a dampener on my Christmas dinner but there is no doubting that the British Library Crime Classics has done us all a favour by bringing this book back from obscurity for our enjoyment, whatever the weather.

I'd like to thank the publishers Poisoned Pen Press for allowing me to read a copy of Portrait of a Murderer, I feel honoured to read a book that had been out of circulation for quite so long before they bought it back for a new generation to enjoy. This unbiased review is a thanks to all of you who made this happen.

Set during Christmas of 1931, Portrait of a Murderer is an unusual novel. We know from the beginning who the murderer is, and at first it looks like he is going to get away with his crime. For its time, the psychological portrait of the murderer is surprisingly deep.

Gathered together for Christmas are Adrian Gray and his family. Adrian is in financial straits because of reckless investments he made through his son-in-law, Eustace Moore. Adrian’s oldest son, Richard, is a member of parliament who has been spending heavily on a blackmailing mistress and his bid for a title. Eustace’s investments are all about to fail, with many investors bankrupted. Youngest son Brand’s need to pursue his painting full time has overcome his duty to his family.

All three men plan to ask Adrian for money that he doesn’t have. Richard needs it to pay his blackmailer. Eustace needs £10,000 to keep his investors happy. Brand wants to offload his wife and children onto his father and sister so that he can return to Paris to paint. Failing that, he’d like a loan to support them.

Brand goes to speak to his father around midnight on Christmas Eve. He gets so angry because of Adrian’s attitude toward his career and life that he lashes out. Meaning to slam a heavy paperweight onto the desk, he hits his father in the head instead. Soon he is standing there stunned by what he has done. But it’s not long before he begins trying to find a way out of it. His solution? Frame Eustace.

This novel isn’t so much about the investigation as about Brand’s mental outlook. Dashing off a portrait of himself as he stands in the murder room, Brand recognizes his own genius and decides that nothing should get in the way of his art. Meredith seems, on the whole, sympathetic with him, even as he treats his own wife and children as discardable, simply because he is not sure of the children’s parentage.

Brand’s brother-in-law, Miles Avery, is not satisfied when Eustace is charged with the crime. Despite his wife Ruth’s apprehension, he manages to work out what really happened.

There are some things that are now considered politically incorrect in this novel, originally published in 1933. In particular, anti-Semitic remarks may bother readers. Then there is Brand’s Nietschean sense of superiority, reminding me a bit of Raskolnikov without the feverishness. However, it’s a fascinating character study.

This was just okay for me. The characters weren't particularly likable. You already know who the murderer is. It's more a matter of whether the real murderer will be held accountable and/or whether the accused will be released and also whether the accused might deserve to be punished for their actual crimes. I maybe understand why this was lost in obscurity over time.

This is an interesting experiment, one of the early books by Lucy Beatrice Malleson. The author wrote many very popular mysteries under the pen name Anthony Gilbert, but also used three other pseudonyms. One of these was the Anne Meredith of this book, the first in a short series of inverted detective novels published between 1934 and 1940. It is the only one of these I've read, the books are pretty obscure, and Poisoned Pen Press has done a service in making this one available.

The story is inverted in several senses. The murderer and method are given early, the story is mostly concerned with reactions to the crime. The characters are not aristocrats nor professional criminals, nor ordinary people, they are vulgar and unpleasant individuals--although all seem to possess at least one talent. The detective lacks motivation and follows no procedure, he wanders and muses a lot; and the resolution is basically random. The crime is both impulsive and executed with the clockwork precision and skill.

The book is not much fun to read, and you don't care about any of the characters--victim, murder, detective nor bystanders. The plot is silly and the detection unskilled. The dialog is realistic but unpleasant.

I recommend this book to avid mystery readers interested in exploring what makes a golden age mystery from an very unusual perspective. However I wouldn't pick it up for pleasure.

Adrian Gray is killed at Christmas. Well written as it takes you through the thoughts of the murderer.

This is crime fiction where you know who the murderer is and the motive and how the victim was killed quite early on in the book.

On Christmas Eve 1931 Adrian Gray was violently murdered by one of his six adult children. The murderer had acted on impulse in a fit of rage. Adrian had not got on with any of his children and they all wanted him to lend them or rather give them money for one reason or another. From then on it is a character study of the family and of the murderer in particular, who works out a plan to put the blame on one of the other family members. The setting at Christmas seems to be purely because this family don’t get on and it was only at Christmas that they gathered together at the Gray family home.

It begins slowly and I was beginning to wonder if I wanted to finish the book, but I found I was thinking about it when I wasn’t reading and wondering whether the plan would work. As the suspense increased I realised that I was hooked and couldn’t wait to get back to the book to find out. Will the wrong person be convicted or will justice be done?It’s an excellent character study, told in the first person by the murderer and in the third person by the other characters.

I was also fascinated by the picture Meredith paints of the society and culture of the 1930s. It’s set in the Depression and the Grays had come down in the world, no longer the owners of a large landed property. This was accompanied by a steady deterioration in character as their point of view changed and they aspired to possessions and a place in society with authority, consumed by jealousy and criticism of others.They are an unlikeable set of characters and probably one of the reasons this book works so well is that each one is described with precision and insight, so that they come across as recognisable people and not as caricatures.

I also enjoyed reading about life in London in the 1930s, with descriptions of the River Thames, the traffic and the talk of electricity and speed, ‘the age’s God‘, and the desire for cars resulting in air pollution from the petrol fumes. The newly rich are financiers, such as Gray’s financial adviser and son-in-law, Eustace Moore. Although his appearance isn’t that of the traditional conception of a Jew, Meredith reveals the casual and nasty anti-semitism typical of the period in referring to his race. In addition she shows society’s attitude to women from the unmarried daughter expected to act as housekeeper and look after her father, to the scandal attached to divorce.

From a slow and unpromising start Portrait of a Murderer developed into a fascinating novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for a review copy via NetGalley.

A wonderful mystery, a psychological masterpiece of the Golden Age.
It's well written, with very interesting characters and a great plot.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley

<i>I received this one through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All my opinions are my own</i>.

I quite enjoyed this Christmas crime novel, it shone by the portrayal of complex and more than morally grey characters. In many crime novels, the exposition can be my favourite part, because I love having the portrayal of several characters and trying to figure out who is most likely to commit murder, whether I'm proven right or wrong in the end. As the identity of the murderer is revealed early on, it mostly is about the murderer trying to deflect the blame from their person and finding evidence to prove who the culprit was for the rest of the characters, which can be both interesting and frustrating depending on the novel. Considering how short <i>Portrait of a Murderer</i> was, it was more of the former and I flew through it. Those types of mysteries aren't my favourite though, but it was a nice change, for once. It had anti-Semitic comments at times, which showed all the more how Jews were perceived in the 1930s, so be weary of it going into it.

I really like the idea of the British Library Crime Classics collection, it's perfect to discover mystery authors who aren't as known today and I'll keep an eye out for other titles of this collection in the future.

I did not like any of the family, even Miles. This is a horrendous imitation of Agathie Christie, it doesn't work. You have a liberal intellectual who wants to justify murder, by feeling sorry for the murderer! As Agathie Christie says, Murder Most foul! No one deserves to be murdered by another human being. That is why we have Rules of law, and members on the jury, and a Judge!
I don't prefer this type of murder mysteries.
Thank you!
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Originally published in 1933, this classic Christmas tale is very much worthy of a modern day audience. Thank you British Library, Crime Classic Publishing for bring this back around to entertain us again.

Every Christmas the extended family of Adrian Grey meet at his isolated country house for the holiday. The Christmas of 1932 with the world in a depression and the English and American Stock markets tanked, the children of Adrian Grey all come with hands out for monetary assistance for various reasons. But Adrian too is strapped as his liquid assets have gone to his stockbroker son in law years ago and are all part of the collapsed market in England. Christmas morning Adrian is in his library, struck dead in the night with his own paperweight by his artist son. But how will the police handle the murder? And who will ultimately pay the price?

Anne Meredith is a pen name for the author Lucy Beatrice Malleson. Although receiving good reviews and gaining her an American publisher, Portrait of a Murderer was not a commercial success. Ms. Malleson, however will be long remembered for her novels written under her more masculine pen names, J. Kelmeny Keith and Anthony Gilbert.

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel from Netgalley, the estate of Anne Meredith, and British Library Crime Classic Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

The Gray family is gathering for Christmas, but while family gatherings at other places may be full of cheer and happiness, there is very little cheery when the Grays get together. One daughter is trying to endear herself by managing the house for her miserly father, one son is headed places in government regardless of what it costs, one daughter’s husband has conned numerous people – including the elder Gray into making risky investments, one daughter is a shell of her former self after personal tragedy, one son is the artist black sheep and lives a miserable existence, and just one daughter is quite happy with her middle class life and two girls and lawyer husband though the others can’t quite fathom why. As they gather all but one are salivating at the thought of getting their hands on their father’s money, thinking it is the answer to blackmail and overspending, risky business endeavors, and freedom from a dreary life. And one of them, when meeting with their father to ask for money will be consumed by fury at his mean responses and kill him accidentally. The reader knows exactly who it is, but will get to watch the entire family respond to the tragedy and only one person will have conscience enough to pursue the truth instead of watching an unlikable man swing whether it is his crime or not.

In some ways, this reads like a dramatic play instead of a normal mystery novel. We spend a lot of time listening to various members of the family in effect delivering soliloquys to defend their actions and motives and way of life, explaining how they think and what drives them. It is more of a treatise on human nature than a mystery. The Grays represent a broad spectrum of ways in which the pursuit of money, fame, and your own glory can utterly disappoint. The man killed might as well have been named Ebenezer Scrooge for the amount of love passed around. So imagine if Ebenezer Scrooge had raised children and how well they’d be likely to turn out. That’s pretty much what you get here. Only the ones willing to see through the fraud and shallowness of their father’s values will manage to turn out well. So if you’re looking for something that’s somewhere between Shakespeare’s tragedies and the classic British detective story, you’d probably enjoy this. If you like introspective characters and exploring the human nature, you should also like this. If you want just the bare facts, traditional mystery stuff, and no grand soliloquys, probably avoid this one. I can see university literature profs loving this one.

Notes on content: About five minor swear words. No sex scenes, but it is mentioned that several of the characters have had affairs (and most are paying for this in one way or another). One murder that isn't very bloody.

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.