The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

‘The truth is what we need now’ -  Hercule Poriot

‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ is the third Agatha Christie crime novel that features detective Hercule Poriot as the lead detective. In this novel Poriot, although retired, investigates the murder of Roger Ackroyd, on behalf of Ackroyd’s niece Flora.

When reading the novel I found the story boring as a lot of thoughts and clues were accumulated but never amounted to anything concrete, but after completing the book I look at this now as a ploy to have the revelation of the murderer be more surprising, which it definitely was, but this taking less than fifty pages in the book did little to recover it for me.

Also I thought that many of Poriot’s thoughts weren’t based on anything such as who he initially believed was the blackmailer, but upon further review they did all seem to be reasoned, but still I do not completely like the inspector.

Poriot is a self proclaimed know it all and while this is proven as well as similar to another popular detective, Sherlock Holmes, in my opinion he is less enjoyable to read. One reason for this is that Poriot insists that he is somewhat omniscient rather than using information to come to a reasoned conclusion like Holmes. However as this is my first encounter with Poriot there may be more to his character that I am yet to understand. As I continue to think about it the more I realise that Poriot and Holmes are very similar as it is even alluded to by Christie but causes me to still wonder why I wasn’t very interested in the novel.

The main thought that I had is that this novel was written during the 20^th century and me reading it much later when more complex murder mysteries are the norm and are what I am more accustomed to, this novel isn’t then as exciting for me compared to how it would’ve been received  by its initial audience. The problem with this is ‘Malice Aforethought’ which came out less than a decade later was a book I was fully engaged in and was eager to turn each pages despite knowing from the start who the murderer was.

I feel like I am only focusing on the negatives currently but that goes to show how little of the novel that I actually enjoyed. For instance the use of the first person writing from Dr Sheppard’s perspective which is a writing technique that I ordinarily prefer didn’t necessarily allow me to fell more involved in the novel. This may have been sacrificed by Christie for the sake of the ending but as it did so unsuccessfully for myself.

Although this is a novel that has been highly regarded since its release it failed to engage in may in many ways.