The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
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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 one of Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. The character Caroline Sheppard inspired Christie to create her famous detective Miss Marple.
In Great Britain Penguin Books published a paperback edition (#684) of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in August 1948. It cost one shilling and sixpence.
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[edit] Main Characters
- Roger Ackroyd, country gentleman, distressed about the recent death of his mistress
- Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, his widowed sister-in-law
- Flora Ackroyd, Mr. Ackroyd's niece and Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd's daughter
- Ralph Paton, Mr. Ackroyd's ne'er-do-well stepson
- Ursula Bourne, Mr. Ackroyd's parlourmaid, recently dismissed
- Major Hector Blunt, big game hunter and Roger Ackroyd's friend
- Geoffrey Raymond, Mr. Ackroyd's secretary
- Parker, Mr. Ackroyd's butler
- Elizabeth Russell, Mr. Ackroyd's housekeeper
- Charles Kent, Elizabeth Russell's son and marginal drug addict
- Dr. James Sheppard, the doctor (and the story's narrator)
- Caroline Sheppard, Dr. Sheppard's spinster sister
[edit] Plot summary
The book is set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant (a role filled by Captain Hastings in several other Poirot novels). The story 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 include Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger's neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law who has accummulated personal debts through extravagant spending; her daughter Flora; Major Blunt, a big-game hunter; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's personal secretary; Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson and another person with heavy debts; Parker, a snooping butler; and Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder.
The initial suspect is Ralph, who is engaged to Flora and stands to inherit his stepfather's fortune. Several critical pieces of evidence seem to point to Ralph. Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora's behest.
The book ends with a then-unprecedented plot twist: Poirot, having exonerated all of the original suspects, lays out a completely-reasoned case that the murderer is in fact Dr. Sheppard, who has not only been Poirot's assistant but the story's narrator. The story is then shown to be a suicide note written after Poirot's exposition.
[edit] Controversy Christie Faced Upon Publication of Book
The most notable aspect of the book, which led to considerable controversy on its publication, is its alleged use of an unreliable narrator, who in fact confesses at the end to being the murderer. In this confession, Dr. Sheppard attempts to exculpate himself from having been at all untruthful as a narrator:
- 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."
Dr. Sheppard's (and Christie's) contention was that everything he had written had been the truth; he simply had not written the whole truth. In particular, he did not mention what happened between twenty and ten minutes to nine, during which he was in fact murdering Roger Ackroyd.
The story also brings attention to the recurrent mystery-novel trend of having a good deal of the facts and evidence having nothing to do with the actual crime (eg. Ralph's disappearance). Though common enough in crime novels, it takes on new meaning here since we are seeing it through the eyes of the killer. Sheppard himself is amazed at the level of duplicity that occurs in the novel, and in the end admits that for most of the story he was baffled as to why his crime had turned out to be so complex and multi-layered.
At the time, there was some level of outcry as to whether or not the ending was fair to the reader, even though Christie - as always - had left clues in the rest of the novel. The controversy nearly got Christie kicked out of the Detection Club for violating the rules on "fair play" with the reader. Only the tie-breaker vote of president Dorothy Sayers kept Christie in the club. In 1945, Edmund Wilson alluded to this novel in the title of his article attacking detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"
History has been much kinder to Christie, crediting her for an original idea. From that point on, the detective fiction mantra that "it is the reader's duty to suspect everyone" took on a new meaning.
Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (2000) (ISBN 1-56584-677-X) (first published as Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd in 1998), an ingenious reappraisal of the case by Pierre Bayard, Professor of Literature at the University of Paris, argues that Poirot actually got the solution wrong and proposes an alternative ending.
[edit] Trivia
- A Mahjong game is described in the novel, ending with the very unusual event of a player getting a complete winning hand on the initial draw. This success makes the character unduly talkative, which leads to significant plot developments.
- Gilbert Adair alludes to the title of the book in his 2006 whodunnit written in the vein of an Agatha Christie novel, The Act of Roger Murgatroyd.
- The narrator as murderer twist was used as early as 1909 in the novel "Jernvognen" ("The Iron Wagon") by Norwegian author Sven Elvestad (writing as Stein Riverton). Though Elvestad/Riverton was often translated and published in different European countries, there is no evidence suggesting Christie knew of this book when she wrote her story. A graphic novel adaptation of "The Iron Wagon" by Norwegian cartoonist Jason was published in English in 2003.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
A television version was produced in 2000 for Britain's ITV1 network. It starred David Suchet as Poirot, Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp (who does not appear in the original novel), Oliver Ford Davies as Doctor Sheppard, and Malcolm Terris as Roger Ackroyd. It is arguably a poor adaptation of the novel, since Japp - not Sheppard - is Poirot's assistant, leaving Sheppard as just another suspect and therefore neglecting the key twist of the novel.
