The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Agatha Christie got me on this one. I was puzzling which of these characters committed this murder right to the reveal and the culprit was completely off my radar. The device for how she pulled this off was ingenious who would ever suspect Dr. Watson in a Sherlock Holmes tale? He would be the one character above suspicion

A fun read that encourages me to work a Christie novel in now and again. There are many I have never read.

Excerpt from my original GR review (Jun 2010):
- Poirot is so clearly the model, or a model, for Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau. I'm sorry I've only now gotten to this. Monsieur Poirot would never be called modest, would he? Christie's story surprisingly reads fresh, no trippy British dialect. Good pace. The "out" presented to the murderer at the end isn't very satisfying though. ( )

Mientras leía el libro pensaba en darle tres estrellas porque, en comparación con otros libros de la misma autora, la chispa y el interés eran muy bajos. Pero, cuando devoraba las últimas 50 páginas del libro, ese interés e incertidumbre crecieron considerablemente y la resolución del caso fue como una estocada al corazón (en el buen sentido).

Debo decir que esa resolución, ese final, han dado un empujón al libro y es que seamos honestos, todo aquel que lee un libro de Christie espera un final sorprendente… y nuevamente la señora ha dado en el clavo. ( )

Roger Ackroyd is found murdered in his study and Hercule Poirot gets to exercise all his grey cells to find the killer. This one has a truly original murderer-reveal (or did at its publication - it's possible others have attempted the same now) and I am impressed with how Christie pulls off the subterfuge. I already knew who the killer would turn out to be, so I wasn't on tenterhooks, but I did pick it up to see the mechanics of how she did it. ( )

I can't lie, this month I've been in such a reading slump. Everything I picked out to read all of a sudden seemed uninteresting. As I plowed my way through another Poirot adventure I released that I was enjoying this mystery more and more. The book kept me guessing until the very end when the murderer was finally revealed. Oh that Ms. Christie, she really did have such a way with murder mystery stories. I look forward to my next Poirot mystery, although who knows when I'll read the next one! ( )