The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

A classic of the genre. Nice pace, very clever, fun . At the end you have to say zut! mais bien sur. ( )

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a classic country house mystery with nervous servants, untrustworthy relatives and hangers-on, and a nearby village bustling with gossip and opinions. Our narrator is the local Doctor who introduces the principal residents, including his sister who operates as the nerve center of the village. There's a newcomer as well, a Belgian man who putters in the garden.

It soon comes out that this Belgian is none-other than Hercule Poirot, retired from his career as a private detective, but willing to investigate the curious murder of local philanthropist Roger Ackroyd. The doctor and others are eager to participate in the investigation, to the chagrin of the official investigator.

Christie takes the usual components of a mystery, the stock characters, the plots in plots in plots, and still comes out with an entertaining story that feels fresh. ( )

I loved it...started to have my suspicions, but really wasn't sure, just thought I was reaching. It was brilliant, the reconstruction made me want to go back and find the clues. This was tried by another author I recently read and it was terrible.... never try to imitate Christie...nobody does it better. ( )

Poirot retires to grow marrows… and solve the murder of a widower who was hiding a dark secret.

One of Christie’s most notorious works, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" is an interesting case: it’s undoubtedly a good book, but there’s a certain laziness in ascribing it “classic” quality just because of that ending. There’s no doubt that "Roger Ackroyd" is a defining moment in the history of crime fiction, but how does that stand up against the book as a work of the genre?

Well, the simple answer is: very well. In fact, I’d call it the best book Christie wrote in the ’20s. Admittedly, she spent much of this decade writing short stories and dabbling in thrillers, but in some ways, "Roger Ackroyd" was where Dame Agatha found her place constructing baffling mysteries and then – more importantly – obfuscating every damn element of them. There’s nothing amazing in the construction of the murder itself, and one could argue that there are too many red herrings, to the point where it just becomes nonsensical. Yet, there’s nothing at all wrong with it either. Each individual clue makes sense, and Poirot’s investigation is both completely logical to the viewer and completely impossible for us to mimic, while also justifying the fact that he fails to detect the killer for so long.

Christie had reduced Hastings to a recurring player already, and so Dr. James Sheppard fills in as narrator: it’s a perfect decision, because we get to essentially “re-meet” Poirot: a retired, civil but reclusive man who just wants to grow vegetable marrows. When he returns to active detection, Poirot will become much more arrogant, but in this environment, he is just a tradesman, doing his job.

[Retrospectively speaking, Poirot's retirement in 1926 raises questions about how he remains so active into the 1970s, but that's another story.]

The twist ending of "Roger Ackroyd", which I won’t spoil here, was front-page news at the time, and reasonably so. It was unprecedented, endlessly clever, and – depending on who you talked to – possibly unfair for the reader, who couldn’t be expected to figure it out. I’m not sure if that would apply nowadays. I certainly didn’t, but it’s possible a more astute reader – with ninety years of this trick’s descendants – may figure out the killer. (Of course, the other possibility – which has happened to all of us at some point – is that the mere act of knowing there’s a trick ending means you figure it out. You somehow become more cagey, and those little details – the joins and the screws – stand out.)

So, is "Roger Ackroyd" a classic? Well, yes and no… and yes. It deserved the praise at the time, and still remains a bold experiment. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the reception to this novel – and the mere struggle it must have to been to write it – prepared Dame Agatha for her increasingly elaborate constructions in future, and her other no-holds-barred twisters like "Murder on the Orient Express" and "And Then There Were None". (Not to mention "The Mousetrap".) "Roger Ackroyd" is very solidly put together and – in truth – I can find nothing to fault it.

Poirot ranking: 8th out of 38 ( )

Genius. I had no idea, she got me completely unaware. Agatha Christie is the best. ( )