The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd? between July and September 1925 in the London Evening News. An American edition by Dodd, Mead and Company followed in 1926.
The novel was well received from its first publication, and has been called Christie's masterpiece. In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever. It is one of Christie's best-known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. Howard Haycraft included it in his list of the most influential crime novels ever written.
Plot
Dr James Sheppard, the story's narrator, lives with his unmarried sister, Caroline, in the English country village of King's Abbot. Telling the story in his own words, Dr Sheppard recounts being called to certify the death of a wealthy widow, Mrs Ferrars, who has committed suicide a year after her abusive husband's demise. Caroline speculates that Mrs Ferrars had poisoned her husband and has committed suicide out of remorse.Roger Ackroyd, wealthy widower and owner of Fernly Park, tells Dr Sheppard that he needs to talk to him urgently and invites him to dinner that evening. In addition to Dr Sheppard, the dinner guests include Major Blunt, Ackroyd's sister-in-law Mrs Cecil Ackroyd, her daughter Flora, and Ackroyd's personal secretary, Geoffrey Raymond. Flora tells the doctor that she is engaged to Ralph Paton, Ackroyd's stepson, though the engagement is being kept confidential.
In his study after dinner, Ackroyd tells Dr Sheppard that he had been engaged to Mrs Ferrars for several months, and that she had admitted the day before that she had indeed poisoned her husband. She was being blackmailed, and promised to reveal the blackmailer's name within 24 hours. At this point Ackroyd's butler, Parker, enters with a letter that Mrs Ferrars had posted just before she killed herself. Ackroyd apologetically asks Dr Sheppard to leave so that he can read it alone.
Shortly after arriving back home, the doctor receives a phone call from Parker. Dr Sheppard tells Caroline that Ackroyd has been found dead and then returns to Fernly Park. Parker professes to know nothing about the phone call. Unable to get a response at the study door, Sheppard and Parker break it down and find Ackroyd dead in his chair, killed with his own dagger. The letter is missing and footprints are found leading in and out of the study through an open window.
Ralph disappears and becomes the primary suspect when the footprints are found to match shoes that he owns. Flora, convinced that Ralph is innocent, asks the recently retired detective Hercule Poirot to investigate. He agrees and visits the scene of the crime, asking Dr Sheppard to accompany him.
Parker notes to Poirot that a chair in Ackroyd's study has been moved. Poirot questions the guests and staff, including Ursula Bourne, the parlourmaid, who has no alibi. The window of opportunity for the murderer after Dr Sheppard's departure appears to have been quite short since Raymond and Blunt later heard Ackroyd talking in his study, and Flora says she saw him just before going up to bed.
Poirot unravels a complex web of intrigue, and presents the missing Ralph Paton – who was, it transpires, already secretly married to Ursula when Ackroyd had decided that he should marry Flora. The pair had arranged a clandestine meeting in the garden. Flora is forced to admit she never in fact saw her uncle after dinner, leaving Raymond and Blunt as the last people to hear Ackroyd alive. Blunt confesses his love for Flora.
Alone with Dr Sheppard, Poirot reveals he knows that Dr Sheppard himself is both Ferrars' blackmailer and Ackroyd's killer. Realising that Mrs Ferrars's letter would implicate him, Sheppard had stabbed Ackroyd before leaving the study. He left publicly through the front door, then put Ralph's shoes on, ran round to the study window and climbed back in. Locking the door from the inside, he set a desk dictaphone going, playing a recording of Ackroyd's voice, and pulled out a chair to hide it from the sightline of anyone standing in the doorway. To provide the excuse for returning to Fernly Park, he had asked a patient to call him at home. While Sheppard had the study to himself for a few minutes after the crime was discovered, he slipped the dictaphone into his medical bag, and put the chair back in place. These details were concealed from his narrative, which has also now been given to Poirot.
Poirot tells Dr Sheppard the matter will be reported to the police in the morning and suggests he spare his sister Caroline by taking his own life. Sheppard completes his account of Poirot's investigation – the novel itself – with the final chapter, Apologia, serving as his suicide note.
Principal characters
- Hercule Poirot – retired private detective, living in the village
- Dr James Sheppard – the local doctor, Poirot's assistant in his investigations, and the novel's narrator
- Caroline Sheppard – Dr Sheppard's unmarried sister
- Roger Ackroyd – the victim of the case. A wealthy businessman and widower
- Mrs Ferrars – widow who dies by suicide at the start of the novel
- Mrs Cecil Ackroyd – widow of Roger's brother Cecil
- Flora Ackroyd – Ackroyd's niece, Cecil's daughter
- Captain Ralph Paton – Ackroyd's stepson from his late wife's previous marriage
- Major Hector Blunt – Ackroyd's friend, a guest of the household
- Geoffrey Raymond – Ackroyd's personal secretary
- John Parker – Ackroyd's butler
- Elizabeth Russell – Ackroyd's housekeeper
- Charles Kent – Russell's illegitimate son
- Ursula Bourne – Ackroyd's parlourmaid
- Inspector Davis – local police inspector for King's Abbot
- Inspector Raglan – police Inspector
- Colonel Melrose – chief constable for the county
Narrative voice and structure
Literary significance and reception
The review in The Times Literary Supplement began, "This is a well-written detective story of which the only criticism might perhaps be that there are too many curious incidents not really connected with the crime which have to be elucidated before the true criminal can be discovered". The review concluded, "It is all very puzzling, but the great Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian detective, solves the mystery. It may safely be asserted that very few readers will do so."A long review in The New York Times Book Review read in part:
The Observer had high praise for the novel, especially the character Caroline:
No one is more adroit than Miss Christie in the manipulation of false clues and irrelevances and red herrings; and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd makes breathless reading from first to the unexpected last. It is unfortunate that in two important points – the nature of the solution and the use of the telephone – Miss Christie has been anticipated by another recent novel: the truth is that this particular field is getting so well ploughed that it is hard to find a virgin patch anywhere. But Miss Christie's story is distinguished from most of its class by its coherence, its reasonableness, and the fact that the characters live and move and have their being: the gossip-loving Caroline would be an acquisition to any novel.
The Scotsman found the plot to be clever and original:
When in the last dozen pages of Miss Christie's detective novel, the answer comes to the question, "Who killed Roger Ackroyd?" the reader will feel that he has been fairly, or unfairly, sold up. Up till then he has been kept balancing in his mind from chapter to chapter the probabilities for or against the eight or nine persons at whom suspicion points.... Everybody in the story appears to have a secret of his or her own hidden up the sleeve, the production of which is imperative in fitting into place the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle; and in the end it turns out that the Doctor himself is responsible for the largest bit of reticence. The tale may be recommended as one of the cleverest and most original of its kind.
Howard Haycraft, in his 1941 work, Murder for Pleasure, included the novel in his "cornerstones" list of the most influential crime novels ever written.
The English crime writer and critic Robert Barnard, in A Talent to Deceive: An appreciation of Agatha Christie, wrote, "Apart—and it is an enormous 'apart'—from the sensational solution, this is a fairly conventional Christie." He concluded that this is "A classic, but there are some better Christie."
John Goddard wrote an analysis of whether Christie 'cheats' with her sensational solution and concluded that the charge of cheating fails.
In a biography of Christie, Laura Thompson argued that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the ultimate detective novel:
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the supreme, the ultimate detective novel. It rests upon the most elegant of all twists, the narrator who is revealed to be the murderer. This twist is not merely a function of plot: it puts the whole concept of detective fiction on an armature and sculpts it into a dazzling new shape. It was not an entirely new idea ... nor was it entirely her own idea ... but here, she realised, was an idea worth having. And only she could have pulled it off so completely. Only she had the requisite control, the willingness to absent herself from the authorial scene and let her plot shine clear.
In 1944–1946, the American literary critic Edmund Wilson attacked the entire mystery genre in a set of three columns in The New Yorker. The second, in the 20 January 1945 issue, was titled "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?", though he does no analysis of the novel. He dislikes mystery stories altogether, and chose the famous novel as the title of his piece.
In 1990, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came in at fifth place in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, a ranking by the members of the Crime Writers' Association in Britain. A similar ranking was made in 1995 by the Mystery Writers of America, putting this novel in twelfth place.
Literature professor and author Pierre Bayard, in the 1998 work Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd?, re-investigates Agatha Christie's Ackroyd, proposing an alternative solution in another crime novel. He argues in favour of a different murderer – Sheppard's sister, Caroline – and says Christie subconsciously knew who the real culprit is.
In 1999, the novel was included in French newspaper Le Monde's list of the 100 Books of the Century, chosen by readers from a list of 200.
In 2013, the Crime Writers' Association voted the novel as CWA Best Ever Novel. The 600 members of CWA said it was "the finest example of the genre ever penned." It is a cornerstone of crime fiction, which "contains one of the most celebrated plot twists in crime writing history." The poll taken on the 60th anniversary of CWA also honoured Agatha Christie as the best crime novel author ever.
In the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44, the writers picked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as an "EW and Christie favorite" on the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".
The character of Caroline Sheppard was later acknowledged by Christie as a possible precursor to her famous detective Miss Marple.