The premise of the story is simple, but genius. The story starts with the Gray children arriving at their father’s manor for Christmas, several with the intention of asking Adrian Gray for financial help. It builds up to one of them murderering their father. We are in the murderer’s mind as this happens, so we always know who did it. But will the police and the siblings work it out?

The characters are all very unlikable and I love that about this book. It is mainly a character study and one that has been done very well. The only human light in the story is daughter Ruth and her husband Miles, who are considered unambitious and uninteresting by the other siblings, but have something that none of the others have; love and happiness.

I love the author’s descriptions of the people themselves and their surroundings. You feel like you know the characters so well by the end of it.

I can’t believe I had never heard about this book before. It is a wonderfully crafted and written book, though I do not think it will be for everyone, it is definitely my kind of tale.

Christmas 1931 and Adrian Gray, at 70 years old, is residing at Kings Poplars. But he has his family visiting him for the season and is killed by one of his children. With none of them fond of their father we read the story of the murder, their thinking at the time, and what they did next as an act of self-preservation. Will the murderer slip up, will anyone care enough.
An interesting and enjoyable read.

In each episode of the TV series Columbo, the script immediately identified the perpetrator of the crime, and the viewer’s pleasure came from watching the disheveled, deceptively dim homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo inexorably hone in on the malefactor’s trail. But that trick (known as the “inverted detective format” long predates Columbo, first appearing in 1912’s The Singing Bone.

Portrait of a Murderer — a 1931 novel by Anne Meredith, one of Lucy Malleson’s several pen names — also follows the inverted detective format and pretty well. And the book really does live up to its title. The novel reveals — in its very first sentence, no less — that the loathsome Adrian Gray is to be murdered by one of his six children. So no spoiler there. About a fifth of the way through the novel, Meredith reveals which one. And, even though I knew the perpetrator, I still thoroughly enjoyed watching to see if the killer would get away with the crime, and the book provides a great window into the mind of a murderer.

Further, Meredith does an amazing job with keeping what could have easily fallen into a cliché: a 70-year-old patriarch reunites the family for Christmas at the old homestead and one of the six children or their spouses takes advantage to slay the old dragon. The novel sometimes waxes too philosophical, and I ended up skimming once in a while, but I’d still recommend it to readers looking for something different.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, British Library and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review.

If you've read any story set in a mid-1800s house where there is an old man who controls the family's wealth with an iron fist and it's Christmas, you can probably predict what is going to happen. This book is notable in that we not only get to see who the murderer is, we get to see how he puts together his cover up, and then how it all goes wrong.
This was an interesting book, especially since it was first published in 1933. It was a little slow in many places and I didn't get into it completely but the idea was a good one.

Three stars
This book comes out April 3
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Certainly a very unusual mystery. We know the murderer, more of a Columbo style mystery. Incredibly anti-Semitic showing just how prevalent hatred of Jews was in the 1930ies. Hard to read in places for this aspect alone. If you are looking for a whodunnit this is not the one to go for. Ok, amusing in places, but leaving a tad of an unpleasant after taste.

This really wasn't much of a mystery. It's more of a charcter study. The father dies. One of his children committed the murder. We know which one it was and how it was done. He's just trying to hide it from his siblings. I really disliked the entire family. It simply did not resonate well with me; however, persons who like to see character drive the story may enjoy it. It's labeled as Christmas crime. Just because the murder happened at Christmas when the family gathered does not make it a "Christmas" story. This one could occur at a family reunion any other time of the year. This is based on an electronic galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley with the expectation of an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for a digital galley of this novel.

This novel written in 1933 is not so much a mystery as a psychological look at a murderer and the reasons for the crime. The family gathered at King's Poplars in 1931 to celebrate Christmas. Adrian Gray had not expected anything but trouble with his adult children but he got more than he had expected when his murder took pride of place in the emotional stew surrounding the lives of his family.

This is just not a favorite style of mystery for me and, therefore, I didn't enjoy it very much. I do know that my preferences are strictly my own so I am trying to be fair to the author. The murderer is revealed early on and the first half of the novel is spent showing the emotional feelings of all the people gathered at the house with their squabbles, bickering and disagreements. None of them was a sympathetic character so it really mattered little to me who had actually done the deed of murder. What was important to each of the characters was money. The police presence happens at about the halfway point and from this point the book held my attention so I read the last half with more interest than the first. Still, even the police investigation did not raise this book past a three star rating. When I forget I'm even reading a book until I accidently run across it in my e-reader, that is never going to elicit a ringing endorsement from me. If you prefer to know the psychological reasoning behind the crime of murder, plus the subsequent justification for what was done you might want to give this one a try.

The BLC series is one of my favourite. I love reading older crime stories and this was no exception. Fantastically written and wonderful storylines

To be honest I did not think I would enjoy this book, but I really did. I found that the characters where extremely well developed, to the extent that I actually felt their thinking and emotions.
Not a mystery as the person who committed the murder is revealed near the start, but it does go into the thoughts and emotions of the various characters in the book, leading to its inevitable ending.

It’s Christmas 1931.

*Pause - That’s it for Christmas, so if the lovely, traditional cover suggests that you might find here some warm, Christmas-infused tale or lesson in the Christmas spirit, you’ve been had. On the other hand, if like me you run with gusto in the opposite direction from heart-warming tales of the resilience of the human spirit and happy families where all value each other’s individuality, stick around, this novel is just right for you.

So . . .where were we? Ah. It is Christmas 1931, thick snow lies all around an estate with a name, Kings Poplar. Imagine Downtown Abbey 15 years after the series ended. The aristocracy isn’t what it used to be, but some of the younger generation of those aristocratic families are caught by the sudden change. They believe it’s their right to be funded without gainful employ. The whiff of “scandal” is the greatest evil, to be avoided at all costs. The social hierarchy remains but is much less impactful than it once was. The “estate” is in disrepair. The lives of the nearby villagers have little to no connection or loyalty to the family.

As in a few dozen other 1930s-era British mysteries, we have:
• the requisite cold, judgmental and cantankerous father, Adrian Gray. He gets along with none of his adult children and respects neither their values nor their spouses.
• His sons, Richard and Brand, and daughters, Amy, Olivia, Ruth and Isobel.
• A son-in-law, Eustace, with whom Adrian has invested the lion’s share of the family’s liquid assets. Another is an attorney, married to Ruth. A daughter-in-law, Sophie, married to Brand, whom all – including Brand – consider common and taking advantage of Brand whilst producing babies that may not be his. Another daughter-in-law, Laura, married to Richard, rounds out the set and becomes one of my favorite characters.

Here’s where the similarity to other mysteries ends. Portrait of a Murderer is not a whodunit. We are told in its initial sentence that one of the kids will kill Adrian over the holiday. Then he or she does so, and the reader is in the room when it occurs. Boom. Portrait of a Murderer is, on the one hand, a Columbo-like story focused on determining how the murderer slipped up and will become captured and, on the other hand, a far more interesting, well-plotted, intelligent tale anchored in the device of a murder mystery of the once-wealthy class, as well as the working class, between the wars. Their world has forever altered, but some of the family are moving forward, and some are clinging to a past they are unable to recapture. The sexism, anti-semiticism, classism – including a jarringly offensive perspective of Eustace, a Jewish investment professional, and Sergeant Murray, the police detective assigned to investigate the case – might be breathtaking to one accustomed to reading historical fiction written post-1990, where it is often toned down a bit. Portrait of a Murderer reminds the reader that anti-semitic views were commonplace, not rare or challenged at the time the novel takes place.

Meredith’s writing is elegant and efficient. She presents a cast of characters whose values and concerns cause the reader to, initially, dislike them all. Then she turns almost every one of those presuppositions on their head, challenging the reader to look more closely. Where the reader first sees mere stereotypes, Meredith fleshes out the depth of each character’s thinking, their motives and weaknesses, as well as detailing the impact of Adrian Gray’s death on their goals, dreams and expectations. For some, his death means freedom. For others, it’s the end of the dream. More than a few are not interested in justice for the killer, since that means having their good names bandied about by the public.

One of the strengths of Portrait of a Murderer is that it includes a focus on the impoverished and desperate, in the form of Brand’s family, in particular, the impact of poverty on Brand’s children, and his and his family’s total disregard for their lives and welfare. Meredith takes a chapter to show us an interaction between Brand and Sophie, at their then-shared home, and her language and approach is almost Dickensian in the absence of sugar-coating and description of the circumstances in which the children lived.

The ending is unexpected, brilliant, and shows Meredith’s understanding of her characters and their motives. I couldn’t have asked for more in a mystery read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing a copy.
About the author
“Anne Meredith” is one of the pseudonyms under which Lucy Beatrice Malleson wrote. She lived from 1899 – 1973, and is better known for her detective novels written under the name “Anthony Gilbert”.

"Portrait of a Murderer" is a historical crime fiction set in 1931 at Christmas in England. It was published in 1933. The story is told primarily from the viewpoint of murderer. He calculated how to get away with the crime as well as justified himself mentally and waxed philosophical about it. The first half of the story was setting up murder--describing who was in the house and why they would want to kill the victim--and then describing how the murderer tried to cover his crime up.

The second half was how the police and one of the other people at the house at the time of the murder figured out who did it and how they proved it. The murderer was not likable, but the man that he set up to take the fall was even less likable.

There was no sex. There was a minor amount of bad language. Overall, I would recommend this interesting mystery.

This was a very wordy but very enjoyable mystery. To be accurate, this is less of a mystery than a psychological examination of the family members of the intensely disliked patriarch, Adrian Gray. The family has arrived at his home, Kings Poplars on Christmas Eve for what is going to be anything but a Merry Christmas.

The reader is introduced to the murderer early on and the remainder of the book swings between the family members, their belief that they are entitled to an inheritance and their ruinous social and financial decline. All of their ulterior motives and failings are brought into sharp focus and none are left unchanged or unharmed.

This was written of a time and place and it was perfect for me but others may find it long-winded. A new favorite quote at the very end: “It is a pity that we cannot die when our lives are finished.”

Many thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for a copy.

This is a very well written suspenseful book. While it is an inverted mystery, it’s not solely from the murderer’s perspective. Instead, we get glimpses the crime from those most involved. It starts out with a lengthy introduction to the most prominent characters. Then with startling abruptness, the crime is committed. What follows is a tortuous sorting out of personalities and clues. There aren’t really any surprises. Right from the first, you know what will eventually bring him down, but who the actually catches him will be a surprise.
I thought the ending redeemed the whole book. Meredith created a cast of unsympathetic characters and then slowly develops their characters into either completely repulsive or reliably friendly. I enjoyed it.
Content warning…
There were several instances of ‘mild’ swearing, and references to illegitimate heritage. While several characters are having affairs, and others are mentioned it is very discreet and not really promoted. I’d say it was about as clean as Agatha Christie’s later works.
I received this as a free ARC through NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press. No favorable review was required, and these are my honest opinions.

As much as I wanted to get into this book I just couldn't, about 5 pages in I was all kinda confused.. Maybe I misses something but I feel like this was a re release of a very old book, actually from what I got from the notes in the front it was, and to me I just couldn't get it. So I cannot say that this book was good or bad, I can say that this book was not for me honestly.

It’s hard to read the first chapters of this book without thinking of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (which was published a few years later). We have a Christmas party in a family with little love lost between the different members. Most of the children have money-troubles and unhappy marriages. And then the patriarch who is an all-around horrible person gets murdered.

However, unlike in Christie’s book, it wasn’t a carefully planned deed but simply the result of one child losing their temper after hearing yet again that they are useless. And we know that because we are there when it happens. We see what the killer does afterwards to cover up their tracks and frame a different family member and what they do once the murder is discovered.
And in these parts, the book really shines because it doesn’t portray this as a black-or-white situation. The murderer is no unfeeling psychopath. In between all the siblings who barely tolerate each other, they have a quite close relationship with one sister and try to help her. But neither are they a poor innocent soul who lost their temper only once. We see what they think about the other sibling and their own family. (And, after all, they have no problem framing someone else). Even without the murder, it’s clear that they aren’t a very good person. But we also learn about their past and how they were treated by others (especially the father) and the tragedies that happened in their life. And I couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been different if certain things wouldn’t have happened.

Mind you all that doesn’t mean the murderer is likeable. They made enough despicable decisions apart from the murder. But that was exactly what made the story so fascinating (and slightly disconcerting ) for me. Most killers aren’t the pure evil we see on Criminal Minds. Neither are they avenging angels like Dexter who only kill bad people. Most of them aren’t even the type you see in Agatha Christie novels, who plan carefully and built elaborate contraptions to make it seem like they have an alibi. Most killers are exactly like the one in this book: a worse person than the average but it’s still easy to see that if one or two things had gone differently they would have gone through life as a bad person who never killed anybody.

There are still things that are not great about this book. Like the not exactly subtle antisemitism. One son-in-law is Jewish and – of course – a banker and – of course – a fraud who ruined lots of people. Any comments about this are mostly limited to one chapter and then not brought up again. It’s also not a major plot-point, it’s just there like so often in novels from that time. I have read worse (hello Greenmantle) and I can’t deny I enjoyed the book anyway. I will think twice about picking up another book by the author, though.

Then, once the murder is committed, we don’t only follow the killer, we see how the whole family reacts to the events. It changes them. And for all the characters that were at least somewhat likeable, things get better. They decide to live their life again, their situation improves, abused children get better homes…it’s an odd contrast to the rest of the rather dark story.

And then there’s the unnecessary information. We get pages of backstory for the inspector who appears once and does little to solve the crime. We learn a lot about the things the victim did during and before the war, which would have made a good red herring in an ordinary crime-story but served no purpose here. The oldest daughter-in-law reminisces in depth about one of her maids who left the household long before the story starts. Sometimes it feels like the author is trying to make a point with these asides but I can’t make out what. Sometimes all it seems to do is fill the pages.

I would still recommend this book to everyone who wants to read a very different golden age mystery.

It's rare for me to drag on my reading time whenever I pick up any titles from the British Library Crime Classics series. "Portrait of a Murderer," however, is one of the titles that falls into that unfortunate category. It isn't a bad written book, in fact, I think the writing and concept are of excellent quality. This, in fact, is probably quite a memorable inverted mystery that I have had the pleasure to read so far.

The ingenious thing about any inverted mystery works is the crimes are told through the narration by the perpetrators themselves. Motives, methods, the investigations that followed are told in the chronological orders. The execution of the plot by Anne Meredith is done beautifully but at times too wordy. The book is divided into few sections:

1- The introduction of a family with its backgrounds and that of each family members
2- The murderer's own narration of the crime from start to finish
3- The reactions and thoughts of each family member after the crime is discovered, the investigation, the trial, and the aftermaths
4- The perpetrator's final fate

A through and thought-out plot but way too much study of human nature and their inner struggles. I guess if the book is not written in an inverted style then the details are important in order to build the suspense. But since the revelation of the culprit is known and the crime is not a premeditated one, I am half interested in the private and hidden lives of the rest of the siblings of the murderer except for one, the brother-in-law, who is wrongly accused of committing the crime at first. "Portrait of a Murderer" would make a great mystery/crime novel if reading it with the intention of understanding the novel is about the "portrayal of character and social comment" as noted in the introduction by editor Martin Edwards. By all means, "Portrait of a Murderer" is certainly an unique book but it is just not my cup of tea. I wish I could love it more because it really is a fine piece of art. Maybe I will consider a re-read in few years.

Thanks Netgallery and Poisoned Pen Press for the chance to review another classic title.

Portrait of a Murderer is an early 20th Century novel that is getting a rerelease in 2017 by the British Library. Anne Meredith was a best selling crime writer and her books have been long out of print until now.

Meredith has an old school writing style which at times for the modern reader can seem over written and a bit flowery. Personally, I found the plot and characters very interesting but there were times that I was lost within the prose. This is merely from reading a long list of modern fiction that it took me a little bit of time to get into the style of writing. Once I got into the groove of the piece, I let it wash over me and found it very interesting and well put together.

A book that I would suspect was way ahead of its time at the time of being first published, has an interesting construct with the reader let in who the murderer is and the reasoning behind it. The book breaks down its cast of characters and lets you know intimate details of each. This is where the story becomes quite fascinating as this occurs within the very first few pages of the piece.

After the full introduction, we are then lead through the murderers motives and the reasoning behind the murder and how they hope to get away with it. This is extremely interesting and have to admit, this plot device in an ingenious way to tell a story.

One must remember that this was written in the early part of the 20th Century and it will have some sensibilities that may offend some of the audience today. If you read this as a museum piece of its time, then one should be able to overlook this.

Overall, this is an excellent novel and one that will hopefully help readers rediscover a classic mystery crime writer and will make more of her work to be released. If you are a fan of the Agatha Christie style of writing and you are looking of a unique look at the mystery crime novel, then look no further. If you are looking for something different in a crowded crime market, then look no further. Simply, a breath of fresh air.

Adrian Gray, a country gentleman, will be murdered by one of his six children on Christmas Eve, 1931. The seventy year old patriarch is hosting the Gray family's yearly holiday gathering. Adrian is a despicable tight wad who parents by using humiliation. His children either tolerate or despise him. One will take his life.

Here are the players. Richard, married to a society woman, has been knighted but wants to obtain a peerage, an honorary title commanding even more respect. Unmarried Amy is Adrian's housekeeper. She shrewdly counts everything, every slice of bread, and will calculate the cost of each item served at Christmas dinner. Olivia is married to unscrupulous financier, Eustace Moore. Moore is Adrian's financial adviser. Isabel had returned home after a disastrous marriage, scandal avoided, through the allowance provided by her husband. Ruth's marriage to lawyer Miles Avery showed promise. Miles, however, was satisfied with less earnings and not driven by ambition. The youngest child, Hildebrand was a penniless, bohemian, would be artist.

The murder has now been committed. The reader having witnessed the criminal act follows the murderer's attempt to deflect the blame. Can the murderer concoct a well thought out plan before the body is discovered on Christmas Day?

"Portrait of a Murderer" by Anne Meredith is a unique kind of mystery. We are privy to the murder and now follow the thinking involved in self-preservation as the murderer sets the stage to implicate a different family member. Will it work? An entertaining and most enjoyable read.

Thank you Poisoned Pen Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Portrait of a Murderer".

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This novel begins with a paragraph stating that Adrian Gray was murdered by one of his children, and, at the 20% mark, we learn which of the children it was. Although there is an intelligent gentleman police detective, we see little of him and he does not correctly identify the murderer. A lawyer, who is related to the family by marriage, is the one finally to put the pieces together and confront the culprit. We are introduced to each of Adrian's children and their respective spouses in the opening chapters (which are excellent), but they mostly fade out during the second half of the story, as the focus shifts to the murderer and whether the crime was in some way excusable.

I have read other reviews which suggest that the reader feels sympathy for the murderer - I did not. While I thought the author did a good job in explaining

SPOILERS

his emotions and motivations, these did not serve to enlist my compassion. I found his attitude to and behaviour towards his wife and children unforgivable. Being capable of creating a work of art does not make a man "noble" or "great", and certainly not worth protecting from the consequences of his actions. It is perhaps indicative of the era in which this novel was written that the man he is intending should hang in his place is a Jewish financier who has swindled hundreds of people out of their life savings.

Nevertheless, well written and engrossing.