The Murder of Roger Ackroyd discussion

Some reviewers and even other mystery writers of Christie's time felt that the fact that the narrator himself turned out to be the murderer was dishonesty and cheating on the part of Christie. Do you agree?

By the way, Christie repeated such an ending in one more novel which I won't name.

I totally agree.. Felt like a fool after reading the last chapter. But considering the fact that the ending was very different gave a rating of 2 stars. But in diminutive terms..."It was a cheat"..

Jayesh wrote: "I totally agree.. Felt like a fool after reading the last chapter. But considering the fact that the ending was very different gave a rating of 2 stars. But in diminutive terms..."It was a cheat".."

But why do you consider it as a cheat? There is no rule of fiction writing that the narrator couldn't be the murderer. What's precisely wrong with it?

Losen wrote: "I didn't think so. I really loved the book. Thought it was a great plot."

Yup. Me too.

The Brilliance of murder mysteries is that it leaves you guessing as to who the murderer is and sometimes you get it right and feel the satisfaction. Even if you get it wrong, the chances that the culprit had crossed your mind, are high. This trait is common in most Christie books, but by making the murderer the person writing the book you guess till the end and have every single person as a suspect, except the one that's been telling you the story. That is the brilliance of the book.

I don't think it's a cheat because it works. I was delighted to be "fooled" in such a way.

Ok. We dont need to take the literal meaning of cheat here. The author has got the freedom to frame the story to his/her wish. But i didnt get the kick when i read the last chapter. That was what i was alluding to.

Scott wrote:

"Thanks for the spoiler ..."

Sorry Scott. I've edited my post. Actually I thought since these are very old novels and here we are all fans of Christie so I thought maybe we would have already read these books. In fact I gave away the suspense of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd too as else it wouldn't have been possible to construct this thread.

Jayesh wrote: "Ok. We dont need to take the literal meaning of cheat here. The author has got the freedom to frame the story to his/her wish. But i didnt get the kick when i read the last chapter. That was what i..."

Hmm. I see. May I ask who referred you this book? I mean did you come to know about it on the net or through a friend, etc?

Thru a friend. A hard core agatha fan. :-(

Now you guys should read this
http://www.jimloy.com/books/ackroyd.htm

not at all, unreliable narrators are a good tool in murder mystery and the closer i got to the end the more i thought "the only surprise would be if the narrator did it" - i e mailed my guess to my book group marked "do not read until you've finished the book" and was the only one who guessed it

thing with murder mystery is the killer has to be a surprise, so whenever i read one now i keep a list and cross off as soon as a character would not be a surprise if they were the killer. unfortunately this means i nearly always guess who did it, but not how they did it

It was a marvellous effort I think. Writing from the view of the killer. Although she wasn't honest with the killer's thinking, but that was just to prevent us from knowing who the killer was. If you want a perfect account of what thoughts go on inside the mind of a killer do read Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment. But taking the crime mystery genre into consideration this was a really good effort by Christie. There's a similar kinda story-telling in another book of her's I think: Three Act Tragedy.

Jayesh wrote: "Now you guys should read this
http://www.jimloy.com/books/ackroyd.htm"

thanks for the link man. i read that article completely. pretty interesting. but i searched for the book "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd"on my indian online bookstores but found that it's out of print. does anybody here has an ebook of this book?

Jyotirmoy wrote: "It was a marvellous effort I think. Writing from the view of the killer. Although she wasn't honest with the killer's thinking, but that was just to prevent us from knowing who the killer was. If y..."

ya i have Crime and Punishment and I intend to read it some day. your commenting was interesting btw.

Agatha always gave the clues to find the killer, she never kept important details from the reader, so I don't think this was cheat.
Great book

It was a great twist imo. I read it as a teenager. I need to go back and try to find the clues that i should had picked up on while reading years ago

Jyotirmoy wrote: "There's a similar kinda story-telling in another book of her's I think: Three Act Tragedy."

No, it's a different one: (view spoiler)[Endless Night (hide spoiler)]. Three Act Tragedy has a twist as well - most of Christie's books do - but it's a different twist.

Farhan wrote: "but i searched for the book "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd"on my indian online bookstores but found that it's out of print. does anybody here has an ebook of this book? "

Out of print? Most certainly not. Nothing of Christie's is out of print, not even her most obscure books, and this is one of her most famous books. You can easily find her entire collection in any good book shop in India - online or physical. Maybe the particular edition you were looking at was out of print.

OK. I understand that we have a lot of Agatha Cristie fans out here. But still I thought you guys would have tried to go thru the link I have posted above. The book what Farhan is talking about is mentioned in the link. Here is a snippet.
"There is a book called Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? by Pierre Bayard. It contains three major ideas: (1) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is logically inconsistent, (2) virtually all detective fiction is logically inconsistent, and (3) pretending that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is consistent, there is a more likely murderer than the one given in the book. Although this book brings up many interesting and valid points, I find it very unsatisfying on several levels. Here, I intend to comment on both books. If you have not read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, then do not read further, as I will name the murderer, and give away some of the clues."

Wendy wrote: "Agatha always gave the clues to find the killer, she never kept important details from the reader, so I don't think this was cheat.
Great book"

I don't think so that she always gave away the clues. At least she didn't give away all the clues. For example in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Poirot guesses that Dr. Sheppard must be hiding Ralph in a hospital and to check his guess he actually visits that hospital and finds Ralph there. This wasn't revealed until the end of the story. So you see Poirot is put at a more advantageous position here than the reader as he can go and check his speculations while the reader cannot.

Monica wrote: "It was a great twist imo. I read it twist as a teenager to try to find the clues that i should had picked up on while reading"

When I first read the ending I thought it might be a misprint or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the words. :)

Mitali wrote: Out of print? Most certainly not. "

As Jayesh clarified above, I was not talking about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I was talking about Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. That's another book by another author.

Farhan wrote: "Monica wrote: "It was a great twist imo. I read it twist as a teenager to try to find the clues that i should had picked up on while reading"

When I first read the ending I thought it might be a m..."

LOL! I understand how u felt. The book makes u want to take back out your hookec on phonics books. I just recommended this book to a colleague who is obsess with Christie through the Poirot tv show on BBC.

Farhan wrote: "Mitali wrote: Out of print? Most certainly not. "

As Jayesh clarified above, I was not talking about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I was talking about Who Killed Roger Ackroyd. That's another book ..."

Ah, sorry - my mistake. I should have read your post more carefully.

A cheat? I think not. I don't give a picayune for "rules"--there are no "rules." The solution was there all along, right under the reader's nose--but she outwitted us as usual.

Agatha Christie didn't limit herself to traditions or conventions; she never held back, allowing her creativity and ingenuity free rein. She was deceitful at times--yes! very cleverly deceitful!--but that's all part of the detective genre.

As long as it all makes sense and all the clues were there, the murderer could have killed themself before their victim for all I care. I give you, the detective genre has "rules"; but as long the solution is logically derived from clues that were never withheld from the reader, I do not think any rules are being broken.

Oh no not a cheat!!!!!!! !! Any mystery you read should leave you baffled at the end and this is what this book did !

Hats off to Christie !!

Even i did not expect that kind of ending to the book. However, all the other chapters were just superb.

In 1944 and 1945 Edmund Wilson wrote three articles attacking mystery fiction, one of which was "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" For a rejoinder, follow this link: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gjdemko/pra...

I didn't think it was a cheat. Despite the fact that I never doubted the narrator, because he's the narrator, she left clues pointing to him throughout the novel, especially the fact that everyone was suspected except for him though he has been with the victim last before he died. I didn't think it was a cheat, it's a mystery-crime novel, they're supposed to confuse you and mislead you at some parts and then reveal the hidden web of event they wove to surprise you with the outcome. Plus, it was a great read.

Farhan wrote: "Some reviewers and even other mystery writers of Christie's time felt that the fact that the narrator himself turned out to be the murderer was dishonesty and cheating on the part of Christie. Do y..."

Endless Night.

I don't think it was cheat. And the proof of it was that the detective himself told dr. Sheppard to fill the blankets of the narrative more than once.

Not at all. I thought it was brilliant.

That is precisely why this is my favorite Agatha book. Once it was revealed, I realized many clues I should have picked up on...loved it. I don't see how this is in any way a 'cheat'.

This is my favorite Agatha Christie. I thought it was well written and I even managed to solve it. It has been years since I read it.....maybe I will read it again!

I thought he may have done the murder, but because he was the narrator, I dismissed that premise. Turns out I was right and never thought it was a cheat until I read it here. You may have a point.

Farhan wrote: "Some reviewers and even other mystery writers of Christie's time felt that the fact that the narrator himself turned out to be the murderer was dishonesty and cheating on the part of Christie. Do y..."

No i dont think so. i guess it was an excellent idea

Well,no.We might feel cheated just because the narrator was the murderer.Had anyone else been in his place it would have been an obvious guess.Agatha needed a new concept and she penned it beautifully.

Caleb wrote: "A cheat? I think not. I don't give a picayune for "rules"--there are no "rules." The solution was there all along, right under the reader's nose--but she outwitted us as usual.

Agatha Christie did..."

Exactly. Quite an excellent book! The solution was definitely right there under the reader's nose; I unfortunately found out about 50 pages in (the clues were there...), but still highly enjoyed the remainder of the book!

Not at all. I actually strongly suspected the narrator throughout the entire book because it was kind of obvious that it was him. I just kept pushing the thought out of my mind because I thought, "she wouldn't..." Of course he was an unreliable narrator. You wouldn't expect him to just tell you that he did it. Plus it wouldn't be worth reading if she gave it away. But the clues were definitely there.

Allow me to point out that Mrs Christie was not the first author to use this particular plot device. It was used as early as 1909 in "Jernvognen (The Iron Carriage )" by the Norwegian writer/journalist Sven Elvestad, writing under his pen-name Stein Riverton. The novel was widely distributed in Scandinavia, and is still regarded as a scandinavian crime classic. The novel has been reprinted numerous times, and is rather easy to come by...

I don't think it's a cheat at all! I admit that I felt a bit silly when I read the reveal seeing as I like to have a guess. But, what I felt the most was how clever it was because I never would've thought of it and it was actually a great twist to the story. I've read quite a few Christie novels and this is one of the most memorable, and one of my favourites. It's just her way of mixing things up a bit, keeping it interesting! It's not like she just thought 'I can't be fussed, I'll just make it the narrator'. That would be a cheat. Just because it doesn't fit the mould, doesn't make it cheating! :)

It gets away on a technicism. I liked it. It taught me about unreliable narrators at a very early age and nursed a healthy distrust for "straight stories".

I don't consider it a "cheat" because Christie reveals Dr. Shepperd is an unreliable narrator in the beginning of the novel. He mentions that he and the inspector left the house (after Roger was murdered) and he returned home at 10:45. He fails to mention that he went to the pub looking for Roger's son before going home. You find this out the next day in the narrative when he is questioned about going there that night. After that everything was suspect.

I dont think its a cheat, I actually thought it was a great idea to have the killer as the narrator and thats part of the reason why I loved this book. This one is my favourite so far(I havnt read that many poirots yet but I am in the process of trying to read them all) another reason why I loved it is that I really was surprised to find out who the killer was as I usually guess right but I didnt this time.

I love the book. Christie doesn't do this in any other book and it was an original concept.

Not really.
But I did give it a lower star rating though than what I would have given it if I hadn't somehow predicted the ending. It's a strange explanation but I did do it somehow.

Farhan wrote: "Monica wrote: "It was a great twist imo. I read it twist as a teenager to try to find the clues that i should had picked up on while reading"

When I first read the ending I thought it might be a m..."
mee too....then read the whole chapter again..!!!

Emma wrote: "Not at all. I actually strongly suspected the narrator throughout the entire book because it was kind of obvious that it was him. I just kept pushing the thought out of my mind because I thought,..."
iguess it too....but the thing is....everything we read were simply what the narrator wished to tell us...!!

yeah sure. disappionting end really

A cheat?? It was brillance and established Dame Christie as a force to be reckoned with....though her many subsequent novels can be used as guides to 'great mystery writing", I don't beleive any other surpassed her first...maybe "Orient Express"
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