Book Review: Portrait of a Murderer, A Christmas Crime Story by Anne Meredith
I haven’t done the greatest job of posting regular book reviews on my youtube channel, so I thought I’d take advantage of my holiday decorations and post a review of a Christmas-themed classic mystery story. I picked up Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith after reading a review of it over on FictionFan’s blog, which is a resource I frequently rely on to find good mysteries to read, especially the older ones that publishers won’t send me. Snuggling up with a good Christmas mystery is what I treated myself to this past week, and Anne Meredith’s book did not disappoint! Although I will say it’s not really a Christmas book; the murder happens on Christmas, but that’s about as far as the holiday theme goes. Still, I enjoyed it, and I find it a particularly delightful challenge to read books written decades ago – it forces me to slow down and really pay attention to the diction to ensure I’m understanding everything, and in a book like this, you’ll want to slow down and savour it too.
Sounds like fun holiday-adjacent reading!
Ahhh, nothing like a nice, happy murdery story for the holidays! /raisescocoamug
you know it!
Thanks for the kind mention! I’m so glad you enjoyed the book – one of the things I love about the BL Crime Classics series is that they’re not afraid to go a bit off the beaten track and give us something a bit different. This one is quite dark, which isn’t always what people expect from mystery novels of that era. Fun fact: Agatha Christie was friends with Anne Meredith, and used her name for one of her characters in Cards on the Table.
Your tree is fabulous, by the way! :D
Thank you and you are most welcome for the mention, I have you to thank for a few classic mysteries on my shelf which I am grateful for :)
Hahaha, I have a review coming out tomorrow, and my book sounds oddly similar to your book. I listened to Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, and in it, an old man invites his adult children and their wives to his home for Christmas, and he’s murdered. It being a Christie book, the whole point is to learn whodunnit, so these do sound a little different. The Poirot book came out in 1938. Also, there was so little mention of Christmas; it was basically a reason for them to all get together.