Anne Meredith (2) (1899–1973)

I enjoyed holiday-related mysteries, and this one had a pleasing cover and an endorsement by Dorothy Sayers. Written in 1933, Portrait of a Murderer has lengthy sentences and drawn-out paragraphs from that era where people had attention spans and tolerance for winding descriptions. I rather like this old-fashioned style of writing.
I was warned in the introduction that this mystery reveals the murderer up front. Not my preferred type of story, but okay, I was game. While this was not the cozy mystery I expected, I will keep it as a writing reference book. If you prefer the short and direct type of story, I'll say that this book is the wordy version of a Lucy Foley mystery, a story told from varying points of view, with no one being particularly likeable and yet we can be somewhat sympathetic to their self-constructed miseries. This is much like The Hunting Party or The Guest List, 30s-style.
Yes, we know who the killer is, but the story still has twists and turns and depth, to keep the reader wondering if the killer will get away with it or get caught. There is no Christmas cheer to be drawn from this novel; it's fairly grim in character and circumstance. At one point, I almost set it aside. So glad I didn't. Instead, I got out my mechanical pencil and enjoyed the ride, underlining some divinely constructed sentences as, "Since her father's death, she had changed, awakened, begun to glow; as a piece of silver that has not been polished for years, suddenly receiving attention, catches the light in a dozen places, reflects, burns, almost illuminates the room where it is placed, so Isobel flashed with an ardour that had been typical of her early years, but that had been quenched for so long that few recognized its return."… (más)