Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and died violently at the hands of one of his own children on Christmas day in 1931. The crime was spontaneous and unpremeditated. The murderer remained staring at the weapon left on the table, then at the corpse in the shadow of the tapestry curtains, still unafraid but incredulous and without words: this is how “Portrait of a murderer” starts, one of the first samples of “inverted” crime novels. The author soon reveals the murderer while presenting the characters, their psychology and the environment, with details of local customs that enrich the story. All of them have weak points: there are unfaithful husbands, selfish wives, financial scammers, bohemian artists, simple people and others who are alienated from the society. The moral behaviours that contrast with the Church’s teachings are presented as inappropriate. It is a work of high literary quality in its genre, without drawbacks, but not suitable for young people.
Anne Meredith is one of the pseudonyms that Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973) used. She was a highly appreciated author of crime novels and belonged to the famous and exclusive Detection Club together with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Published in 1933, this work has been reedited in 2017 with an appendix by Martin Edwards, who places it in the perspective of a crime novel in the epoch of the author.