The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (published in 1926) is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It features Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. It is also one of Christie's most well-known, and most controversial, novels.

Related Topics:
1926 - Detective novel - Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot

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The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England and told in the first person by Dr James Sheppard.

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It begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumoured to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be suicide until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, dies. The suspects are: Mrs Cecil Ackroyd, Roger's neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law with debts, Ackroyd's niece, Flora, Major Blunt, a big-game hunter, Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's secretary, Ralph Paton, his stepson with gambling debts, and Parker, a snooping butler.

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Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate, with Dr. Sheppard's assistance.

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The book is most notable for its surprise ending, which revealed that the narrator is the murderer:

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:I am rather pleased with myself as a writer. What could be neater, for instance, than the following: "The letters were brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone."

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At the time, there was some level of outcry as to whether or not this was fair to the reader, even though Christie - as always - had left clues in the rest of the novel. This debate continues, with Edmund Wilson alluding to this novel in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"

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Pierre Bayard's book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? (2000) (ISBN 1-56584-677-X) argues that Poirot actually got the solution wrong and proposes an alternate solution.

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