The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

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 and her daughter Flora, and Ackroyd's personal secretary Geoffrey Raymond. Flora tells the doctor that she is engaged to be married 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 admitted yesterday 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 and, stopping just long enough to shout to Caroline that the caller is Parker reporting that Ackroyd has been found dead, he rushes straight back to Fernly Park. On his arrival, 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 if he will investigate.

Asking Dr Sheppard to accompany him, Poirot visits the scene of the crime. Parker notices that a chair has been moved. Poirot questions the guests and staff including Ursula Bourne, the parlourmaid, who appears to have no alibi. The window of opportunity for the murderer after Dr Sheppard's departure appears to have been quite short as 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 the 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 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 replaced the chair.

Poirot tells Sheppard that this will be reported to the police in the morning, and he suggests that to spare his sister Caroline the doctor might take his own life. Dr Sheppard finishes writing his report on Poirot's investigation (the novel itself), with his last chapter – Apologia – serving as his suicide note.

• 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 commits 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

The novel is narrated by Dr James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot's assistant, in place of Captain Hastings who has married and settled in the Argentine. It includes an unexpected plot twist towards the end, when Dr Sheppard reveals he has throughout been an unreliable narrator, using literary techniques to conceal his guilt without writing anything untrue (e.g., "I did what little had to be done" at the point where he slipped the dictaphone into his bag and moved the chair).

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."[10]

A long review in The New York Times Book Review, read in part:

There are doubtless many detective stories more exciting and blood-curdling than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but this reviewer has recently read very few which provide greater analytical stimulation. This story, though it is inferior to them at their best, is in the tradition of Poe's analytical tales and the Sherlock Holmes stories. The author does not devote her talents to the creation of thrills and shocks, but to the orderly solution of a single murder, conventional at that, instead.... Miss Christie is not only an expert technician and a remarkably good story-teller, but she knows, as well, just the right number of hints to offer as to the real murderer. In the present case his identity is made all the more baffling through the author's technical cleverness in selecting the part he is to play in the story; and yet her non-committal characterization of him makes it a perfectly fair procedure. The experienced reader will probably spot him, but it is safe to say that he will often have his doubts as the story unfolds itself.[11]

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.[4]

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.[5]

Howard Haycraft,[14] in his 1941 work, Murder for Pleasure, included the novel in his "cornerstones" list of the most influential crime novels ever written.[13]

The English crime writer and critic Robert Barnard, in A Talent to Deceive: An appreciation of Agatha Christie, wrote that this novel is "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 [novels by] Christie."[6]

John Goddard wrote an analysis of whether Christie 'cheats' with her sensational solution and concluded that the charge of cheating fails.[12]

In a biography of Christie, Laura Thompson wrote that this is 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.[15]^{: 155–156}

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.[16][17]

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 (all crime writers) of the Crime Writers' Association in Britain.[8] A similar ranking was made in 1995 by the Mystery Writers of America, putting this novel in twelfth place.[9]

Literature professor and author Pierre Bayard, in the 1998 work Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd? (Who Killed 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.[18][19]

In 1999 the novel was included in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century published in the French newspaper Le Monde, chosen by readers from a list of 200.[20]

In 2013, the Crime Writers' Association voted this novel as CWA Best Ever Novel.[7] 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."[7][21] The poll taken on the 60th anniversary of CWA also honoured Agatha Christie as the best crime novel author ever.[7][21]

In the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 – 3 January 2015), the writers picked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd as an "EW and Christie favorite" on the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".[22]

The character of Caroline Sheppard was later acknowledged by Christie as a possible precursor to her famous detective Miss Marple.[23]^: 433

Christie revealed in her 1977 autobiography that the basic idea of the novel was given to her by her brother-in-law, James Watts of Abney Hall, who suggested a novel in which the criminal would be a Dr Watson character, which Christie considered to be a "remarkably original thought".[23]^: 342

In March 1924 Christie also received an unsolicited letter from Lord Mountbatten. He had been impressed with her previous works and wrote, courtesy of The Sketch magazine (publishers of many of her short stories at that time) with an idea and notes for a story whose basic premise mirrored the Watts suggestion.[15]^: 500 Christie acknowledged the letter and after some thought, began to write the book but to a plot line of her invention. She also acknowledged taking inspiration from the infamous case of the unsolved death of Charles Bravo, who she thought had been murdered by Dr James Manby Gully.[24]

In December 1969 Mountbatten wrote to Christie again after having seen a performance of The Mousetrap. He mentioned his letter of the 1920s, and Christie replied, acknowledging the part he played in the conception of the book.[25]^{: 120–121}

The story first appeared as a fifty-four part serialisation in the London Evening News from Thursday, 16 July, to Wednesday, 16 September 1925 under the title Who Killed Ackroyd? In the United States, the story was serialised in four parts in Flynn's Detective Weekly from 19 June (Volume 16, Number 2) to 10 July 1926 (Volume 16, Number 5). The text was heavily abridged and each instalment carried an uncredited illustration.

The Collins first edition of June 1926 (retailing for seven shillings and sixpence)[2] was Christie's first work placed with that publisher. "The first book that Agatha wrote for Collins was the one that changed her reputation forever; no doubt she knew, as through 1925 she turned the idea over in her mind, that here she had a winner."[15]^: 155 The first United States publisher was The Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 19 June 1926 (retailing at $2.00).[3]

By 1928, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was available in braille through the UK's Royal National Institute for the Blind[26] and was among the first works to be chosen for transfer to Gramophone record for their Books for the Blind library in the autumn of 1935.[27][28] By 1936 it was listed as one of only eight books available in this form.[29]

• Gilbert Adair's 2006 locked-room mystery The Act of Roger Murgatroyd was written as "a celebration-cum-critique-cum-parody" of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.[31]

• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
• The Shooting Party (Chekhov novel)

• Rowland, Susan (2001). From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British women writers in detective and crime fiction. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-67450-2.

• The full text of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at Wikisource
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at Project Gutenberg
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at Standard Ebooks
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at the HathiTrust Digital Library
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at the official Agatha Christie website